painting faces

Back to Work...

2010-08-25T18:37:00.000-07:00

With summer vacation nearly over, I'll be trying to regularly add to this blog again. Many portraits have been completed over the past year which I haven't yet shown. Here is a preliminary drawing in charcoal- a detail for a full-length oil.

Dan Wilcox Folk Harp Song--Celebrate the Rain

2010-08-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

Lilah and I met Mr. Wilcox at his green home a week or so ago. We'd never been in a home with sod on the roof and chimney coming out of the grass. He's an organic farmer as well as musician. Wish I'd videotaped the first song he sang which was so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes!

2010-06-18T21:32:00.000-07:00

2009-06-24T13:01:00.001-07:00

One of my very first...

2009-06-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

crushes was on Laurence Olivier who starred in the Alfred Hitchcock movie, Rebecca. I first saw the movie when I was seven years old. It had such an affect on me that I could not stop thinking about it and had trouble falling asleep that night. The next morning I drew this picture of the cast of characters. In those days we didn't have hulu, dvds or even videos, if I had had a way to watch the movie again I might not have drawn pictures of it, trying to recapture the feeling the movie gave me.

Lou and Walt

2009-06-20T14:26:00.000-07:00

Finally finishing up Lou and Walt's portrait! 24" x 36" oil -I'll replace with the final hopefully this week.

Black Ink Monotype

2009-06-14T20:47:00.000-07:00

I have portraits to finish, I know, but it is important to try new things. This is my first black ink monotype print. I so enjoyed working on this today in Priscilla Treacy's workshop.

2009-06-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

Lilah's Preschool Graduation!

2009-05-22T12:15:00.001-07:00

today was lilah's last day of preschool! she is feeling emotional about it and so am i! here she is with a few of her good friends alexandra, katie, sofia and her wonderful teacher mrs. thurmond. have a wonderful summer everyone!

Jeb

2009-05-22T10:40:00.001-07:00

Impressionistic Oils Underway

2009-05-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

These are both fairly large at 24" x 36". I'm very pleased with both so far and will replace these photos with updates soon. The photos were taken at angles to avoid the glare from wet paint. the color on these is in my opinion much nicer and richer than you see in these photos.

Jr. Achievement Portraits 2009

2009-04-28T19:20:00.001-07:00

Thomas F. Farrell II, President and CEO of Virginia Power, Charles T. Hill, Mid-Atlantic Chairman, President and CEO SunTrust Bank.

2009-04-24T16:56:00.000-07:00

Molly Myers

2009-04-06T19:18:00.001-07:00

Charcoal on Toned Paper

2009-03-27T02:01:00.000-07:00

2009-03-02T02:55:00.000-08:00

2009-03-01T18:18:00.001-08:00

2009-02-27T19:33:00.000-08:00

16" x 20" oval canvas, will update soon.

A portrait of Jacqueline in oil 24" x 36" from 2002 I'd borrowed to do some touch up work and finally took a photo.

2009-02-27T19:31:00.000-08:00

2009-02-27T19:29:00.000-08:00

2009-02-27T19:27:00.000-08:00

2009-02-27T19:24:00.000-08:00

2009-02-27T19:20:00.000-08:00

This portrait of Jack is not recent! It's from 2004, but when I did his brother's portrait I wanted to make some adjustments. So here he is!

2009-02-27T19:09:00.000-08:00

2009-02-27T19:06:00.000-08:00

2009-02-27T19:04:00.000-08:00

2009-02-27T13:31:00.001-08:00

Catching Up

2008-11-09T09:12:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated my blog in quite a while and just wanted to let you all know that I'm still around and still working hard. As you all know I have quite a few orders and am behind. The plan is to catch up with all older orders while still finishing up some that are currently due. I do not want to add any new portraits to my blog until all old orders are delivered which will be in January. So please check back then for completed older works and a group of new works.

Thanks so much for checking in!

