Learning from the experts: A Street (I've Never Seen) in Venice

During my fall 2010 oil painting class at Williams, one of our early projects was to select a work at the Clark Art Museum (www.clarkart.edu) or the Williams College Museum of Art and to copy it using various limited color palettes and experimental techniques. My selected piece was John Singer Sargent's oil painting of "A Street in Venice" from 1880-82, which is part of the collection at the Clark.



I produced five copies: 1) black and white,

2) one set of complementary colors (blue and orange),

3) the darker colors of palette with no white allowed,

4) the lighter colors of the palette with no black allowed (which was also executed solely with the palette knife),
and 5) only washes (oil paint thinned with medium) built up over a long working period

A Family Portrait

During the summer of 2010, I spent my time working on this portrait of the children and dog of good family friends. The oil painting was the largest I have done, measuring 48" x 72"!