The Wood Children

[Mike McCarty]

You have this hair thing down. The boy's hair is perfect, and I love the back lighting with the girl.

[Patricia Joyce]

My Lord, Michele, these are abosolutely breathtaking!!! Very rich, expressive, sensitive, emotional. I love them. Thank you for sharing them with us.

[Kimberly Dow]

Wonderful Michele. You seem to be doing plenty - have you been getting faster do you think? Not that it is important at all, but I remember you had mentioned it.

[Michele Rushworth]

I have been getting faster, and though I don't know if every painting is better than the one before it, as Cynthia asked, I know my work has been getting better over time.

As an example, these two paintings took me about half the time I think they would have taken a year ago. It's mostly because I don't need to rework things as often, and because I plan more from the start.

[Denise Hall]

This is so beautiful, Michelle. I learn a lot from each portrait you post. Thank you so much. The little girl's love for her puppy really comes through! Congratulations on capturing that emotion.

Denise

[Michele Rushworth]

Glad you like it. The girl and the puppy is about as overly sentimental as you can get, but that's reality. She's completely in love with the little fluffball and hugs him all the time.

[Jean Kelly]

Hi Michele,

Overly sentimental in this case is delightful, she makes me smile. And he is all boy, in his attitude and relationship to his bud. I love it! But then I'm a sucker for animals.

Jean

[Linda Brandon]

Michele, these are so beautiful! I love these. You must have a secret for getting those edges so soft, what is it?

[Michele Rushworth]

The soft edge-making technique I use is something I learned from Bill Whitaker. I have a drawer full of dead, fuzzy sable and synthetic brushes that I use as blending brushes, in all different sizes.

I blend one color into another and then grab another clean, dry blender brush for the next color areas. As Bill said, you need a lot of clean blenders each day, doing this (or you can clean them with fast drying acetone for the next colors you want to blend, but I don't use that). My good brushes get fuzzy so fast that the "blender" drawer fills up fast and I probably have fifty of them. This technique works especially well if you have to blend a wet area into a dry area. Then I go over everything I paint with a small fan brush and smooth things out even more.

[Mary Sparrow]

Michelle, these are just gorgeous. I have to agree with Cynthia, you really are improving by leaps it seems with every painting. Do you care to share your secret with me?