Custom Portrait of Moggie
8″ x 10″ Oil Painting on Linen Canvas Hardboard
©2010 Leanne Wildermuth
All Rights Reserved

Here’s the final image of Moggie’s fourth portrait, this one is an 8×10 oil painting. Her previous portraits were all in graphite (See Moggie #1, #2, #3) so painting her in oils was a real treat!

My schedule is filling up SO fast, at this rate I will be busy until at least the end of November. I have 11 projects in queue now – quite a variety! I’ll be working on a few custom graphite portraits, at least one in oils, a few blog designs and a couple of photo album designs. I am very excited and blessed to have great clients who keep me creative in so many ways.

I’ll update again very soon with more new work!

I’ve completed Moggie’s portrait! Her whiskers, and suitcase have all been revisited with a couple more layers with very fine brushes and I think she’s just stunning. I am pleased as punch with how she turned out!

Things have definitely picked up around my house so the past few days have been busy busy busy, go go go – and I have not had the chance to get her portrait uploaded here for you to see. I’ve sent the photo to my client for review and approval as well so I’ll be varnishing and scanning and shipping the beginning of next week.

Thanks for popping in for a visit! I’ll post the scan next week some time and hope to find a few moments in the next few days to catch you up on all the other day to day things I’ve been up to. See you soon!

I’ve got a couple more progress shots for you of Moggie’s portrait! The top photo shows how I began working in her stripes first and what the portrait looked like when I began filling in her coat. I thought it was a neat comparison shot to the final under painting beneath, so you can get a better idea how I work through a portrait.

The first thing I work in is the background and foreground, if there is one, and then I paint in the facial features – eyes, nose & ears – then stripes and solids. The only part of the painting that is completely finished at this stage is the gorgeous mustard background. I’ll paint in each hair on her coat again individually – under painting it like this just covers the canvas in the darkest color so I can start laying actual fur over the top.

I might not finish this piece until next week. I don’t use black, since it’s not a natural color found in nature. What appears to be black in my paintings never is – it is a combination of indigo and other dark values found in the painting. For example, Moggie’s “black” is indigo and raw umber, with a touch of burnt umber and yellow ochre where the light is bouncing off of her coat. Indigo seems to be the once color that takes the absolute longest to dry, even when using a medium to speed drying time! Neat little tidbit for you artists who are following along! I quit using black a long, long time ago – doing it this way makes the color so much more real, and rich.

Moggie and I will see you again soon!

Both of my girls are back to school and that means I’m back at the easel! I’ve kicked off my week with Moggie’s portrait, working in the background and the under painting of the blue suitcase that Moggie is lying on in this portrait. This is an 8×10 oil painting on a linen panel, in case you’re wondering! I’ll be finishing this painting by the end of the week, so stay tuned for those updates.

I’ll also be working on another cat portrait, that one is a graphite drawing – as well as a few site designs and updates for clients, so I’m diving right in!

Summer is coming to an end and the kids are getting ready to go back to school. I’ve cleaned and organized the studio so that I can paint/draw and photograph more efficiently, and now it’s time for me to get back to work!

It’s always tough to work on projects through the summer months with the girls home – I would much rather soak up all that time with them – before I know it they’ll be gone all summer and I’ll have studio time year-round!

The kitty above is Moggie, I’ve drawn her portrait several times already but this one will be a full color oil painting. The sketch is done and I’m ready to work on the background color, which will be a nice creamy golden mustard to match her tabbiness (sitting in a blue suitcase, holding a blue NY Giants drink cozy). It’s going to be a really sweet portrait and I’m excited to get back to the easel!

Hope you’ve enjoyed your summer!

I’m participating in a new Photography meme again this week! You can find the Pro Photo Business Forum Weekly Challenge by clicking right here. I won last weeks fill light challenge so WAHOO! I’ll try again – especially since there’s a cool prize this week!

On to the challenge:

This week, your assignment is “Shallow Depth Of Field”. Tell a story, and make the subject of your story more clear through the use of a shallow depth of field.

I love this challenge. I am still learning the ropes with my D90 (Nikon) and I have one lens in particular, the 50mm, that always gives a fantastic depth of field, even on auto. I was tempted to use it, but I really need to stretch a bit with my technical skill so I used my default lens, the 18-105mm. I changed my settings to manual (uh-oh, here I go, off into uncharted territory – sortof kidding), including manual focus. Then I flipped my focus to single point and voila – I learned something new!

