The Palette Knife Portrait Continues

Fresh back into the studio from my trip abroad I am anxious to get going again with my palette knife portrait work preparing for a show.  They won't all make it. You have to paint a lot of portraits from life to get a few good ones it seems to me. The palette knife is more hit and miss than painting with the regular brush.

This one of Julie is the first one painted from life on my return thinking somewhat of the beautiful J.W. Waterhouse paintings and sketchbooks I was lucky enough to see in the U.K. I tried to keep some areas to almost the bare canvas while working up  other areas much thicker.

Today I start a portrait of a vineyard owner with that palette knife. Come back to see the work in progress?

"Julie"
12 x 9"
Oil on linen panel via palette knife
Johanna Spinks

I Painted Gidget!

Honored to meet and paint the original Gidget Kathy Zuckerman for my Face of Malibu Series.
She helped put surfing on the map in the 50's when her father wrote his famous book seeing Kathy's life on the beach.  The book went on to become the Gidget phenomena in a film of the same name starring Sally Field.


Kathy, a wonderful spirit,  is the 30th sitter to be painted for my second public portrait project The Face of Malibu with The Malibu Times, the project now in its' third year. The Face of Ventura came before with The Ventura Breeze newspaper, that collection now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Ventura County.

Read Kathy's life story here