Painting Loosely

February 4, 2016


Patti Frasier at Daily Paintworks

Patti Frasier, an artist in Fredericksburg, Virginia, taught our class this past weekend.  She is such a talented artist who paints with loose and bold brushwork, while maintaining strong color and great lights and darks. 

She generously demonstrated her techniques for painting loosely and provided us with notes and tips about painting which summarized everything you need to know about painting. 

Here is the work of two students that shows so well  strong color, luscious paint and beautiful brushwork. 

Patti shows her work on Daily Paintworks, a website for artists.  Here is a link to her vibrant work where she sell her paintings.

Patti Frasier at Daily Paintworks


Thank you, Patti, for being our teacher this week.  You are an awesome teacher. 

Painting Loosely

February 5, 2014

Painting loosely is something I work on in my paintings.  I wish I could remember who said this, but it has stuck with me  - "loose brushwork requires good drawing".    That one statement really made a difference in my approach.   I spent more time on getting the perspective correct and the drawing than I did on the painting.  Well, maybe I am exaggerating, but it took some work to get the drawing right and it is probably not perfect. 

This is a 6 x 6 and I am considering doing a 12 x 12 of this. 

Painting Loosely

February 2, 2014

These are all reminders to me about painting loosely.  It is a look that I like and includes thinking about abstract shapes and pieces of color. 

Things that have helped me to paint loosely, keep bold brushwork and bright color:

     Maintain darks in the painting  (Dream Tolle Perry's class helped me with this) because of her use of a dark transparent underpainting. If you use the "search button" top right corner of this page, I summarized her class in an old blog posting. 

     Use deliberate brushwork and lots of paint

     Keep colors clean

(These would all be good topics for future blogs.)

Here is my latest painting where I put a lot of what I learned in Dreama's class to work. 

I try to stick to the process of doing a drawing,  a study (as many as I need to perfect the color and composition) and the final painting. 

Step 1:  Thank you to Nancy Bradley for letting me use this photo.  She is such a good photographer.

Step 2:  Study (6 x 6)

Step 3: Final Painting ( 12 x 12)

The biggest change was in the colors.  Notice the accents of complementary color on the leaves and shutters especially, another technique that Dreama taught us, taking advantage of color theory and just for the pure joy of colors you love.