Little Red Hen

Little Red Hen Sold

oil on gallery wrapped canvas 12x12x1"

I've had the desire to paint the chickens ever since we moved here, but just couldn't see the image that I wanted as the final product. So I went to the Daily Painters Gallery and searched for Chicken paintings. While many of them are fabulous, they still weren't what I had in mind.

I wanted something more graphic and fun.

In olden days, back in the 60's I worked for a company that made wrapping paper and specialty bags for retail companies. I was one of three in the art department. We were only allowed to work in black and white and we had to use the art from freelancers to turn into full color for rotogravure presses. This is truly ancient technology now. But occasionally those days float to the surface and I allow myself a little 'illustration' detour.

Some of you may say this looks like a quilt, but I think it works better as a painting.

Tomatoes
.

Tomatoes

Oil on gallery wrapped canvas, 12x12x1"

click here to bid

We have a few different varieties of tomatoes in our garden, heirloom, cherry, and the kind that grow well in a container. All of them are starting to ripen, demanding to be painted. Ah summer!

Doncha love red?

Blue Teapot

.

Blue Teapot

oil on gallery wrapped canvas 12x12x1"

Sold

Today I decided to leave out the fruit, and after a suggestion from a commentor I tried to vary the lighting. However, I have no natural light so I dinked around with spots and floods and bouncing light, and the final result is just about the same lighting as the rest of my paintings.

So much for that suggestion.

What I discovered was that I need bright light for the color to be bright. I can direct the lights away from my subject and then I have dull color. Well...I don't want dull color. In fact this teapot was almost not bright enough for me to buy it in the first place (Goodwill, $8.95) and same with the yellow cups (Goodwill, $1.40 for 4). The cobalt cup and saucer (Goodwill, $.99) were dazzling though, and yet with a indirect light, the cobalt blue was practically black, so nevermind.

I attempted to limit my palette by finding a nice yellow tablecloth, which was handdyed and had a bit of red that wouldn't make it into the frame of the painting. However, it was reflected smartly by the teapot, spoon and cup and saucer.

So much for that limited palette idea.

I think I'll have a wee cuppa tea.

The Last Weekend in July

We are rejoicing over a good week of rain and now the expected overwhelming plant growth can get going.

Our Bee Balm is past its prime but the butterflies and hummingbirds still visit often. This one is right up against the porch so we can watch them feed so close. I plan on putting more Bee Balm all over the yard next Spring, since it is doing so well here.

This monster Stargazer Lily got a late start but is not letting that hold it back. Does it seem to have a few more petals than normal?

Altho we did not plant a 'butterfly garden' on purpose, the word is out and we have tons, really tons of butterflies all the time. This is so great. We loves us some wildlife.

Speaking of which, here are some of the 30 or so frogs and our Gang of Five Goldfish.

Look out Mr. Froggie, here they come again!

In yesterday's comments I promised (someone?) to address why I am painting this way. What way?

Well, back in 2006 I took a break from quilting and for two months was painting abstractly and loving it. I felt loose and free and could just play with design and color and experiment to my heart's content. At the time I may have suggested that I would never go back to realism, or some such foolishness. And now here I am painting realistically. So what gives?

Hmm. To explain this is a long story but suffice it to say that I was afraid if I ever painted realistically I would tighten up and be miserable, as I was when I was in art school. After a career in quilting, making non traditional quilts in non traditional ways, I felt that I had overcome so much of that tightness that it should also make it easier to loosen up my painting.

I suppose that was true to some extent.

So beginning again with painting, I knew I would have to struggle at first to regain my chops and thanks to the painting a day movement, it was clear that this was the way to do it.

OK? So I am painting realistically because I can. But really, I love that I can paint realistically without all that old tightness and fear and that turns out to be the best reason in the world.

Three Plums

Three Plums

oil on gallery wrapped canvas

8x10x1"

Yesterday while Dave and I were having coffee and I said that after painting all week I find myself looking at objects like these plums and seeing just how I would paint them, breaking down the shadows, the highlights and the edges.

So I grabbed the plums and went upstairs and did just that.

And then I had a difficult time trying to take a picture. The wet paint was so shiny and reflective that it took 40 attempts before I could get even these above. The best one came while the painting's edges were still unfinished. They are now all painted, but of course I have to do that after I photograph the painting itself or I would have nothing to prop it up on without getting paint on everything.

Later that day I was surfing around on Ebay and bid on something and lost the bidding. And I thought how discouraging that must be for people.

So today I am not going to post this painting on Ebay. It is $100 and shipping is $5. Paypal or personal checks are accepted. Just email me and it is yours. First come, first served.

Avocados

Avocados Sold

oil on gallery wrapped canvas

12x12x1"

Who doesn't love avocados? When we were kids we got an orange, a piece of chocolate and an avocado in our Christmas stocking. I can't even remember my first one, I was so little.

