Stacy Weitz Minch

Quick sketch of our family pet. If ever a model moves, this one does, ha! My  mom pointed out that he's too thin, and she's right, but I feel like I might have a good excuse ;)

4x6", oil on linen mounted to hardboard Quick sketch of a wild rose I clipped from a bush in our backyard. I've started keeping a cigar box loaded with paint in the freezer at all times. It's so much easier to find a few minutes to paint when setup is taken out of the equation.

Here's a painting I started as a quick sketch last week, and ended up working on for a few days in a row. Oddly enough, the part of the painting I feel like I'm struggling with most is the background. I'm letting it dry now, and I'm going to give it another go to see if I can't salvage it. 

I'm not a huge tomato eater, but I couldn't resist these beautiful tomatoes at the grocery store last night. And then i couldn't resist picking up my brushes and painting them when i should have been in bed ;)

Haha, a month or two ago I was perusing the local thrift store with the kids, and came across this beauty school mannequin in the toy department. It has real human hair :o and isn't really very lifelike, in my opinion. But I thought she might hold still and let me paint her ;) And she does. But painting portraits is sort of really, really hard. I think it was in a John F. Carlson book that I read something along the lines that a good picture is nothing but a series of good corrections. And I was correcting and correcting and correcting here (mostly the drawing, of course--the color I may worry about later). Which sometimes feels a little discouraging, but that's just what it is. Correcting. Over and over and over. At least the setup is very repeatable. And I guess $4.99 was a pretty reasonable unlimited model fee ;) Also, I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, but that doesn't mean I won't eventually, right? Except for one 20 minute attempt at painting my k...

Another ranunculus sketch. This one was pretty quick, maybe 30 minutes or so.

5x7" This is just a quick 45-minute sketch of a ranunculus I picked up at the grocery store this morning (keep me away from that floral section! ;). When I bought it, it was all curled up, but magically opened up in the warm car on the drive home. I preferred the shape partially-closed, but I'm hoping it might close back up overnight... if not, there's another tiny bud that I assume will eventually bloom. The colors are so vibrant and beautiful, though! I've started using more of a reductive drawing process for starting floral sketches. I like some tone in the background, but I don't like it where the petals will be--it muddies the color. And drawing with a thinned brown or gray paint does the same thing. So I draw with my paper towel, and it's just kind of fun and fast. Anyway, I've got my eyes set on a few more master copies that will guide me in the direction of pulling it into a tighter finish when that's what I want. 

Happy May Day! I finally took my new Soltek out yesterday (to the side of the house--I'm so adventurous ;). And I painted some lilacs. This was probably an hour to an hour and a half or so of painting. I could be happier with this painting--seems like I could have been using a larger brush for those blossoms, because they're feeling a little too broken up, especially in the shadows. But, that's alright. At least I painted. And next time I'll have some ideas on what to do differently. That's what I like about painting small and often (though often hasn't been often enough lately, mostly just Sundays--my time is spread pretty thin these days). But there's always next time to build on what I learned last time. And I also like analyzing what I did afterward and writing it down, so I can refer to my last painting and push a little further with each attempt. 

5x7", oil on linen panel Just a quick sketch of a persimmon from last night. Turns out they aren't very tasty (they're one of those fruits that suck all the moisture out of your mouth--and apparently their name means something like "dry fruit" ;). But they are pretty little things. I probably spent between and hour and hour and a half on this (I like to make a note of how long it takes me to do things, for future reference).

5x7", oil on linen panel I woke up at 5AM this morning, laid around a little while trying to get back to sleep, then decided to get up and paint for a bit before everyone else woke up. Pomegranates always get me. They're just the prettiest. I think I might fiddle with that cast shadow more a little later. I haven't painted much lately and I kind of forgot about that panic state of every painting, where it feels like it will never ever come together (I think that's about where I ended with my awful painting yesterday). But it's still a surprise every time, ha. And why was I up at 5AM? I don't know. I wish I could figure out a way to predict and prevent my discouragement and anxiousness regarding all this stuff, but it comes in waves (and for no apparent reason).

5x7", oil on linen panel Another sketch of some little pumpkins we picked up at the pumpkin patch the other day. I left the white one out this time. I don't know why it's so much easier for me to see value and temperature on brightly colored objects, but it is. I guess the variation of color/value on white is probably just a lot more subtle, so your perception needs to be much more fine-tuned. In any case, I'll keep working on that white stuff. With the pumpkins, I'm finding I have to make sure all the darks are connected, and all the lights are connected, or it looks really wonky. I don't know if that makes sense, but it does in my head. And here's a quick sketch of a cat, done from a photograph. I'm feeling the fall vibes, if you can't tell ;) 

Another quick little painting. I find these two-toned fruits pretty tricky as far as color and value matching goes, especially the transition where the two tones meet. But I sure do like having that little box full of paint ready to go all the time--it seems like half the battle of painting is getting set up (and of course cleaning those brushes after-the-fact. But I don't really use too many most the time :)

4x6" Another quick oil sketch. This kind of thing is just for fun, and isn't that nice? I think I will practice more white dishes next--those subtle shades of gray. I think I need to give the grays a little more color next time, and really study those values carefully (though I may need to spend more than 20 minutes at it)...  My palette was looking pretty crazy, so thought I'd share (and I'm still pretty excited about this silly little cigar box, ha).

