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.