This has not been a productive couple of years for me. Working almost exclusively nightshifts in the Emergency Room has taken a bit of a toll on my energy level. I seem to always be either working … or recovering from working. It’s hard to improve as a painter if you’re not painting.
Year Paintings
2012 29
2013 35
2014 17
2015 18
2016 10
2017 2 (through mid-April)
On that note, I decided to repaint one of my favorite images of Suzy, as an experiment to see how my style has changed since beginning to paint.
Oil on cradled birchwood panel from “American Easel.” Ground was then toned with burnt sienna.
Palette and Supplies:
Design was sketched onto toned canvas with graphite pencil.
Background of chromatic black, eyes and transparent cast and formed shadows
Opaque highlights, middle tones added next. Background given a glaze of ultramarine blue.
Continued to define the value range by painting additional layers of transparent darks into shadows and flake white into highlights. Color highlights of quinacrinone red, qunacrinone violet, yellow ochre, cadmium red.
“New and Improved Zu” (2017). Louis Cooper. Oil on Panel. 20″ x 20″
Now here’s the fun part. This is the THIRD time I’ve painted this image. The first one, painted in 2012, was so poor that I had suppressed it from the public record. The second one, painted a year later had better value range and handling of hard and soft edges, more three dimensional and less cartoon-like. The latest … what do you think? Step forward? Backward? Sideways?
2012
2013
2017