by Barbara Downs | Dec 3, 2014
I get asked all the time how I go about starting a painting. Do I work from a drawing that I then copy onto the canvas? Directly from a model? Or from photos? Do I sketch first on the canvas? With charcoal? Pencil? Paint? Truth be told, I don’t have a single...
by Barbara Downs | May 11, 2014
Because today is mother’s day, I’ll post photos of some of the pieces recently completed or in progress in my studio right now. I’m still working on images of babies and children, as I did last year with this encaustic series, In Memory of Childhood....
by Barbara Downs | Aug 31, 2013
Although I’ve been spending most of my time on the large figurative paintings, I am still working with bird imagery and other pieces based on the natural world. I just finished this drawing, Heron Double-Take. Thank you, Susana Arias for this LARGE sheet of...
by Barbara Downs | Jun 16, 2013
I now have these twelve of large-scale paintings, all completed over the last year. They all are acrylic/mixed-media on unstretched canvas, approximately 6’x9′. Falling and Fallen, acrylic/mixed-media on unstretched canvas (hung directly on wall with...
by Barbara Downs | May 17, 2013
I have many thoughts about my current series of large-scale paintings, but I’m going to limit this post to the topic of mark-making as it relates to scale. I started thinking about this perhaps a year ago, while I was working with small encaustics but...
