"Cozy Close" --- SOLD

I just spent a wonderful day with my family celebrating a belated Thanksgiving. I ate too much, as usual, and am off to bed early.

"Judge & Jury"

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So, the judge is the apple in the bowl. The jury is to the right. And the "poor" little guy defending his honor is to the left. Once I thought of it that way I couldn't look at the painting without seeing a courtroom. : )

"My Flower" - SOLD

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I had forgotten all about this fabric - it was stuck at the bottom of a pile. I'd like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! We're having ours on Saturday when the whole family can get together, so I'll probably paint tomorrow. Don't eat too much pie, ya'll!

"Test the Water" - SOLD

I'm very happy with this one. Thanks to all of you who wrote to me about skylights in the studio. Unfortunately I got mixed reviews. : ) Oh well ... I guess I have some time to think about it before I get my dream studio.

"Visiting Day" - SOLD

Ahhh, apples. Possibly my favorite subject to paint of all time. Yesterday, after mentioning the lights I use on my subjects, someone asked if I also vary the light on my painting. The answer is no. Eventually, when I am able to build my own custom studio, I hope to use natural light for painting. My studio now has a small, south facing window that is totally unusable. So I have a "daylight" florescent work light mounted on the ceiling directly above my easel. It works pretty well. I am considering skylights in my next studio - anyone have experience with them?

"Cherry Red Red Red"

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After many unexplainable problems with the new email service, Constant Contact, I have decided to switch to yourmailinglistprovider.com. I did a test last night with great results - hopefully it will work with the whole list at once. Thank you all for your continued patience on this issue. Please let me know of any problems going forward.

I have 3 lights in my studio that I currently alternate between for lighting my subjects. One is an authentically "white" light that I got from a specialty light bulb store. It is especially good for flowers. I also have a general "daylight" bulb (more yellow than the first) that you can get anywhere. I also have a "daylight" spotlight bulb. Yesterday I used the first bulb. It is a soft light, and not very directional. Today I used the spotlight. It tends to light up fruit like this that is in any way translucent. It makes the shadows crisp, and generally makes a more dramatic scene than either of the other two. I really enjoy experimenting with all 3.

"Gabbing Cherries" - SOLD

This time of year my local grocery store always seems to stock lots of cherries. Is it a holiday thing, or do they just happen to be in season right now, somewhere? Because I'm sure they're not from around here. They are a lovely fruit to paint - dark red and shiny, with stems. Like mysterious strangers. ; )

'Ode to Broccoli" - SOLD

This is some broccoli from the farm share we participate in. It had some long spindly leaves that looked like cheering arms, but they just weren't working for me in the composition, so I took them off. I never thought I could pull off brocolli in an interesting way, but I'm actually thrilled with the result. Sometimes I like to roll around in a little COLOR!!!

"Family Feud" - SOLD

I really simplified the flowers in this one - I find I like this approach the best out of the last 3. Petals are just so so so hard to get right in detail, and I would like to propose that sunflowers are the toughest. If you want a challenge, get some and try it. And if you do, please email me the results - I'd love to see some other approaches. : )

Some subscribers to my email list have written to me saying the images don't show up in the emails they get. I have contacted the service I switched to and they suggest these people check their email clients to make sure background images are allowed. I have no idea why my images are being inserted as background images, but this is worth a try. If you are one of these people and this isn't the issue, please let me know. Thanks for your continued patience!!!

"After the Ride" - SOLD

Many months ago I did a series of pears. One person in England bought 2 of them and I mailed them off. The buyer never received them. A week ago they returned back here. Crazy, the mail system! I gave the original winner first dibs and am now putting them in my Ebay store. I've also marked down a few others that were already in my store, in time for some early Christmas present buying, in case you're into that. : ) Here are the 2 pears: ("Just a Pear 4 & 5")

"Three High" - SOLD

Today I started a large painting of these three sunflowers, but in a different light. It started out terrible, and about 4/5th's of the way through I realized that it was going to end terrible. So I wiped it off. I think it's the second time ever I've wiped a large canvas. And it was tough - after 6 hours of work! So I did this small one as an actualy STUDY - go figure - and love it! And of course my sitter can't come anymore this week, and the sunflowers will be droopy by the time I have another full day to paint. Ah, sigh.

