The Reading, oil and gold leaf on board, 16″x20″, Jessica Libor 2013

There’s nothing like the home stretch when you’re working on a painting.  I’ve poured many hours into this work and have pushed it further than I usually do–which I think I’m going to make into a regular thing 🙂  Above you can see the piece as it looks today (please imagine it without the watermark!) after I put in the final brushstrokes.   It’s all in oil, but there are accents of pure 23 karat gold leaf woven throughout.  The pattern along the edge of the silk cloth is all gold leaf, as well as the apples and oranges scattered through the grass.  I’m happy with it as a finished piece, for now.  I’m planning on this being another one to exhibit for my Master’s thesis exhibit in May.  When I am putting this many hours of planning and execution into each piece, planning ahead is a necessity.

Many thanks to Todd Barrett, who lent his superior modeling skills to me for this painting and for a few other upcoming pieces.  Todd is also a Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts student who is a great artist in his own right, tackling tough subjects in his art such as city crime.  Many thanks to this friend.

Thanks Todd!

The other model was pretty good too, since she knew exactly what she wanted out of the painting– seeing as it’s myself.

This piece was influenced by Renoir’s paintings of couples relaxing in the verdant grass in springtime, as well as the hyperrealistic Pre-Raphaelite paintings of people who although are staged in pastoral settings, have unseen tensions between or around them.