Christy

2008-10-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

Hill

2008-09-21T14:51:00.001-07:00

Clara and Molly

2008-09-20T20:35:00.001-07:00

Clara

2008-09-10T07:48:00.001-07:00

Kate

2008-09-04T15:07:00.000-07:00

Ellie

2008-08-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

for fun!

2008-08-21T01:41:00.001-07:00

these portraits are of me and were done for fun by my friend, lawrence humphrey. he does a portrait painting a day. my favorites are his historical portraits which are sort of like whimsical caricatures in the styles of famous artists. here my portraits were done in the style of modigliani and picasso. wouldn't it be great to have one of each member of the family hung as a collection? i hope to have one done of each member of my family. if i do, i'll post them here. and if you are interested in having one commissioned yourself, email me. he works much faster than i do :-)

i've been stalled with my work this summer, but my children start back to school in a week so i plan to get lots of work done in the coming month!

Reilly almost finished...!

2008-08-10T11:09:00.002-07:00

here's a close up of a 3/4 oil portrait of reilly that i'm working on. i'll update and change photos as i go. these backlit portraits are challenging to paint sometimes but so very pretty, such pretty color in the shadows.

Ben

2008-08-02T17:40:00.001-07:00

this is my second portrait of ben. you might spot the other under the category 'pencil and charcoal portraits'.

Lilah from Life

2008-08-01T20:43:00.001-07:00

lilah is only 4 so naturally she doesn't like to sit still. she did pretty well though for about 15 min while i sketched her in my moleskin. after she ran off to play, i finished from memory. i tried a quick one of noah too, but i don't care to show you how that one turned out ;-)
it's difficult to get to my studio these days since i have both my children with me everyday. i have a group of paintings all so close to completion! drawings are easier for me at this time since i can do them at home. still i'm aiming to finally complete a couple of oils this coming week.

George

2008-08-01T15:56:00.001-07:00

Booker

2008-07-27T06:00:00.001-07:00

isn't he beautiful?

Wildflowers (in progress)

2008-07-19T21:57:00.001-07:00

24" x 30" oil on stretched linen-- this is one of several portraits that should have been completed ages ago. i want to sincerely thank you all for having such patience with me! anyway, i'm absolutely loving this painting. i'm determined to complete it this week, and as i work on it i'll update the image on this post.

thanks so much for looking.

Wesley

2008-07-16T14:12:00.000-07:00

this is the older brother of calder whose portrait i posted last month.

2008-07-13T14:23:00.000-07:00

2008-07-12T18:31:00.000-07:00

i completed this portrait a couple of years ago. i love to come back later and see my portraits framed and hanging in the home. truly it's one of my greatest joys to know that they are seen and appreciated every day. i took this photo a few days ago when i delivered the portraits of this little girl's younger twin brother and sister.

thanks for looking!

2008-07-04T23:10:00.000-07:00

Home again, home again...

2008-07-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

this is a quick oil sketch of matthew. i painted him as he was painting me just before i left for home... lilah and i miss him already! matthew started his own blog while we were visiting, please check it out. it's called 'school of life', and i've added it as a link on the lower right column of this page. i will very likely be adding more links to blogs of other inspiring artists in the future.

"thank you wind"

2008-07-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

i did this little sculpture in matt's garden. lilah did not hold still for me, didn't matter, i know her face well! i started it with her looking up at me, and then was reminded of a favorite memory of her. it was a warm day in dec 2006, and lilah was sitting at the table on our back porch. lilah closed her eyes, enjoying the breeze and said "thank you wind.." that really made me smile!

in matt's garden

2008-06-26T19:53:00.000-07:00

snapshot of my beautiful girl

2008-06-21T05:52:00.000-07:00

i love the warm, days gone by feeling that sepia gives.

matthew

2008-06-20T09:55:00.000-07:00

i'd like to introduce you to one of my favorite painters and cousin matthew marino; he's an all around sort of artist. i'll be leaving in a few days for a visit with him at his home in pittsburgh. he's an inspiration to me in that every part of matthew's life is creative. he specializes in sculpture, and i'm hoping to get the chance to do some with him next week! and btw if you're interested in purchasing any art or in seeing more art from matt, email me at talbott.christy@gmail.com

this is a sculpture matt did of me!

