Stacy Weitz Minch

18x24", water mixable oil on board, 11/30/15 I don't know... I think I'm about done with this one (maybe a few more touch ups?). This is probably the biggest I've ever painted with oil, and my goal was to be loose and fast. I feel like I've been a little tight with my painting lately. I really want to be able to accurately represent reality, because once you can do that, I think it gives you a great freedom to be able to do whatever you want to do with your art. But at the same time, I don't want to get so caught up in accuracy that I lose the fun. So I pulled out the really big brushes on this one, and didn't let myself get too caught up in any of the details, drawing or otherwise ;) I'm okay with that; it's basically what I was going for. Loose, fast, fun :). This is the view from the post office parking lot to the southwest of the building (the gray on the bottom is a big cement wall, ha. I left out the wrought iron fence and row of bush

My older sister was in town for Thanksgiving, and she agreed to hold still for a little bit while I sketched her :) This is not a perfect likeness, but it reminds me of her anyway... I filled in most of the values after she had left, so had I had a little more time, I may have been able to get a better likeness. Next time she's in town ;)

12x9", pencil on paper, 11/24/15 This one got a little messy ;) I wasn't quick enough to get the pose right in the first 20 minutes (why do I draw so slowly when I'm standing at an easel??? sketchbook on my lap, I feel like I can get a quick basic sketch done pretty quickly). And it was the same story after every break (and the pose shifted ever so slightly each time). So there was a lot of erasing and redrawing. I was using different paper this time (more textured than my usual), that also made my lines softer, which I'm not so sure I like. This model has such a beautiful nymph-like quality that I didn't quite capture (she's much prettier than I made her here... just started refining the features in the last 5-10 minutes and didn't quite get there). So overall, some room for improvement :) But when I feel bad about my most recent drawing, all I have to do is look back at the first night I came out to draw in March... haha ;)

Okay, I have a goal this week to draw for at least 10 minutes a day. I don't want to go days without doing something art-related, because it feels like I come back rusty when I do that. So here is a tiny sketch from last night (this head is about 2" tall, not including the neck/braid). The subject was my daughter, but I didn't quite get her likeness. She probably moved about 57 times in the 10 or so minutes I was drawing--a few more still moments might have helped. I think the trick to drawing kids is to get a super fast, but accurate basic outline, then watch and wait until they get in a similar position again and quickly put down another line, and just keep going like that--the trickiest part is getting that super fast (I'm talking, like, less than 10 seconds if you're lucky) and accurate basic block-in. Still working on that ;)

5x7", water mixable oil on linen panel, 11/20/15 I bought a few of these cute little indian corns (not sure that's a proper pluralization, but oh well) in all different colors at the grocery store a few weeks ago, and just got around to painting one of them last night. It's almost Thanksgiving!!! (I have some family coming into town next week, so I'm getting excited :)

I'm still trudging along on with this painting. I went at this poor lady's head again this week, and I'm feeling a little better about it now (though next time I paint a face, I will make it a much bigger face. 1 1/2 inches is just so small, and if something is off by the tiniest bit the whole face just looks horribly deformed, ha).  Since the picture above, I've scraped out the blanket (again!) and am going to give it another try sometime (maybe soon?). I've had a hard time creating the illusion of depth with this silly blanket, and I think part of the problem is that I'm working from a photograph. The camera exposes for only one gray value, and this blanket was just a little blown out, so I'm having to fudge the values, which I'm not really that great at. So I'm going to try pulling it up in Photoshop and reducing the exposure for the blanket and see if that will help. I may need to bring her feet a little more forward/elongate them b

12x9", pencil on paper, 11/17/15 This was a two-hour pose, but I didn't get very far on it :) For one, I was standing up, which always throws me off a bit. I've been trying to figure out why that is, since standing definitely does make it easier to quickly compare your drawing to the subject. I think it's because I don't have something to rest my arm on, and it makes my fine motor skills a little less... fine. Also, one of the students there at the CAS was trying to help me approach the drawing the way they do there at the school. Which is a slightly different way of looking at things than I usually do (though really pretty similar, if a little more structured than my usual way of working), so it threw off my groove just a little bit (not a bad thing). I redrew those legs about a zillion times. It didn't help that I had been up half the night before (my baby has decided about 1-4am is a great time to be awake, ha).

