MAG Artist’s Blog

Paint! Manassas wrapped up today. It was a whopping success! I’ve updated the Paint! page if you want to see some of the work exhibited during this event.
Artist Leonard Justinian was our judge. Here are the winners of this year’s Paint! Manassas:
1st place: Sunny Spot (Manassas Battlefield), acrylic by Michele Frantz

2nd place: Noon Train, acrylic by [...]

I am back from North Carolina and not to be out done by Michele in Paint! Manassas, I am busy painting the town away, so to speak.  Above is a watercolor and graphite sketch of the Manassas Old Presbyterian Church I have been messing with tonight.  I started this as an 11×14 very wet-in-wet painting [...]

 Not to be outdone (yeah, right) by that pesky Rob, I have now started more paintings for “Paint! Manassas” than I can count. But will I finish any of them in time? The suspense is killing me…. michele frantz
 
   

May 10, the day of the long-awaited “paint-out” which officially kicked off our 2nd annual “Paint! Manassas.” Alas, the weather did not favor us; damp and windy. As a result, not as many people in town as we hoped. Still, about 2 dozen artists braved the chill and rain to begin their creations, and I managed to [...]

It rained today.  I started off with Selina, from the Manassas Art Guild, in Clifton Virginia and I fully intended to finish my Old Clifton General Store painting.  Did I mention that it rained today?  No sooner did I get my french easel set up and it started again
As a back up plan we [...]

Today I spent most of the day parked on the corner of Center Street in Old Town Manassas.  From my wonderful seat I was able to capture this 18×24 value sketch (on rough watercolor paper) and add some watercolor before the sun came up and ruined my light.  I did get about 3 hours of [...]

 Well today is the first day of my first retirement (before I go back to work next month ).  I celebrated by going to the Manassas Battlefield with Michele, Maria, Selina and Mary Ellen to gear up for the spring en plien air season.  I will let the paintings speak for themselves.  The top [...]

MAG members Rob Burkhard, Mary Ellen Semat and myself took advantage of the glorious spring weather to “paint out” at the Manassas train station. On the left, that’s Rob and Mary Ellen (I’ll let you guess which is which) hard at work, and on the right, Rob applies oil paint to his board with a palette [...]

This one involved a lot of dripping!

This impressionist 15 x 22 Watercolor of San Diego’s Balboa Park was finished on Christmas Day. I spent a few days looking it over for areas to improve and am finally happy with it. One of the hardest things to do with any medium is to loosen up and paint just enough to [...]