"Grace" Oil Pastel

Oil Pastel, 5.5 x 5.5"

$45 plus shipping 

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Hello, Watchers!  This painting represents for me a breakthrough process.  I am excited and thrilled actually at how this one came together!

I painted it on my lunch hour today from a scene I saw hours earlier on the way to work this early morning. No reference photo. It makes me very happy to have created from my mind's eye, memory only! A very freeing process...

In real life, the blues of the trees of this painting are much richer and the orange is lighter, calmer, and not so contrasty--the orange knows its place in the real painting.  

I am using Picasa to edit these OPs and am about ready to decide to keep this new computer.   When I decide for certain, I will move my Photoshop Elements license to this computer and then hopefully do a better job of photo-editing.

Anyhow,  thanks for being here to hear about my breakthrough...and to all my artist friends, Happy Painting!

"Open Arms" Oil Pastel - 30 Paintings in January 2015

Oil Pastel, 4x4"

SOLD (Thank you!)

This is the one I talked about yesterday, that appeared horrendous when I scanned it.  Today I photographed it.   I would say the photo is marginally better.  I actually really like this little painting...not so sure about the photograph!

I am really glad I have a blog--for most of you, it is the only way I would ever be able to show you my art.  But times like these I really wish I could say, "Come on over to my studio and let me show you what I've been doing."   Ixnay on the digital images!

Anyhow, I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the 30 Paintings in 30 Days.

I am blessed to have people who follow and comment on my art.  Today, I would love to encourage everyone to go check out the offerings from the rest of the 30 in 30 artists on Leslie's blog.  Perhaps you would be willing to go find some new art you love and go let the artists know on their blogs. I think the other artists are already checking each other out, so I am mainly talking to my non-artist friends.

At the bottom of Leslie's posts, each of the artists in the 30 in 30 posts a small thumbnail of their painting for the day.  The later in the day you go to Leslie's blog, the more paintings will be there (obviously!).  You get to the blogs by clicking on the thumbnails.  If you are in Firefox, like I am, a new tab will open with the artists' website, blog, or FB, whatever they put in the link on Leslie's blog.  A few artists don't put links, so clicking their painting won't get you anywhere.

And, as always, I thank you for being here...

"Winter's Exhale" Oil Pastel

Oil Pastel 5.5 x 5.5"

Well, for the sake of the 30 in 30, I am showing you this one, but I just cannot bring myself to sell it until I can get the image accurate enough to the painting.  I tried three different photo editors!  So, I give myself credit for trying, anyway.

This is an extra one I painted the other day.  I was looking forward to showing you the one for today, but the scan was SO OFF, that the above one actually looks relatively accurate!  

Apparently, using the scanner for Oil Pastel Paintings is going to be a bit more iffy than using it for Acrylic Paintings.  I will be looking for a Plan B.

Happy Painting, everyone!

Lady Bug Dress

Acrylic with Palette Knife 10x8"

My latest in my new series of toddler legs.  Legs courtesy of my OTHER niece!  I am now out of nieces, so if anyone has any photos of little toddlers they would like to share as painting references, feel free to send them my way!

If you have read my blog for awhile, you will know that I am on a quest to improve the photo images of my paintings (now there's a positive way to put it!).  Thanks to Rick (photoshop guru who is helping me tremendously with my prints) at Henco Reprographics, I now know that the color and values are even affected by the ANGLE TO THE MONITOR the image is viewed from.  Artist friends, did you know this???  Try viewing one of your paintings on your monitor from various angles, and you will see for yourselves...

P.S.  Guess whose dog needs surgery on her other knee?

Last Red Azaleas

                                                                                                                     acrylic, 6x6"

Yesterday's painting offering.  I'm going to stop complaining about how the photos don't look true to the colors of the painting....I'm putting you on notice that I will be working to correct the issue, probably by changing the software I am using for photo editing.  Until I do, please just assume I am not happy with the photos, so we can move on.   I wonder whether other artists are satisfied with "close enough," or if they keep editing until the photo looks perfect.  One of my friends told me she thinks the photos will never completely match the paintings.  She's an Off-Blog Commenter.  I have a few of those among the Watchers.  I am very grateful for all of you.

