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New artworks at The ART Lounge Gallery are going up this weekend.  Featured this month will be the top winners of the Strawberry Festival Fine Art Show, sponsored by the East Hillsborough Art Guild.  We are excited to have these works of art exhibited in our gallery!  If you are in the area, drop in for a look at the local talent.  :)

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I love Gallery days!  I painted this little 8X10 painting, "Day Labor" today at the gallery, and started another.  Friends stopped by and we enjoyed their company until time to close.  It was a good day...  :)

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Today I painted at The ART Lounge Gallery, this little portrait, which is a study in cool fleshtones and backlight.  The Fl. Strawberry Festival is over and I am eager to get back to painting MORE!  I did get to demonstrate 4 days, which was very nice.  Anytime I can paint is a good day.  I am working on 8X10 portrait studies, faces.  My goal is to sharpen my drawing (with paint) skills as well as to master a variety of fleshtones.  I believe quick studies are the best way to achieve this.

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Today I demonstrated at the Florida Strawberry Festival using a WetCanvas photo reference.  More people who came by were amazed with my use of the laptop to pull up the reference and paint from it.  I know there are many of you who do the same.  It saves my eyes and I can enlarge, reverse image, reduce saturation for value studies....on and on.  This is an 8X10 in oil on masonite panel.  I may do a little more work on the blanket across his shoulder, but my aim was to get the pose and the COLORFUL face and water jar.

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Each year the Florida Strawberry Festival hosts a Fine Art Show, sponsored and staffed by a group of volunteer East Hillsborough Art Guild members and their friends.  It is a nice show, raising funds each year to benefit our student scholarship program.  There were some fine entries this year, as in the past, and I try to take the opportunity to demo at least a couple of the 11 days of the Festival.  I am posting the demonstration painting from this morning.  I used my photo reference of a young girl for the pose and fleshtones in this 8X10 oil painting on masonite panel.  I am happy with her as a 3 ½ hr. study, so I think I am going to frame her.  Honesty is her name.

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After working at the Strawberry Festival most of the day, I came home to a surprise...my fun online art buddies had taken a 2-hour online painting workshop with Jonathan Hardesty on Saturday morning.  He recorded the session, so I was able to go online this evening and "catch up" by using his photo reference of his lovely wife Marie (DROP DEAD GORGEOUS EYES!), and painted a nice little study.

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Quick studies can be so much fun! If they don't turn out, no problem; you don't have a lot of time invested in them. I personally enjoy the freedom that one thought gives me. It allows me to just enjoy the process and I usually learn a thing or two along the way. It's also a great stress reliever! This is the process I used for "Her First Rodeo" painted from one of my photos, in under two hours. It is obviously a quick sketch, and not a finished portrait.

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The entire country has had strange weather this winter, including central Florida.  On several occasions the growers resorted to spraying the fields with water to protect the strawberry crop.  I slogged through nearly knee deep icy water in the fields to get photos, and put together a couple of those shots for a painting.  This is my entry for the Strawberry Theme art competition at the Florida Strawberry Festival, "Protecting the Future".  While you are enjoying the festival, don't forget to drop by the Art Show, located at Gate 5, and St. Clement's "Make Your Own" Strawberry Shortcake booth, located at Gate 9!  

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