Painting Class Wind-Up

This week is the last one for my Beginning Painting class at the community college, so I've spent a lot of time at the easel. A couple of weeks ago I posted my first attempt at a figure painting, and expressed my unhappiness with some parts of the painting. So I've been re-painting that one. Here is the new version, before and then after repainting. She's much happier with her doggie next to her!


For our final assignment, we were given a list of about 30 fairly contemporary painters and asked to pick one of them to study and then to emulate. We were not to copy one of their paintings, but to try and understand their style, and then make our own painting to the best of our ability using things we learned about that painter. Since I've been so involved with drawing the body this semester, I knew I wanted to do more figure painting. Aiming high, I picked the great Richard Diebenkorn to be my muse, and have been reading books about him, staring at his amazing paintings, and trying to channel his style, given that I'm a rank beginner. Just for fun, here is what I came up with, using a drawing from my life drawing class and then abstracting it into this painting. I'll show you the drawing, then the painting....