And wasn't it strange and funny when there was a late freeze in California or Mexico, somewhere that we get most of our avocados in January, and people were going nuts that there wouldn't be enough avocados for the Super Bowl guacamole!

I just bought these yesterday and they were about perfectly ripe and I was afraid that when I opened this one it would have a brown spot somewhere, but luckily it was just right.

In the comments about Oriana Kacicek's painting of the orange slices, was a good question I would like to address.

liz in IN said...
Amazing skill. But...is 'real-looking' the style you're going for? >shrug<>

Well, I guess I am entranced by the Hyper-realists, and then again NOT. For one thing, they are usually painting from a photo which holds time still, and nothing changes the image. When I paint I am painting the actual scene, er, still life, and moving myself around and readjusting my posture and that changes what I am seeing so it is a bit more of a trick to get everything as perfect as it would have been if I had the still photo to look at. Those shadows and highlights don't change. And the avocado in the photo doesn't start getting brown after a few hours under the lights.

But I am aiming at the reality of it. And we all know nothing is as unreal as a painting. So it has to be my interpretation of the view before me.

I have been looking at lots of artists' work online, as part of my homework and one thing has really jelled in the ol' bean. None of us are going to make the history books. And I am finally OK with that. As a painting student, way back when, it seemed that we were primed to aim for that achievement, as tho it were the main goal. MAIN GOAL. I don't know how this was communicated to us, but I felt compelled to dream that dream. It killed me, artistically. I doubted everything I put forth.

Now, I could care less about the history books.

I think it's great that I can put art in the hands of people directly, either online or through the mail, without an agent, a gallery, a museum, or critic to get in the way. And because I don't have to deal with them, I don't have to categorize my style to fit into their marketing plan.

So as to real looking style? I guess I am learning to accept that this is the way I paint and it is evolving, and getting better if I do say so myself. Daily painting makes it happen.

New Artist to See

I have discovered a new Painter a Day person, Oriana Kacicek at Elusive Hues. Wonderful, inspiring, expensive small works.

I'll be making a new painting this morning, inspired by her elegant simplicity.

Just for Fun!

Photos with my paintings inserted.

Red Bowl with Fruit

Red Bowl with Fruit

oil on gallery wrapped canvas, 12x12x1"

Sold

I was searching the blog archives for something a minute ago and realize that I used to write a lot more each day. Things are different now and I don't write as much as I used to.

Why?

Maybe because I don't feel like I am in show business anymore. Not teaching and traveling and just staying home in the studio seems too tame to write about. And since I don't have a clue how to teach painting I am not offering tips or instruction or demos. Not knitting or baking either.

I have calmed down too. And the big excitement of the day may be so teeny as to forget it when I sit down to write.

Our big deal yesterday was the rainstorm. Lots of thunder and gobs and gobs of refreshing rain. We have been miserable watching the pond shrink daily and wishing that we would get the rains that the Midwest was enduring. A big crane flew into the pond, Dave said, and I waited for a while to see if the 5 goldfish were still swimming there. It took half the day before they all assembled on the water's surface. I was jubilant when I saw them. Dopey I know but when you can count your fish you get attached to their survival.

The sun returned and it reignited the heat and soon we were closing up the house to keep it cool. In just minutes the rain returned even stronger than before and since I had just cooked lunch we ate it on the porch with the rain surrounding us.

Black beans, chicken breast in mole sauce, Mexican rice, chopped tomatoes and onions. Some diet.

I got back to painting at about three o'clock while Dave took a nap. My start was feeble but I was able to wipe off the bad parts and repaint them. This is a big discovery for me in painting. In olden days it would never have occured to me to wipe off a bad section. I would have abandoned the painting. But thanks to my reading other painter's blogs I know this is doable. And what a difference it has made in my confidence.

And because none of my friends are daily painters I have not been discussing or critiquing anyone else's art. No competition amongst pals. What a good thing this is. And how different from being in the quilting world with my girlfriends. Still it would be nice to have someone look at my stuff and have something to say, good or bad. I make Dave climb the stairs every night for the big reveal, but really he always likes everything. That's not a complaint.

The garden is either lush or dying depending on the amount of sun and water it gets. I will post pictures, as soon as everything dries off.

We got rid of the stinking, noisy, mean roosters and are down to one chicken, Little Red. She is so much happier now and we allow her free reign around the yard. Look out bugs, she is a sharp pecker.

Today I am going to town and getting a haircut, at last, and will do some grocery shopping. Dave and I are going to start eating smarter, and that means more of the fruit and veggies that I am painting will be eaten before they go bad, up in the studio.

Abundance

Abundance

Oil on gallery wrapped canvas, 12x12x1"

Click here to bid
It's easy to see why Italy and Mexico chose these colors for their flags. How festive! I am happy to say that the garden delivered these beauties to us and before we use them for our dinner I felt they must be painted.

The work of several other painters is influencing me on this one. I wanted a different viewpoint, so I lowered my surface to about nine inches above the floor so I could look down at the subject. What I didn't count on was that my field of vision with my eyeglasses was just short of the distance. I spent the whole day switching between bifocals and my magnifying readers to capture all the details and textures. It worked but it really wore me out.

