December 20, 2011

Well, we are fast approaching Christmas and the end of the year.  This month I really haven't been good at painting every day so will probably get coal in my stocking.  The one painting I did get done was a Christmas card for a PF friend Amelia and then used it as my family Christmas card.  Usually I try to get a painting done just for the family card and a different one for the exchange butr this year just got behind.  Here is the painting I did and sent so Amelia has the original and I just have a copy.  Plan to paint this again so I can frame it as I have done in years past and I bring all the paintings I did for each year out and hang them and that is part of our decoration. 

I really was thrilled how this turned out.  Will redo this is a larger size. 

I didn't get my YOP painting done even though I love to paint roses but.......  Hope to work on it after Christmas and still post it before the end of the year.

Have done loads of baking and went to a  Christmas cookie exchange.  The two crystal platters in the front of the table were some of the cookies that I baked this month.

And then my DH and I celebrated our 47th anniversary yesterday the 19th.  Here are a couple of photos from those ancient days.

So there you have it.  Now have to concentrate on shopping, wrapping, more cooking AND PAINTING.

November 28, 2011

A little bit of an update on what I have been working on.  My YOP (year of painting) for November was fun.  I loved the photo that we used and I cropped it a lot.  I love reflections and autumn so had fun with this.  My steps were to first crop it on the computer here

Then I sketched out on plastic where I thought the darks should be

And finally I just had a blast using autumnal colors, trying to create reflections and doing the canoes.

I probably could have cropped it more and will definitely try this painting again maybe crop it differently. 

I also have been working on  another exchange of Christmas cards and finished it after trying twice, not liking the first one shown below   Just didn't turn out like I had in my mind so did another one that is totally different than this one.  Have finished it but won't post until I send and the person receives it.

So now want to start on another card to send to a few select folks.  One thing about doing some of these paintings is I at least even with all the hustle and bustle find time to paint just a little almost every day.  This is a good thing.  Need to do it more.



November 1, 2011

Nice way to start the month, I finally finished the crystal that I started in August in Florida of a gathering of painting friends.  I am fairly please with it and now will move on to other paintings.

Arches 140# 14" x 20", using maingly DS paints.  Photo by Mollie.

Last week in October

Well starting working again on the crystal that we started with Mollie's demo at SPLASH in Florida in August.  It is something I have never done but I do find that once I get into it, it can be very soothing and relaxing.  It is something that I will be working on for awhile and then walking away when I get too lost in where I am going with it.  Here is where I am now.  I worked on it a bit yesterday on it and will also work on it today.

I worked on the background and foreground intensifying some of the colors and then started working on the left side with some colors.  I am finding that I pick a color and then kind of go around the outer edges or wherever I see it and add like the pale red for example.  Mollie said to leave the facets in the front for now so am following her instruction.

Here is a close up of some of the little bits that I have added.

Then for fun I started a different glass.  This is from a photograph that I took of this delicious looking appletini that Deb ordered our last night at Indian Beach.  It was a really cool place to eat and drink and then go outside on the patio and dance to a Motown band.  Hadn't done something like this is a long time and it was so so much fun.  Watching our friend, Cindi, let her hair down so to speak and doing line dancing which I could not catch on to but I had no problem with the rocking kind of dancing.  It was so  so much fun and I paid dearly for it later on that night with a very sore back but it was worth it.

I digress as usual and so I want to share the beginnings of the appletini painting.

Don't know how I am going to get in the bubbles and spray thingies but I will figure out something.

I'm off to paint. 



Week of October 17th Work

Well this week along with other things I worked on a challenge which we call YOP (Year of Painting)  I am really behind but did do the one for the month of October which was due the 20th and actually got it in on time.  It was a wonderful challenge and something that I don't paint very often but it was fun and interesting.  We paint something different each month and this month it was a lovely red antique truck all spruced up.

This was the photo we worked from.  I altered it a bit as you will see.

I did a total underpainting with Gamboge and then started added various reds quin red, cherry red, (HWC), permanent rose deep (DaVinci), quin rose and later magenta then for the darks CB, BU, and a mix of quin red and blue for purples.  I also had masked some sunspots, definitely would do this differently but this was an experiment.

More modeling of the reflections on the door and putting in some darks and the grills.

Worked on background with various greens sap green, underseas green, quin gold, BU and solme blue for trees and removed some of the masking.

Removed all masking and tried to work on chrome on bumper and wheels and headlights.