Here’s my submission, which is actually two photos, because there are two totally different feelings from each of these images.

This is our chiapoo, Copper. You can see from the first photo that he’s sitting. It’s a good looking treat and you can tell that he’d like to get his paws on it. The second shot, however, he’s begging. You can see it in his eyes. He wants that treat – pretty, pretty please?

(And I want that prize. Pretty, pretty please?)

I would like to mention that these are, indeed, two completely separate shots, I am holding the treat in my left hand, and my camera in my right. He’s a good boy, and held very, very still while I refocused! I was impressed.

Won’t you play along? Grab your camera and head on over to the Pro Photo Business Forum. 🙂

This week, I’m participating in a new Photography meme, a Weekly Photo Challenge hosted by my good friend and client, Aric Hoek, who runs the Pro Photo Business Forum. He’s an amazing photographer and a generous spirit. His site aims to help amateur photographers learn, improve, and effectively turn their talent into a successful business.

This first challenge is using Fill Flash. You can see the challenge here and participate if you want – there’s still time this week!

You can really increase the quality of your photography with the right amount of fill flash. Fill flash will help to resolve this problem for you. This weeks assignment; use flash to illuminate your backlit subject.

Here’s my submission for this challenge:

I had her back to the sun and, as you can tell from the blown areas of the photo, the sun was high in the sky so her face was in full shadow. I used my SB-900 flash on a tripod slightly to the right (behind me) with the diffuser and filled those shadows, giving a natural light source feeling instead of a hard flash result. I am not a fan of on camera flash and have very little experience using my SB-900 so this is really good practice for me! I’m glad Aric chose this as the first assignment and can’t wait to find out how I can improve my technical skill.

Special thanks to my awesome model (and daughter) for getting all dolled up to help me with this assignment! You rock, pretty girl!

Yes — I am still around! Has it really been more than a month since I’ve updated? Really? Oh my. I certainly need to be better about keeping you in the loop.

I’ve been immersed in a million little things, which all add up to (shamefully) neglecting my site and blog. It is a time consuming commitment, and as I delve more into photography and trying to learn more; figure out what I want to do and how I want to do it, I’ve put my site on the back burner.

Since my last update, I’ve traveled to California to shoot a wedding and visit with a lifelong friend (whom I miss terribly), and returned home to work diligently on photo selection and editing for the wedding. I have come to realize that weddings are beautiful, wonderful events that are very – very hard work for a photographer to do single-handedly. I applaud all of you wedding and event photographers out there who do it – you are amazing. Truly — I applaud you, and also – envy you. Muchly.

Of course it is also summer vacation – and working from home means I can only work so many hours a day before I must stop to spend some quality time with my girls. I’ve hosted a few family backyard BBQ’s, road-tripped to visit family, watched my niece graduate high school, photographed her graduation party, ran hither, thither and yon for appointments, waterparks and other random summer activities, and photographed a 60th wedding anniversary party. It’s been busy.

I should also mention that I did update my shop last week with some brand new nature photography that I’m making available to you in print. Please check out my new work here in my Nature Prints shop, and order up a few prints to enjoy in person!

Over the last few days, as I sit out back on the patio enjoying (yes, enjoying) the suns rays as they heat my neck and shoulders, I hear the mid-summer buzz of cicadas on the trees and realize that the summer is almost over.

Summer. Almost over.

I woke up this morning, opened the curtain and the sun was not as high as it should be. As I expect it to be. As I wish it were all year. So, here it comes – I can feel it, I can smell it – fall is on the way.

Back to school. Back to the routine.

I still have a few projects lined up – of course a website design, a custom portrait of a cat in oils, and another cat portrait in graphite. I also have myself on my schedule, and will launch an all-new site that will feature the finest of fine art and portrait photography. Stay tuned for that.

I’ll be back, soon. I will be participating in a new Photography meme, a Weekly Photo Challenge hosted by my good friend and client, Aric Hoek, who runs the Pro Photo Business Forum. He’s an amazing photographer and a generous spirit. His site aims to help amateur photographers learn, improve, and effectively turn their talent into a successful business.

I hope that these glorious summer days have kept you just as busy! Pop in and say hey; keep me from hearing crickets along with the cicadas! 😉

Custom Portrait of Joey
(Chestnut Horse)
12″ x 16″ Oil Painting on Linen Canvas Hardboard
©2010 Leanne Wildermuth
All Rights Reserved