Alabama watercolorist here!

Monique McFarland · 10-18-2005, 10:57 AM

Hello all! I am Monique and am from Alabama...along the coast...and yes, we have picked ourselves up and brushed ourselves off from all of this storm mess and we are getting back into the normal swing of things! Back to my love, portraiture.

I am a married (12 years to a cattleman) mom of three children, 11, 9, 8 yrs old...who are very VERY involved in school, all sports, piano, violin, gymnastics, and every other activity you can possibly come up with...needless to say, THEY are my full time job. This other love of mine, portraiture, is trying to peek out and let itself be known! I have chosen, for now, watercolor as my medium of choice....I have become completely in control of it (as in control of watercolor as you can get, lol), allowing me to capture a likeness of someone to their utmost pleasing. My innermost passion is to be able to get the same likeness of someone in oils....that is a deep-seated desire of mine, attainable only through time and practice, I know, both of which I don't have a lot of....but, God willing, I will. I truly feel that I am young enough and hopefully have a lot of years ahead of me to reach my goal.

I have a true deep passion for portraiture...I'm the one at the gallery you see, in front of the French portrait collection, leaning as far over the rope as one can get without falling down, with my hands behind my back, trying my best to memorize every single brush stroke and color so I can run back home and duplicate what I just saw. I get tears in my eyes from the beauty of them....passion, thats the only way I can describe the feeling. I'm sure you all know it, and know it well.

I was blessed with the opportunity to go to the portrait conference in Washington this past May. needless to say, this was the highlight of my whole year, by far!! I could have stayed for a month there and still not have seen everything I wanted to see, and meet everyone I wanted to meet. So many fabulous portfolios and a handful of the most wonderful paintings...blessed...thats how I felt...The workshops were invaluable. I truly wish I could have attended every one of them! And the portfolio critiques...wish I could show my changes to the main one that was critiqued...I may do that on here...to show how much that helped too. All in all, it was a wonderful experience.

OK, i'll wrap this up now, gone on too long, but I'm so excited about being here and I want to become a regular reader/contributor. I usually do WIP's at another favorite site of mine for artists...I will start doing them here, as well. The comments are more valuable to me than anything in the world as I do commissions. I need as many sets of eyes on my work as I can get, and love the comments and critiques...they are so very valuable to me.

Glad to be here!

Monique

I'll post the painting that was critiqued there and that I came home and fixed:

Patricia Joyce · 10-18-2005, 01:20 PM

Welcome, Monique,
What a delightful painting. I just want to sit down next to this child and play in the sand!! Looking forward to your participation.

You will learn so much here, I promise!

Monique McFarland · 10-18-2005, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patricia Joyce

Welcome, Monique,
What a delightful painting. I just want to sit down next to this child and play in the sand!! Looking forward to your participation.

You will learn so much here, I promise!

LOL...thanks so much! I'll tell him, he's 11 now!! and would probably prefer a game of two hand touch in that same sand now. I do love this dear painting, of course, I'm partial, since it's of my son when he was a baby. Look at how it looked before, when I went to the conference and see if you can find the changes I made..some of them are obvious. It hung on my wall for a while before I got the courage up to take it out of the frame and apply the changes that came from my portfolio critique at the conference in washington.

Thanks for being the first to reply!! So glad to meet you and yes, I already have learned a lot!! So many resources and so many countless fabulous artists!! I'm loving it already. I lurked around and read and viewed as much as I could possibly view before being accepted. I couldn't wait to take part...lol...ask Cynthia...

here are the before and afters of it:

Carolyn Bannister · 10-18-2005, 01:42 PM

Monique,

Welcome, glad you survived the storm and can get back to painting!

This is lovely, i especially like the green tones in the sand.

Hope you find this forum and the people on it as informative and helpful as i do

Carolyn.

Patricia Joyce · 10-18-2005, 04:41 PM

Ah, very nice improvement. Basically, you placed him in his shadow as he should be, darkening the shirt is the most noticeable. I am learning myself how extremely crucial it is to understand the separation of light and dark, to really study where the light is and where the shadow forms. It's so much fun, the more my eyes are trained to see lights and darks.

Your son was an adorable baby, I bet he is a cute kid and that you have several pieces you've painted of him over the years!

Garth Herrick · 12-27-2005, 01:05 PM

Welcome Monique!

It's nice to have you here. There are so many good oil painters and so few watercolorists. You're needed here!

I'm glad you are being able to pick up the pieces of your lives disrupted by the likes of Katrina and Rita and resume some state of normalcy. I can't even imagine that challenge.

You know, we probably crossed paths somewhere at the PSOA conference last May. I hope you don't mind me saying, but I like the first version of your son as a baby equally as much as your fixed version, because it has a more believable luminosity, in keeping with the setting. Sorry I didn't get to see it in person in D.C.

Again welcome,

Garth