Finish.  I was fairly pleased with this challenge.  I think I rushed too much as the end to meet the deadline. I plan to catch up my back months and work on the extremely challenging piece for the month of November.

October 12 Musings

I have been painting a bit but also very busy harvesting and canning and freezing both from our garden and U-Pick 'Em places.  Love going out to the country.  One more place to go this season or maybe two; one to go pick apples and make applesauce and the other to get a pumpkin at the pumkin patch.

Here are a couple of cards that I painted in the last couple of weeks.  Am sending one out for a birthday card and the other I sent to a PF friend and I can post it now as she has received it.

This one will be for my brother's birthday.  It was of the fixings for the jar of Italian tomatoes behind which I also canned

This card for Ann was of tomatoes from our garden and fall flowers also from our garden  They are on 9 x 7 Arches WC paper



Finished Cactus September 16, 2011

Hi all, I actually finished this last week but trying to handle computer problems limited my time for art work.

The one thing I learned was to mask very very carefully in the beginning.  When I removed the misket, I had a lot of huge white blobs and I did find that I spent a lot of time try to repair.  After spending several days looking at what I had finished I must say I am quite pleased with my outcome.

I do plan to spend some time now working on other paintings that I already have drawn out.  It seems I was totally ambitious when I went to Florida as to how much I could accomplish but I have a large variety of drawn out ideas ready to go.  Now to just get into that studio and put brush to paper. 

Update September 7, 2011

Hi all,

It has been a busy summer with traveling early in the summer to the East Coast and getting to spend a week with three of my youngest grandchildren in South Carolina and my son and Daughter-in-law. Had a whirlwind week busy all the time and did a lot of photography mainly of the grands.

Then on to Connecticut to visit family and up to Cape Cod again to visit family and then into Massachusetts to do some historical research and enjoy that beautiful state.

Then my brother visited for a week so again no painting. Gardening then took over and we worked every day trying to get some veggies to grow.



But what I had done early in the year was register for a week in Florida in August with some painting friends. They are folks on a web site that I belong to paintingfriends.com and we all gathered in Indian Rocks Beach, FL for a week of painting. We had demos lead but several very good professional artists and I really learned a lot. Have I finished anything? Nope but Am working on it now. Here is a photo of the group with our instructor Bob Hague and portraits that had a different technique. It was very informative a lots of fun.

As you can see there is a lot of work needed for me to learn this technique. I did do another morning's work on this portrait but think I need to go in and try and make this poor girl look like something.























The very first day of painting Mollie Jones gave a wonderful cactus demo and we worked all day on this. Since it had been so so long since I had painting I had a lot of fears to conquer and just remember that it was just paper. I am enjoying this painting and Mollie is such a great teacher. Of course, I am prejudiced as she was my roomie for the week and I cannot tell you all the giggles and laughter that went on.

I did work on this since I have been home and this is where I am so far. I am in the midst of canning produce so not much time to paint and am trying to take my time with this one which I really like so far. Love the blending of the colors and LOVE painting on a larger scale. I just have to remind myself not to be in a rush. The other paintings are there waiting for me and just go slowly and try to achieve what I want to. Do plan to paint more cacti as they are fascinating and have a lot of photos that I took on previous trips of different types of cacti.


















A lovely lady named Peg gave a talk on painting clouds. We didn't try to paint clouds this week but we sure did photograph them and with Hurricane Irene imminent the skies produced fantastic cloud formations. Will definitely be going to try and paint just clouds for awhile and put to use what Peg talked about. Here is just one of my photographs.












Another demo that Mollie gave was of strawberries in a crystal bowl. What fun this is. It is intricate but sometimes one needs to do this as well. I have not done anything more on this since I left SPLASH but plan to finish this. Here is the group with their crystals and we also spent time photographing setups of different types of crystal with different fruits like this..



















And this is the end of a wonderful week in Florida and the end of my summer. I plan to be painting more so keep tuned for updates. I find by posting my progress it helps me keep encourage to go on with my love of painting and photography.

May 20, 2011

Well here is my painting for the month. In my Painting Friends site that I belong to we are painting a different subject each month and are supposed to be putting a lot of planning into it. I haven't gotten to the point of doing a lot of sketches (not my strong suit) nor thinking too much about changing the photo that is provided. I need to do more of this to make a painting mine and not just a copy. I did change colors on the tablecloth and cropped the photo but that is as far as I got. Need to simplify and not be a slave to a photo. Take the good parts and create something just mine.