Calder

2008-06-12T10:32:00.000-07:00

Cooling Off

2008-06-11T07:37:00.001-07:00

What I've Been Doing on These Hot Early Summer Days

2008-06-10T15:19:00.000-07:00

Jr. Achievement Event

2008-05-16T07:26:00.000-07:00

it was a lovely evening! here i'm pictured with my good friend, karla, whom i've known since i was four!

Jr. Achievement Laureates for 2008

2008-05-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

patient lilah

2008-04-19T17:25:00.000-07:00

lilah was here with me for part of the day while i finished up her portrait and worked on finishing up the three laureates' portraits. she entertained herself drawing mermaids and counting jellybeans!

in addition to Lilah's portrait...

2008-04-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

i have the first two jr achievement laureates' portraits now underway as well . the big night is may 15!

on the way home tonight i was listening to NPR. i turned the radio on at a point where a funny girl with a lovely voice was making a sort of awkward joke about the microphone being a big blue ball and how it makes you feel to have to have blue balls so close to your face :/ :) then she sang a song she wrote called 'breakable' and another called 'faraway', i think. and i just heard 'the way i am' on youtube. hadn't heard of her till now. you must check out her music! her name is ingrid michaelson, and she's fantastic!

Lilah Further Along

2008-04-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

Lilah Underway

2008-03-30T19:10:00.001-07:00

i feel guilty working on a painting of lilah when i am still behind on commissioned portraits. i do have an excuse for this though! i was trying something new for one of my jr. achievement portraits this year, painting on gessoed panel instead of stretched canvas. but i didn't much like the gessoed panel! just not used to working on it i guess... i didn't want to waste it and thought it might be fun to experiment, so here is lilah!

Olivia

2008-03-30T19:09:00.001-07:00

Liza

2008-03-04T13:48:00.001-08:00

Tea Time

2008-02-24T19:38:00.002-08:00

today we celebrated lilah's 4th birthday with a small tea party at the grand jefferson hotel. the girls dressed in their princess dresses and had a lovely time. thank you mary for taking the photos! this one of lilah and paige is especially sweet!

Valentine's Greetings

2008-02-14T18:53:00.001-08:00

happy

hope cupid is good to you. i have always loved vintage postcards; i have a collection i'll show you sometime. what appeals to me even more than the romantic images on these old cards is reading the letters that were written for loved ones, now long gone. it's amazing to me that i can hold in my hand a bit of card stock from a hundred years ago and read about the lives of strangers in their own and often exquisite handwriting, catching just a glimpse of their lives, yet sometimes a meaningful glimpse. i love old things... can you have a nostalgia for something you've never experienced? sometimes i wish i'd been born a hundred years ago!

2008-02-05T18:17:00.000-08:00

my little scamps

2008-01-28T13:44:00.000-08:00

Matthew's Timeline

2008-01-23T21:01:00.000-08:00

i'm proud to show the recent artwork of my cousin, Matthew Marino. this work was done for a 2008 New Year's Eve event called First Night in Pittsburgh. it is a batik timeline of life on earth. he said that the event was much fun and that they closed the streets so that people could walk down the middle of the streets on Penn and Liberty and that there were piles of firewood on sidewalks and burning in big drums.
it appears not all of the photos have uploaded and for some reason the ones that did upload are not in the correct order!.... hmmm it's late; i'll fix that later... i especially love that he's incorporated the constellations! so much to look at!

beach painting of lucy

2008-01-21T17:06:00.001-08:00

Creature Comforts USA - Art

2008-01-18T15:28:00.001-08:00

Jill

2008-01-08T18:25:00.001-08:00

Jill is a lovely little girl, so ladylike already. i finished her portrait last year. since the clients live out of town and came to Richmond to pick the portrait up, i didn't get to see how it looked in their home-- so happily they sent me photos! thank you Kim.

