A SHORT SHOW & TELL on VARIATIONS part 1: Mark Making & Seeing

Felt tip pen drawing of a recumbent fluffy white dog. Grey with white and black accents. Artist Elizabeth Lisa Petrulis.

Variations on Butterscotch (Drawings) When I first got my new paint pens I made three quick drawings from the same reference photo. (Thanks, Kathy Hsiao, for the photo of Butterscotch.) I really got a thrill. The pens reminded how much I love to draw. Making these variations, I was merely getting a feel for the pens … Read more

THE CHICKEN HOUSE STUDIO part 1: the beginnings

Chicken house masonry building interior as found without doors or windows and strewn with debris and trash.

Humid buggy air loitered in the holes where windows and doors once were. The corrugated tin roof was leaky, rusted, and layered over spongy asphalt shingles. On the cobwebbed inside, feathers stuck to chicken wire and translucent snake skins hung from the rafters. The floor was dirt. Its most recent use a convenient and hidden repository of oversized, unwanted, hard to dispose of junk. But it was a sturdy masonry building with a spacious interior.

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WORKS IN PROGRESS: Horse Shadows (midway)

a still from a progress video showing Elizabeth Lisa Petrulis painting "Horse Shadows"

Video Stats

a still from a progress video showing Elizabeth Lisa Petrulis painting "Horse Shadows"

The below live action video lasts less than 34 seconds but represents 25 minutes of work in the studio (through the miracle of editing and accelerated motion).

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UPDATED VIDEO on making “Megaphone”

Black and white painting of two dogs, one seen only by the tip of its nose through his medical collar.
Dog with floppy ears and a loose scruff looks sideways at an others noes protruding from a medical collar. High contrast black and white painting by Elizabeth Petrulis
Megaphone, 2014-15,  Medical Collar Series,  acrylic on canvas, 24″ x 36″, Elizabeth Lisa Petrulis  BEFORE
Black and white painting of two dogs, one seen only by the tip of its nose through his medical collar.
Dino and Mookie in Megaphone II, revised 2017, acrylic on canvas, 24″ x 36″, Elizabeth Lisa Petrulis  AFTER

I have updated the video on the making of “Megaphone. Since I last posted a video showing the progression from drawing to finished painting, I realized I was not actually finished. As you will see,  near the end, I dispensed with the strict technique of layering black washes on a white surface. Instead I began mixing values adding white, gray and black over each other. At this point I had also begun using acrylic mediums (particularly glazing and mat mediums) another departure from painting the Original Dog Studies. It may be subtle but there is more detail and refinement. Here then is the updated video.

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