Little Red – Watercolor Portrait

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Little Red 6.5×4.25 Graphite & Watercolor on paper
Available for sale on Etsy.
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This started as a doodle of a friend’s face from a photo taken in the 70’s, and the drawing just meandered until it became a young girl in the woods – and then I saw Little Red Riding Hood emerging. Sometimes, it’s best to let the art take you where it wants to go, and enjoy the tour and insights along the way. 🙂

Using graphite and my favorite pointy Faber Castell Pitt Eraser Pencil to lay in a sketch. Just starting to layer color here.

I’m excited to share that my watercolor Aperture (11×14) [above, Sold] has been juried into the Brand40 Works on Paper Exhibit. The juror is Peter Frank, Art Critic for the Huffington Post, and I’m sending a big thank you shout-out to him. The theme of the show is Entrances & Exits, and the opening will be at the Brand Library Art Galleries in Glendale, CA September 17th – 6:00-9:00pm.

Art Quote
Childless, his paintings were his children, and to part with one was like the parting of mother and child.
In these days, when selling of pictures has become an essential part of the art of painting, it is difficult for people to comprehend the attitude of a man who really did not like to sell. “What are pictures for, if not to sell?” asks the spirit of the age. It does not seem quite so obvious that poems are written to sell and that music is composed to sell. Even the “practical man” feels that poems and music ought to be made for something more than to sell, and if they are not, they will be the worse for the narrow end in view; but paintings and sculpture, they are commercial products to be dealt in accordingly. When Whistler did part with a picture he had no faculty for getting a high price. His prices were very uncertain. To one person he might ask a round sum, to another, a small sum – just as the mood seized him, the price having no particular relation to the painting. He never could see why paintings should be sold like cloth, by the square yard; why a large picture should necessarily bring more than a small. To him, perfection was perfection, whether large or small. What justifiable reason is there for the commercial schedule of so much for a head, so much for a half length, so much for a full length portrait? The one may, but does by no means necessarily, take a little more time; but, then, a painter does not value his work by the day. A perfect thing is a perfect thing, whether large or small, Whistler would frequently say. In the matter of prices, he was obliged to yield somewhat to custom, and ask more for larger pictures than for small, but he did so reluctantly and intermittently, with a natural result that dealers, who screen pictures as the plasterer does his gravel, could do nothing with him. ~Recollections & Impressions of James McNeill Whistler by Arthur Jerome Eddy, 1903

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