3/4 Oil Portrait of Will

2008-01-07T18:40:00.000-08:00

Will has been on my business cards for years and has served me well, i think. don't have many cards left now, so i'll have to choose a new subject for my new cards soon!

Joanie

2008-01-06T14:27:00.000-08:00

i've been busy this week starting a couple oil paintings that i'll be posting soon. in the meanwhile, thought you might like to see a drawing i did last year of a very cute little girl named Joanie.

Montage

2008-01-02T18:23:00.000-08:00

i did this pencil montage from a few old snapshots for a lovely neighbor of mine who sadly lost her twin sister this past year. she gave it as a Christmas gift to her mother.

happy new year 2008!

2008-01-01T10:22:00.000-08:00

one of Noah's bionicles, he likes for me to take dynamic shots of them. we'll send a few to lego and hope they'll print them in their magazine.

another year. they are going by so fast! i want to thank all of my portrait customers. you all mean more to me than you'll ever know. it means so much that you want me to paint portraits for you! i've had a difficult past several years, but 2008 is looking bright. much love to all of you!

christy

and there we were!

2007-12-30T16:56:00.000-08:00

tidying things up today i picked up a stray bit of the newspaper and saw this drawing by Kerry (who is an artist at the paper). i immediately recognized all of us! that's me, Kerry, Noah, Lilah and our dog, Belle! he never told us he had done this, just let us come across it. aren't we cute? haha! it was for an article on how to better organize your Christmas ornaments.

the Talbotts

2007-12-30T11:05:00.000-08:00

we visited my husband Kerry's family in the days after Christmas. it's been a while since i've sketched from life, so i've decided to get in the habit again. here i've drawn some quick sketches of Kerry's family, Sherry (Kerry's sister) and Jeannie and Hunter (his parents). also Lyndsay, our niece. i've got one of Lilah in here; she probably sat still for less than twenty seconds! good practice for me!

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T14:57:00.000-08:00

hope you all are having a wonderful christmas!

i've posted a photo of my old 'night before christmas' book which i read to my kids every christmas eve. last night Lilah and i noticed that the little girl sleeping on the left of the cover has her hair in the same type of old fashioned curlers i made for Lilah which she slept in last night too. and also here is a photo of Lilah this morning wearing a princess dress and an old tiara Santa brought and left a note saying it was once worn by a beauty queen, miss dairy 1962! Noah is happy today too. Santa brouht him legos, bionicals, music and playstation games.

btw, the artist who illustrated the book was Arthur Rackham. i love his illustrations. i've tried to provide links to more of his work but am unable to... can't figure out why! his 'alice in wonderland illustrations are just breathtaking! i'll write more on him later.

Ellie and Reilly

2007-12-24T22:59:00.000-08:00

Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince Pt 1

2007-12-18T17:42:00.001-08:00

check out Pts 2 and 3 on youtube!

Twenty Month Old Triplets!

2007-12-17T20:47:00.000-08:00

2007-12-06T13:20:00.000-08:00

I have been working!

2007-12-05T22:28:00.000-08:00

Sargent once said "a portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth"... :-)

none of these is quite done yet, but will be soon! i'll post the updates on these and another large impressionistic oil in the next few days.

edit: the unfinished paintings are being replaced with photos of the finished pieces!

Cicely Mary Barker

2007-11-30T21:20:00.000-08:00

we took the kids to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden tonight for the festival of lights. they had great fun running through the maze, drinking hot chocolate and watching the train exhibit. in the gift shop i found a little Christmas present for Lilah, a book called 'a flower fairy alphabet' written and illustrated by Cicely Mary Barker. i've always had a love of old things, and especially old children's book illustrations. so beautifully inspiring!