8x10", water mixable oil on canvas panel, 11/13/15 A quick plein air sketch I did yesterday afternoon (about an hour or so). It was so sunny and beautiful and peaceful out in the crisp fall air. And then I came home, turned on the 5:00 news, and learned about all the tragedy in Paris. :'( "You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." -Mahatma Ghandi

6x6", water mixable oil on gessobord, 11/12/15 I could probably paint a pomegranate every day of the year and not get sick of them. I love their rich colors and textures, individual shapes, and characters. I haven't done a lot of painting or drawing the past week... not really sure why. Maybe it's the time change, the change in the weather (brrrr), or burnout from trying to finish that bigger painting last week (I like to start something and get it done ;), or something else altogether, but I've been in sort of a funk the past little while. Having a daily painting habit has made me much more aware of my mental and emotional state, which is probably a good thing... but makes me feel a little neurotic, because I'm much more aware of my shifting moods. It seem like the balance of my life has to be somewhat aligned before I feel like painting, which makes it all the more obvious when something is off (and I've learned it's never a good thing to try

Since I didn't make it out to drawing last night, I asked my husband to pose for me while he was watching TV. Well, he definitely does not have a future career as an art model--he moves just as much as the kids, ha! Anyway, it's hard to draw something that moves a lot. But I got better with each attempt (I think). With my first one, I WAY over exaggerated the size of the features (why do I do that!?). The second one got super messy because of all the constant motion ;) and the third one I might have had a solid 5 minutes on before any major movement, so it was a little better. And then my daughter fell asleep on the couch, so I had a little bit better luck with this 10-15 minute sketch (though she still didn't hold still, ;).

6x4", water mixable oil on linen panel, 11/8/15 Today I decided to do a quick sketch of a sunflower for a nice diversion. I don't think it's productive to work on something once you've gotten sick of it, so I'm going to let that other painting sit until I feel like picking it up again (maybe I never will, and if so, I'm okay with that). This one was just fun :) I think flowers are excellent practice for shape, value, color... everything.

The mother's head just kept looking worse--it was too small and was getting smaller the more I worked it (which is a new one for me--I usually exaggerate heads ;), overworked, dull colors, etc. I read in an oil painting technique book (I think Harold Speed's?) that you can put a thin layer of white paint over an area that needs to be reworked, so I'm going to give this one a rest for a few days while it dries and try again. Maybe it can be saved :) I might scrape out the white of the mother's blanket (for maybe the third or fourth time) and try again. Getting those subtle gradations of white to appear three dimensional is really difficult :/

Currently dangling precariously between #3 and #4 in the sequence below (and I don't always make it to #6 ;)

12x9, graphite on paper, 11/3/15 My figure drawing from last night's session. I was trying to focus more attention on mass than I usually do. My drawings tend to be a bit cartoon-y sometimes. Looking at this, I can see that her left hand is a little too big and far from her body. Should've stepped back a little more to compare, but I was tired and didn't feel like standing last night... so I sat to draw.  Funny--it's almost the exact same pose as last week's model. Weight on a different foot, though (and a different model :)

I'm trying to get the trickiest pieces of the picture out of the way first... And also calculate the order in which I lay on the paint. It takes some strategy. Faces are always the trickiest... especially little faces. Every tiniest deviation makes such a huge difference in appearance! Still not done with these but they are getting closer. So far so good, I suppose. I'm not racing to the garbage can with this one (not yet anyway ;) As much as smaller daily paintings fit my schedule right now, Its probably good to experiment with larger paintings here and there, so I don't get too dependent on working small--even though it can be a little exhausting (and hard to find the time)!

16x20, water mixable oil on board, 11/1/15 I'm just getting started on this larger painting (I know that relatively speaking, 16x20" is not that big! but it's bigger than I usually figure I have time for). I stumbled across this couple in the foyer at church a while back, and I just had to snap a stealthy photo on my iPhone :) Working from a photo is always more difficult for me than working from life, but I do have access to the very spot where this photo was taken, so if I need to I can zip over there some afternoon to study from life. Starting something new is always a little scary--there's always the very real possibility that it won't turn out! But if so, I'm sure I will learn something important from the experience, so here I go. Wish me luck ;)