Piri Portrait with Animal Totem

From the www.spiritanimal.info site: “The owl spirit animal is emblematic of a deep connection with wisdom and intuitive knowledge. If you have the owl as totem or power animal, you’re likely to have the ability to see what’s usually hidden to most. When the spirit of this animal guides you, you can see the true reality, beyond illusion and deceit. The owl also offers for those who have it a personal totem the inspiration and guidance necessary to deeply explore the unknown and the magic of life.”

I don’t know if everyone has an animal totem but I always thought my daughter Piri did. I feel sure that her animal totem is an owl because when she was a baby, a particular barred owl living in our woods, got obsessed with her and seemed to be constantly watching her. He would even perch on a low branch outside the living room window so he could stare into the house when we were not outside. At night he perched on the hip of the roof and made those wheezing owl noises that are not hoots. When she was pre-school age her favorite dress, that she insisted on wearing almost every day, had an owl on it.

So when I painted Piri, I wanted to include her animal totem. -LP

Following An Algorithm for Visual Harmony

Following an Algorithm for Visual Harmony

It wasn’t too long ago that I read an article by Iwo Zaniewski on social media that purported to explain an algorithm for visual harmony:

∀ei ∈ Sn C(ei, Sn\ei) = Cmax (Sn)

Now the article was long and since social media rather encourages short attention spans I just started skimming it. As an artist, I was interested to read enough to get what I think was the gist of it: For every element in your composition, you want to maximize the contrast between that and the other elements. Maybe this is where my recent interest in painting things with strong shadows came from. Anyway, in this latest painting I am working on, I am again exploring shadows and light. It was an interesting challenge painting the face completely in shadow, then adding the points of light. Two times during cherry blossom season I tried to get out there and paint them in person, but got rained out both times. So I’m working on this in the studio from a photo I took of beautiful granddaughter number two.