Incredible Talent:

I know this is a poulty and livestock forum, but, I just found out that one of our members of the forum, has an incredible talent. I think it deserves to be seen. My wife and I spent a couple hours looking and enlarging every pic of this Artist. It was nothing short of spectacular. The artist is Leslie, better known as (greenhouse_gal) She will probably kill me for this, but I only have one life to give...LOL I won't give out her website, but if you love art this is a must see...Hay

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Okay Greenhouse what's the web site? After that introduction you can't deny us.

LOL! It's http://www.leslieficcaglia.org/

The one that Hay really liked a lot is on the home page - the curly-haired little girl with the baby chick. That's my granddaughter at age 2, and the arms protecting her are my DH's. I also have a French series that reminded Hay of his long-ago visit there.

I second Haystack's opinion! I also like "keeper or the river" and "Jeremy dreaming".
Amazing artwork!

Just beautiful!!It must be awsome to be able to do that,you are so talented.

Thanks, people! Keeper of the River was one of my first, and Jeremy Dreaming is from a photo of my son when he was about ten. I loved those curls!

really nice work! portraits in oil are hard to do, at least for me!

Cerridwenn, I think oils are the easiest of all mediums to work in, especially for portraits. They are so forgiving; if you make a mistake you can always fix it. I have tried pastels but just don't get the same control with them. Maybe if I persevered, but I don't see how people get the detail with those blunt sticks of color! And watercolors are the most unforgiving of all! But it may just be what you're used to. What medium do you work in, and what kinds of subjects do you paint?

they are really incredible

Thanks, Donna!

well i've just started with oils, and i find them hard to control. although as you say they are easier than watercolors in that respect. i can't stand working in watercolors, but my dad loved them and made a lot of incredible paintings with them. i'm sure a lot of it is practice. i do actually like pastels, mainly for their bright colors. one of my favorite ways to use pastels is on muslin and you spray it with water first, then draw on it while the canvas is wet. for my hex signs i use acrylic, hoping they will hold their colors better.

i guess one of my problems is that i like a lot of detail, and i keep finding it really difficult to do that without smearing things into a mess with painting, whichever kind of paint i use. one of my favorite media to work in is pen and ink. i find it very meditative and i can get a lot of detail in. i've had some problems with the colored inks fading though and i don't know how to fix that.

the great thing about art is that there are so many different things to work with, and when you find the one or more than one that you really like you just feel automatically like you can do it. i really like pottery as well, clay is just fun to play with. all i need is more time!

I paint very thinly, and so smearing things isn't a problem. I also work on different areas and let the paint dry a day or two before returning if I've got a lot of paint on one spot. I can go back in to do details on faces, though, without difficulty. Occasionally I will wipe out what I've got with some mineral spirits, or use a palette knife to scrape things down, and then continue with the eye or mouth or whatever.

Sometimes when people see my prints they think I work in pastels, I assume because of the textures. I mainly use Silver Grand Prix bristle brushes with mongoose or sable brushes for tiny details.

That's an interesting pastel technique; I take it that you're not using many details with the wet muslin ground? You're right about acrylic for your hex signs, though; mural painters I know use those for outdoor work, and I use them when I am reluctantly talked into doing lettering for signs around the place!

with the pastels no, you can't really get details dry or wet... but the wet muslin background is AMAZING for skies and water. goes through chalk quite fast though, so i don't buy high end chalks for that. if you put paper behind it, the color leaks through and leaves a really pretty stain of the original. i think i probably use too much paint when i do oils, my teacher was more of an impressionist so i started learning with a really full brush and i think that is part of what makes it hard for me.

isn't it funny how when someone finds out you are an artist, they always want you to do lettering? i don't like to do large scale block lettering at all, but i love calligraphy.

I hate lettering; it's so picky! What I do now if I have to letter (like the No Wake sign I made for the piling by our riverbank) is to use outline fonts, enlarged so that they are the right size for the sign, and then I trace the letters onto the surface and paint them in. At least that way it looks good.

The person from whom I learned oils uses the normal amount; I'm not sure why I use so little. But a palette-full lasts me a long time.

Wow, just Wow!

Thanks, Annie!