Stephen Bennett Portrait Painter

I used this photo in my beginner oil painting class last night to illustrate the importance of values to my students. Showing students gets through to them more when they can see examples of what you're talking about. I'm only halfway through the class and I'm quite sure I've already worn out the word values. I explained to them that you can be off with your colors but you really need to get your values down pretty close.  I use Stephen's paintings to illustrate the point that you can change the colors all you want as long as you get the values correct. I showed them how he replaces hues in his paintings with these vivid colors but because he keeps the values correct, you can still recognize forms as a face.

If you're not familar with Stephen Bennett's work, please visit his web site. A strange thing happened a few weeks after I discovered his work. I was driving to my painting class with Stuart Dunkel and I was stopped at a intersection and as I looked to my right, I saw one of Stephen's paintings or perhaps a reproduction on the wall in a business. Really strange coincidence!

http://theportraitpainter.com/web/index.html

Here's one of my all-time favorite paintings by Stephen:

Djalu Gurruwiwi,

Caretaker of the Yidaki

Acrylic on canvas

80 x 64 inches

Abbey Ryan's Online Painting Demo

I was able to watch Abbey Ryan's online painting demo last week and was very cool.  I love watching how other artists work a painting.  You can view this demo and others by visiting her web blog:  http://ryanstudio.blogspot.com/ and you can also visit her main site: http://www.abbeyryan.com/. 

Abbey paints in a "alla prima" or all-at-once style which is the process of painting a painting directly onto the canvas and usually in one sitting.  Her painting style was handed down by her teacher, David Leffel at the Art Students League.

Abbey sometimes includes these magnificent bottles in her paintings that are equally beautiful, you can view on the Jury Smith Bottle Shop site:  http://shop.jurysmith.com/