Putti in Pinstripes

2007-11-28T16:10:00.000-08:00

aren't these two beautiful? don't they look just like little cherubs? i told their mother so! she said that was funny and told me how when she and her husband went on their honeymoon to Italy there were cherub sculptures everywhere-- there they call them putti. she said she kept telling her husband that he looked just like the putti... now they've got a genuine pair :-)

Pose and Expression

2007-11-28T11:43:00.001-08:00

a darling little two year old boy named Ryan came to my studio today to be photographed for a pencil drawing. i thought it might be of interest to show these photos since in some ways many parents may be surprised that this is the type photo that i like to work from.
for one thing i don't generally go for the big smiles. i have several reasons for this.. #1 i tend to be more interested in focusing on the expression in the eyes rather than the mouth when doing a portrait. when the subject has a big smile, the eyes become less important. #2 i also tend to associate large smiles with photographs ("say cheese!" :-). #3 portraits with big smiles are less like the traditional portrait paintings that i really admire. ideally i'd like to be able to do all my portraits from life, few portraits done from life will have the subject smiling! now in spite of having given these reasons for not being partial to big smiles in painted or drawn portrait work, there are always the exceptions. there are some children who are just so smiley that it is truly the best way to paint them.
another reason people might be surprised by my choice of photo reference is the fact that often the subject is looking away from the viewer. i do this more often with my less formal portraits and drawings. just often feels more natural to me, less posed.
parents will sometimes say, "but he looks so serious!". it's usually a simple matter to brighten the expression just a bit by slightly turning up the corners of the mouth or raising the brows. also if we like a particular photo where the child is looking away, but the parent prefers to have the child looking at the viewer, it usually is no problem for me to move the direction of the child's gaze.

Women In Art

2007-11-26T20:41:00.001-08:00

this is lovely. enjoy!

Ellie with the Flaxen Hair

2007-11-26T11:15:00.000-08:00

An Older Painting

2007-11-24T11:34:00.000-08:00

i usually like sunny days to take photos for this type of painting, but the day i took photos for this it was quite overcast to the point of drizzling. i brightened things up a bit in the painting, but that overcast light worked quite well!

Baby Lilah aka Cindy Loo Who :-)

2007-11-23T13:58:00.001-08:00

this is a drawing i did of my own little girl some time ago. she would often look so serious and be so intent in her observations. these days she's a happy, silly, sprightly thing!

Impressionistic Painting in Progress

2007-11-23T12:20:00.000-08:00

here is one of several commissioned impressionistic oil paintings i have underway at the moment (24" x 26"). the more children there are in the picture, the trickier it often is to have a charming and natural looking pose. this one i feel is working nicely. i don't always wish to have all the children looking directly at the viewer as if posing for a photo. it's often nice to have them interacting with each other in the scene or occupied with some activity. i'll post an update on this painting soon!

Catherine Finished

2007-11-13T18:35:00.000-08:00

Munchkin with Matt's grapes

2007-11-10T06:58:00.000-08:00

here is my girly little daughter again this time sitting next to one of my cousin's (Matthew Marino) beautiful paintings.

Catherine Underway

2007-11-09T16:33:00.001-08:00

Ann Carter and Scout

2007-11-08T17:59:00.000-08:00

Laura in Pink Bow

2007-11-05T19:24:00.000-08:00

i started this one ages ago and put it aside to work on other things, finally finished it up in my new studio!

trick or treat

2007-10-31T21:42:00.000-07:00

greetings from my lovely children!

my little punkin

2007-10-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

Charlotte H.

2007-10-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

Girl on Swing

2007-10-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

Baby Sketch

2007-10-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

Charlotte on Oval Canvas

2007-10-09T20:49:00.001-07:00