Apparently my email fix is not without bugs. Argh! Not to worry - I will prevail ... eventually.

"Center Stage" - SOLD

I think I finally got the email situation figured out - you should ALL be getting this one. I wrote to Duane Keiser (the one who started this whole painting a day "thing") and asked his opinion about Google Groups. He said he found it less than perfect as well and that he recently switched to Constant Contact, not free, but reliable. And they import lists. So I switched you all over and from now on we should have no more problems. Knock on wood.

Above is a "red" sunflower I found at the grocery store today. I can tell it was dyed because the water in the vase turned red after about 10 minutes of the flowers being in it. : ) At first I thought - I can't paint dyed flowers, they're fake! But then I thought - beauty is beauty, and artists paint man-made (or altered) things all the time. So there you go.

"Golden Rose" - SOLD

This rose had a lovely glow to it and it was a struggle to capture, but if I look back at my old roses I can see I've improved. On the other hand, I am finding over and over that art is extraordinarily subjective. Recently I got an email from a regular reader who critiqued my subdued colors of late. It goes to show that when I think I am doing some of my best paintings ever, someone is going to think the opposite. And when I think I am putting out *crap* - for lack of a better word - someone is going to love it. But all I've got with me in my studio is me, so you'll have to continue to settle for my aesthetics. : )

"Rose on Dots"

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Apparently my emails are still not getting out to everyone. If you are one of those people, I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience! I am working on a solution. Apparently there is a way to "follow" my blog using blogger, but the instructions for installing the icon are for a newer version of blogger that I don't have. I already have some "followers" but I'm not sure how they signed up - if you are one of those people can you tell us how? Thanks. Meanwhile, I am taking a break and going camping with my family. Back on Sunday.

"Light in the Dark" - SOLD

I cut a beautiful rose painting out of a magazine recently (completely forgot to note the artist) and tried to recreate the feeling here, but failed completely. This is what I got instead. I like it anyway even though it's different from what I intended.

I'd like to bring your attention to an up and coming, Canadian artist: Deltra Powney. Not only does she have a super cool name, she's got a way with color & composition. This is her lovely painting below:

"Emerging" - SOLD

I am thoroughly frustrated with Google Groups. They have maintained my email list for these last 2 years and now, within the last few weeks, the emails are not going out regularly. I have been doing research tonight, online, for hours but cannot figure out what the problem is, and cannot get any support from Google. Is anyone else have problems with Google Group emails not getting to everyone on your list reliably? I tried one more thing today - please let me know (again, sorry) if you are seeing this on my blog, but didn't get an email when you should have. Thank you thank you!!!

Oh yeah, and as for yesterday's post, I have gotten lots of emails asking WHY I didn't like the first (white) roses painting. First of all, the roses don't quite read as white ... more like brown? or pink? Second, the composition is pretty boring, and a bit awkward. Third, the light, while spectacular in real life, turned out looking a bit flat in this painting. The light was just a little behind the flowers, and really lit up that one flower up top, while just speckling the rest. As hard as I tried, I didn't capture that, and that's what impressed me about the scene in the first place. So there you go, my own critique. : )

"Off & Running" n/a & the good & the ugly

I am trying something new with the email list - please let me know if you see this on my blog but didn't get the email when you should have. Thanks!

