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

Stick at it...

The Early Hours
 12x16
Palette Knife, Oil.
Johanna Spinks

Morning friends...

I started this portrait in the early hours of the morning when, unable to sleep,  painting seemed like a good idea. Of course, I lost much of the next day feeling tired but I liked what I got on this portrait, done with a palette knife and nothing else. The face was done very quickly.

Inspiration strikes! Don't we love it when that happens?

 I finished it up yesterday but it was much slower going than at 3am in the morning.  Stuff that should have been easy was like walking in molasses. But I got there.

I am glad I stuck with it. I believe in sticking with things. What do you stick at for results? Now, let's take on the day.