I did have fun doing this as it is not a subject that I would normally do. I don't do much in the way of still lifes or it is not my favorite thing to really do.

On to my next project for the month of May/June. Don't have the subject as yet and will not be painting for a couple of weeks. Will photograph instead.

Doing several paintings. This one is basically done for what I wanted to do. It is a demo from a wonderful site I belong to at www.paintingfriends.com and we are having a get together in August in FL for a week of painting. So we needed to practice these berries in order to be able to follow along better in the demo since we are going to have several demos.

I loved doing these. Red is such a happy color but also staining. First you do an undercoat of gamboge which gives the berry a lovely glow. Let it dry thoroughly and then technique is to pick up three colors 2 red, one blue on the brush neat put it on the basic of the berry and then kind of "smush" it around. You clean your brush and use clean water and come from the part of the berry where the leaves are and let it mingle. You do the same with the leaves but obviously with greens.

Well it took me forever with other things going on but here is my first effort of the splash berries. Interesting technique , did struggle with it, like how in the world did your paints in the well not mix up by the time you got to the third color? And I probably had put too much paint (neat) on the brush as I really had a mess a couple of times. Then there was the masking really made a mess of it and didn't realize it until I pulled it off. Will do it differently I think when I do these for the Splash for real. It wouldn't work with a toothpick to put the mask on and my special masking thingie that is so expensive won't work right so I will probably need to purchase another.

It was fun to do in bright colors. I didn't have the perm red I think it was (I have since bought one) so I used a quin in place of it or maybe I replaced that with naphthol red with is a brilliant red and I love it but I also didn't have something else that was listed, can't remember now. Anyway I liked my color of strawberries but wow one of them is really staining.

Anyhow here is the end result. I was fairly pleased with the results but need much more work on the smushing technique and also the seeds. I had masked them and made them too big and then had to back track and try and repair damage. Plan to practice just seeds to figure out a better way to do them.

Well here we are in the Spring of 2011 and I haven't posted in forever. What with traveling over Christmas and doing other things my painting kind of was put aside. Here are a couple of things I have done this year so far and now I'm really trying to do some painting each day for one challenge or another or trying to learn a new technique. Just to catch up and have a record of what I have done this year.

We have a portrait challenge where we do at least one portrait a month. Here were my attempts so far.

This was the first one I attempted. Really lots wrong with this one, his eyes are too close, pupils too large, skin not too bad and hair was kind of fun to do. Good experience. On to the next one.



Liked parts of this little boy, some of his skin tones and eyes. Had a bit of problem with his hair but all and all not too bad.

Next was this little girl. Again I liked lots about this one, fairly satisfied, really worked on her hair and her eyes which were an incredible blue. Really struggled with the right eye, it looks okay but could have been better if I had used good paper. Sometimes when I do these paintings I use my cheap paper which is a huge mistake. What if I really like something? Need to keep this in mind.


This is really one of my favorites so far. I used only one color of paint an indigo blue to make a monochrome painting just using different tones and values. He looked so sad and he really could be every man from anywhere in the world really.



This one I did yesterday. Our challenge was to take a photo of a bust of a man (probably some old Roman guy) and paint it emphasizing the shapes and shadows. The photo had a blue tone. People were saying he was creepy probably because these statues or busts don't have any pupils or iris in their eyes it is just the white part with the lids. So I decided to use a color that is used sometimes as an underpainting called caput mortuum violet (the name suited this guy's status) but used it to warm him up. This one when I finished made me giggle because he is really creepy now but kind of cool.



Then for something a little different for the past month we are doing a challenge of taking a picture that is posted and taking a part of it and painting it any way we wish. We sketch it out, some folks did lots of sketches, that's not my thing but I did do one sketch, then I cropped the photo to get where I wanted to emphasize. Then I mixed two pages of colors. I'll tell you I was really ready to give up because as you can see there are a lot of greens in this painting and they are all mixed from different blues and yellows, no tubes of green were used. As I said I was ready to dump it and give up but kept on. This was my final which we posted yesterday. Not too bad.



So next month we have a new challenge, a still life with a lot of bright colors. Should be fun. Now I need to go to my painting room and work on another portrait that I am just doing for practice. It is one that a friend has done and posted and I am trying to learn the technique but will post when I finish.