I feel like I am over a hump this week. Last week, on the other hand, I talked about a painting I liked at the start and hated when done. Well, some sadistic reader : ) asked me to post it, so here is the ugly painting in all it's horribleness. (read on)



I am ONLY posting this because today I did one that I am much happier with (below). Isn't it funny how that yucky feeling from a bad painting stays with you until you "redeem" yourself by doing something better?!? I was recently invited to show at a gallery in CA but they want me to resume the flower in jar series I worked on ages ago. It just so happens I was hankering to do so anyway, so these are my latest attempts in that re-direction. What is difficult is that I used to do them from photos, but now work from life. For this second one I actually took a photo and had that on a screen nearby while I worked from life. It was really helpful to get subtle changes in the jar and background. Otherwise, it sucked as a reference because the rose (the important part!) was too bleached out, and the leaf was black.

"Vanishing Vase" - SOLD

Apparently I am still having some troubles with my email list. If you used to get an email from me each time I posted, but now you don't, please let me know. I am trying to figure out if it's the whole list or just some people. Thanks.

I really enjoyed the subtleties in this painting, and the contrast between all the grays and the bright reds and greens. I teach a lot in my class about having a dominant value, and a dominant color, but I think it can apply to just about anything. That's my latest working theory anyhow: that a painting can be made more dynamic if "something" is dominant. So the unsaturated colors here are dominant, but the eye goes towards the bright colors - partly because they are bright but also because they are what is different. If this painting was half gray and half saturated I think it would be less interesting than one or the other being dominant. So, is this something I came up with or is it an established rule?

"Nestled" - SOLD

Another tomatillo. I love these little guys.

"Tomatillo's Undressing" - SOLD

My second title choice was "Various Stages of Undress." : ) I did a large painting today of white roses and I re-realized something really different about painting small vs. large. With a small painting it is a lot easier to keep the whole thing uniform - to keep the momentum all the way through - to keep it fresh. I loved the large painting during the first few hours but ended up hating it at the end. I lost the idea halfway through. I lost something. I've had a drink since then to ease the pain, so I apologize if I'm not terribly coherent. ; )

"Flying Tomatillo" - SOLD

I have forever passed by the tomatillo's in the grocery store because ... well to be honest I thought they'd be too hard to paint. But I was feeling adventurous the other day and picked up a few, for kicks. I used a panel that was pre-primed many days before and therefore dry. Usually I prime right before I paint. I have to admit I really liked it for this mostly light (high-key) painting. It was just the right color to put the blue over ... I like the bits of brown peeking through. What I never knew about tomatillo's is that they're kind of sticky under the paper-thin wrapper. Weird. But totally fun to paint!

"Out of the Dark" - SOLD

Here's purple/orange/green again, though in different proportions than yesterday. I was introduced to the idea of dominant color in Harley Brown's book, "Eternal Truth's for Every Artist" (a fabulous book I mention a lot that is unfortunately no longer in print). The idea is that you have a dominant color (one general color that takes up the most room in the painting) and then less of some other colors. Harley suggests using the compliment of that color and then what he calls discords, but I think the "other" colors can be just about anything. It's something I love to experiment with!

"Color Triad" - SOLD

Well I have to admit I didn't plan this, but where I tend to go for a complimentary or split-complimentary color scheme, this time it turned out to be triadic. Orange/purple/green. All the secondary colors. I haven't read much about color theory - I must admit - most of what I know comes from looking at art & experimenting. I generally start with what looks good through my viewfinder, and if something isn't working I look to my color wheel as a possible problem solver.

"Looking Out" - SOLD

I opened my new box of vegetables from the farm and - lo and behold - more peppers! It's a good thing I like to paint them. This time I got all sorts of colors. Everything except green actually.

By the way, I am honored to say I was included this month in an article, in Southwest Art magazine, about artists who paint (or sculpt) fruits & veggies. Even though they got a few facts wrong in my little blurb, the painting of (yes) peppers turned out really nice, and ... well I am just blown away to have been included. : )

Final workshop demo and photo

Above is a demo from my last workshop, in Indian Rocks Beach, FL (sold). Below is a group photo of the class. Another fabulous group! I am finally feeling better today and am just about to go up to my studio to paint. Thank you all so much for your kind emails on getting better!!!

Update

Unfortunately I caught some sort of bug in Florida and haven't been able to paint at all since I got back. I hope to be up and about soon.