Mia and Juliana Christmas Surprise

I made this portrait about two weeks ago right when I got back from Annapolis. It was a Christmas present to the Grandparents of Mia and Juliana from their son, John Santos. Mia and Juliana are a few years older than their images in the portrait and they were happy to pose under the work. I was lucky enough to be invited for the presenting of this gift. They even fed me some fantastic traditional Portuguese dishes of cod and octopus. I loved it. It was a very good evening. Thank you to the Santos family.

James at Twenty

This is my son, once again, being the model for my work. I wanted a casual portrait of him as he is, pensive and in his hooded sweatshirt. I still have to thank Rick Casali from Maryland Hall for being such a great teacher in the Charcoal Portrait class that I took and to Andree Tullier for the Charcoal Drawing class. They both taught me the basics of using charcoal. Now I find it is the first thing that I want to do when I wake up in the morning. No kidding, I like it that much!

Little Maggie

This is a charcoal portrait that I did today of Liz's niece, Maggie, who is three years old. My son tells me all the time that she is the cutest baby he has ever seen. I never saw her as a baby but I think that he must be right!

I have been very busy lately doing charcoal portraits and I love it. If you would like me to do a charcoal for you, just contact me at cm.mccoy@comcast.net and we can make arrangemnets.

Thanks.

Christine

The Norton Gallery

The Norton Gallery in Padanaram Village will now be representing my portrait work. This is a charcoal that I finished yesterday the owner, Phil reading to his son. They are the only framers that I go to and send my clients to. They are good people and run a great service. If you get the chance to visit this area, make sure that you stop into their gallery. They have many beautiful works of this area by local artists. I don't think that they have a website but they can be reached at (508) 997 - 9674 or they can be visited at 330 Elm Street, South Dartmouth, MA 02748. Padanaram Village, which is part of South Dartmouth, is a beautifully quaint New England harbor-village with great dining and unique shops. I love to go to the book store and the antique shop which has a great collection of old doll house furniture and all sorts of wonderful things that always send me down memory lane!

Alexandra in Charcoal

This is a charcoal portrait of Alex. I am getting much more comfortable working with it, lifting it off the paper, pushing it around with a dry brush and pressing the charcoal dust into the paper with tissue paper. Charcoal is wonderful to work with because it is fast and once framed can last hundreds of years just like a painting. I love it!

Painting the Figure from Life

This painting is from two classes of Rick Casali's painting class at Maryland Hall. The model is Liz Makowski and she is not only beautiful but she is also one of the funniest and most charming story tellers that I have met. She had the whole class laughing many times and the time flew by! I am so sad that the class is over.

Charcoal of Dante

Rick's brother, Dante modelled for us. I am starting to get more comfortable with charcoal. It can be moved around and changed so easily. It is much more fun than pencil or pen. Now I am starting to experiment with different papers. They can hold the charcoal very differently. I found one that I like that comes in single sheets. I hope to be doing a lot more charcoal portraits.

Today's Class

Today we worked on painting portraits from life with John Ebersberger. He expected a lot from us and I like it that way. He makes us really try to take it further than we have before. We had yesterday afternoon and today to work on it. Again, I was trying to establish the planes of the face. I can see places where I would like to adjust but for the amount of time that we had to work on it, I am very happy.

Today's model is Jessica Terneus.