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.

July 18, 2010

Quite awhile since I've been here. Been very busy with our youngest son's wedding and house guests and a nasty cold/flu which just hung on and sapped energy. Hopefully I'm back to enjoying trying to create some art.

First I tried to get back into painting by doing a FF challenge on one of the painting web sites that I'm on. It turned out just ok but at least got my brushes wet.



I like the colors and the blending, poor bee doesn't look much like himself, he he he

Then more time went by and a lovely lady by the name of Mollie put up a demo on painting a sunflower so I though aha just the ticket. I love sunflowers such happy flowers. So I tried to learn the technique.


Well, just couldn't get the dot technique but I was trying. I had another failure and almost gave up and then I worked on the following one. I still couldn't get the hang of the dots and just bringing water to the dots and letting the paint do its work. I sort of got it but wasn't getting the results I wanted. Then I reread the directions and tried some more and sort of got it but then couldn't resist just adding my own colors and idea to the sunflower. It wasn't the total looseness that I wished but satisfactory. I'm not comfortable having no drawing to go by and just trying to do the drawing with the paintbrush other than a bit in the center. Also struggled with my leaves, definitely need much more practice on this technique but a lot of folks had very kind encouraging comments on my painting. I used mainly Daniel Smith paints (really love them) and a few Michael Grahams that I still have left. Painted 10x14 Arches 140# block. Think I will try this again on a larger sheet and see if I can't paint larger and looser.





The other thing I tried was a demo I had found online of Fantasy Flowers and it also helped me climb out of my blockage to painting. In this you just put on paints and kind of shape a vase, again no drawing, and then use ink pens to pen in some suggested flowers; then use colored WC pencils and add some shading. This is how far I am with this. Kind of fun and that's what painting should be about.

And a close up


So now am going to try and finish paintings that I've started and if I can't get inspired by that I will flip the paper over and do something else on the back.