Last night's two-hour figure. I really tried to get the portrait in there, and hey what!? I nailed it. That's her. I think it helped that it was a familiar face. I've also been trying to get back into the daily painting thing. I'm a big believer in painting small and often. I read this book called "Art and Fear" a year or two ago, and the author tells a story about a pottery class where the teacher broke the class into two groups. To one group he said, "You will be graded on one pot. So try all semester to make a perfect pot." And to the other group he said, "You will be graded on how many pots you produce. So make as many pots as you can." At the end of this experiment, those who were in the "quantity" group also had produced the best pots.  There's just something about actually doing something and doing it often that is really important to improving. And something I've come to realize (over and over again) i...

8x8" It seemed like a good day for a carefree sketch of something. I haven't painted in a couple weeks, and maybe I'm missing it. Or maybe I'm just itching for a change from what I've been doing lately. This is me playing with paint and not thinking too hard--just letting the brush go.  I need that sometimes. These little studies may not be much, but I do think they are more helpful than I give them credit for. The mistakes made here are small, the pressure is low, and the lessons learned can be applied right away to the next little painting. So maybe I'll try to do it more. Or maybe I won't--just taking it day by day right now. I think this was 30-45 minutes or somewhere around there.

5x7", water mixable oil on linen panel I haven't had much time to paint or draw lately. But these beautiful pieces of fruit just had to be painted. This was about an hour and a half study, I think. Someday, I'll be able to do them more justice, but believe me, they're better than they would have been a year or two ago (if you don't believe me, just click on the label for "pears" at the bottom of this post--it's a little scary ;). I think I'm painting a little too thin lately. My first experiences painting were with watercolor, and I still try to make use of that background as part of my value scheme (letting some of the white show through the paint on top). Oil doesn't work quite the same way, and I need to build up a little more paint. I think I'm slowly getting a little bit better at matching colors, though, and that's a good thing. Shadows are still a little confusing for me, especially the dark color right under the frui...

8x8", water mixable oil on canvas panel Quick little sketch of a sunflower. This was purely for fun. I wasn't too careful about the drawing on this guy (it's hard to be when you only spend an hour on something). My main goal with my painting these days is just to get a better sense for color. Not much else to say, except sorry (again) for the bad photo quality. I'm too lazy to use anything but the iPhone camera these days.

6x4", water mixable oil on linen panel I just wanted to do a quick little sketch tonight while we were watching the Olympics. I had my lamp in the opposite corner of my teeny tiny dormer window studio, and I really liked how it was actually making shadow shapes in the petals of the rose. So I decided to leave it there, even though the thought ran through my head "But I should be painting in the same light that is falling on the subject." Listen to that little voice, Stacy! ha. Clearly, I didn't listen. Subject, lighted. Canvas, in shadow. Not good. Here's a rather sad little progression of how things went down. But the good news is that, from what I hear, experience is the best teacher--perhaps I won't make that mistake again? I wouldn't necessarily count on it, but I'll try to remember ;) (also, don't paint with transparent colors in the dark)     And while we're on the subject of flowers, late last night I read t...

I'd really kind of like it if my window wasn't placed in such a way that everything I set up ends up being very softly back lit. I mean, I'm sure it's really great for helping me see subtlety and all, but sometimes I'd just like a big old drastic shadow, you know? Anyway, I don't mean to complain. It's a very nice window and I'm glad I have it. I'm very fortunate to be one of the few humans in this world who have the means to paint at all. I decided to use a limited palette for this mini sketch session (50 minutes for both roses). So I had white, black, naphthol red, and yellow ochre on my palette. It's kind of cool to see what that simple color combo can do. Not that this was a very complex subject as far as color goes. But it does somewhat simplify your color decisions to have just a few piles of paint on the palette. Painting is so stinking hard. It's something I realize more and more each time I try. But someday I'll be a...

5x7", water mixable oil on linen board Strawberries have such great individual character. Whenever I arrange them to paint, it feels like they're huddled in some kind of social gathering. This particular situation is something quite relate-able to human experience--at least my human experience. And I'd be willing to bet I'm not the only one :) This was a pretty quick little sketch--maybe 30ish minutes. Here are a couple behind the scene photos.