For the first time since I started my painting practice, I left in the middle of a painting and returned to finish it.  I really had to go somewhere for about 30 minutes yesterday, and I think maybe the pause was good for the painting, because the first layers of paint had a chance to dry well before I got into layering over them.  I like to paint wet over dry, but sometimes with acrylics, I end up painting wet over kind of sticky.  I wonder if the painting is still considered alla prima since I stopped for a half hour--I'm not really concerned about the label, just curious.

You can see I am still having an ellipse problem.   I'm expecting improvement with practice.  Sometimes the ellipses are a matter of a drawing/seeing/mind distortion and sometimes a paint-handling issue.  In Last Red Azaleas, the ellipse was a seeing distortion. 

I feel kind of guilty cutting flowers to paint them.  I usually leave flowers to grow where they are.  The azaleas were on the way out, though, so how guilty can I let myself be?  It's supposed to be quite cold tonight.   I went around the yard trying to cover up plants and cut some flowers I didn't think I could cover well.  I guess they would have died tonight anyway.  We'll see what's left in the morning....

Hi Brooke!  Hi T!

Painting the Light

                                                                                acrylic, approx 6x8"

This painting isn't quite a standard size (slightly less than 6x8"), because it is on a masonite board that was cut to size at home, and apparently when you take a large piece of masonite and cut it into a bunch of smaller boards, the end ones are going to end up slightly smaller.   I've been told.  Anyway, I am wanting this to be slightly even smaller at the bottom, because think it would be a better composition that way.  I'm going to have the same sawer saw some off as soon as other projects around the house are finished and the table saw becomes available for art cropping (unless someone out there knows for a fact that sawing a completed acrylic painting on masonite is a bad idea and lets me know).  Here's how I would rather this look:

It's slight, but I think it makes a difference.

You can see that the ellipse at the top of the vase (BTW, same vase as yesterday's painting) is kind of off, tilted.  You know what?  That doesn't bother me.  I have decided that I am not after perfection in the drawing, because I think having some things a little off gives the painting some life. 

I like the sense of light in this one, and my main interest in painting is to capture a light effect.  Whether painting still life, landscapes, or people, that is what I am interested in.  I have so much to learn about painting light.  Lighting a still life has been a big learning challenge, because of wanting to have a nice light effect without harsh shadows.  I've done research and experimented, but if anyone can direct me to any reference information on this topic, I would be so grateful.

So far, natural light on the still life when the light is at certain angles gives me more of the effect I want....but then I have the same issue painting still life as with painting plein air--the light CHANGES!  It's pretty interesting over a painting session to watch the light change--you see all your light and shadow effects disappear and reappear in other places.  But it makes it hard to complete the original vision of the painting.  At least in the amount of time I need to do one of these paintings.

For the light effect in this painting, I think I lucked out in finding these purple flowers and being able to pair them with my peachy-colored vase.  I think being sort of complementary colors, they helped make the light effect on the vase pop.  Then again, I am not a trained artist, so maybe I am making that up.  But I do think from my readings on color that these are near complements and that having them together did help give a sense of light.  I'm happy to hear from any artist out there who can tell me if I am making sense!

Photos.  First, I want to acknowledge my friend Dixie for letting me use her art photo shooting set-up.  Without access to Dixie's set-up, I would not have this blog on-line yet.  So, thank you SO much, Dixie.  Secondly, I want to say that the photos for this post and the prior two were done by me, alone with the photo-shooting set-up, without Dixie there.  For the first three posts' photos, Dixie was there.  One thing we know that made a difference is that she had one extra light on that I didn't use.  When I look at the photo from this post and the last two compared to the first few, the first few look more accurate to the paintings to me.  So, I'll need to try that extra light from now on.  Or maybe actually having Dixie there made all the difference...