I LOVE that little green cherry tomato. It is the star of the painting if you ask me.

Pears with Pitcher

Pears with Pitcher

oil on gallery wrapped canvas

12x12x1"

Sold

One of the goodies that Frieda and I found at TJMAXX last week was this darling little peach colored pitcher. Frieda loves orange and lime green together. Or in this case Pear green. I wonder why no one ever names a color Pear green? I guess because they are always changing color. These really reflected the color of the cloth they sat upon.

Pears on Blue

.

Pears on Blue
oil on gallery wrapped canvas, 8x10x1"Sold

Lots of fruit and veggies remain after my big commission paintings were sent off. The ripest must be painted first, so it is the pears. I was sent a link by my friend Judy Sebastian who shows her collages at the Left Bank Gallery on Cape Cod. One of the artists in the current exhibit, Katie Trinkle Legge paints fruit too, and she wanted me to see her work. I love it!
Katie painting in her studio. I must get a photo of myself like this. O, but then I would have to get dressed. Follow the link above to see her work and notice the prices. Woowoo!

Frieda Anderson Visits Us

'
Frieda and Dave enjoy a cold beverage on the pondside of the porch.

This was after a full day of girlfriend shopping, talking, museum and gallery hopping, Panera lunching, and TJMAXXing. We were wiped and hungry, and of course ultra thirsty.

On our way to Chattanooga we did the touristy thing and pulled over to take in the scenic view. Dave and I have driven past this roadside parking spot a zillion times but this was the first time I stopped to take it in.

A bit hazy but still pretty neat.

In Chattanooga, our first stop was Frazier Avenue. The galleries and art supply store got our business. Then we went down a sidestreet and saw this great house with a bike fence and blue bottle collection on the porch. What a great idea!

After lunch at Panera downtown we headed over to the River Gallery

and the Hunter Museum where we saw this great iron fence sculpture and lots of terrific artwork.

We ended our trip with a visit to TJMAXX and found all sorts of objects to add to my still life collection. You will be seeing these things in paintings in the future.

One of the things I love best about having house guests is COOKING FOR THEM. I dream about it. We had a lovely dinner which included fresh beets pulled right out of the yard, and a salad with basil, cucumber and nasturtium blossoms and leaves, plus other regular salad stuff like red ripe tomatoes, feta, and kalamata olives. The main treat was grilled filet mignon. O how yummy to eat this all al fresco.

But it is all over way too fast. Frieda returns to IL today via the Nashville airport. Sigh. It was a great visit and I got to share our Mexican Chalet with her and she got to meet the chickens, the frogs and the five goldfish.

And Popeye, of course.

Commission Completed

.

Here they are! The last three at the front, the plum, the mango and the nectarine.

I am so pleased with the result, the variety, the colors and the backgrounds.

Now for a few days of drying time, and then they will be packed up and sent to their new owner.

I think it would make a fun afternoon deciding what order to hang them in.

One of the comments (from Anonymous, wouldn't you know?) was that the highlights all seemed to be in the same spots. Ha! Like that was a mistake. The shadows are all falling in the same areas too. Knowing this would be a collected art piece, I strove for some level of consistency to aid in making it a whole. I was asked not to make the backgrounds too matchy matchy, so my solution was to always set the light source in the same direction.

What I learned: All these objects had local color, shadows and highlights. To paint them I began by finding the shadows and highlights and then I filled in with the color. Then I repainted the shadows, the highlighted tonal areas and cleaned out the spotlighted areas. Lastly I added the white. Also I put the backgrounds in FIRST. That way I knew how much to contrast the colors of each fruit. Great lessons to take with me for any shape or object in a painting.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

And now for something completely different: I am picking up Frieda Anderson at 10 am today. She will be visiting me until Friday. No new painting until the weekend. One of the days, maybe Thursday we may go into Chattanooga (depending) and visit some girly shoppes, and maybe the art galleries. Of course I will have reports of the visit. Now I must hurry and clean the house!

Commission:Day 4

.

I decided to redo the apple, on a new canvas, and make it yellow, since there was a dearth of yellow fruits in this grouping. Only the lemon and banana were yellow, and neither were as warm a yellow as this Yellow Delicious.

The avocado was especially challenging since it had a rough texture and yet had a glossy reflection. I think it worked out well.

Speaking of challenging, the eggplant was HUGE and to get it all in the 6x6" canvas took several tries. Compare that to the mushroom which was tiny and now looks like a Paul Bunyan mushroom. Does anyone remember Paul Bunyan anymore?

So 13 down and three to go...but I contacted my commissioner and asked if I could make a few substitutions. Leek, carrots, beets. These all seemed too long and thin to paint just one per canvas. I planned to use a beet from my garden, since they are plump and ready to pull, but really, NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME visually. And with the carrots I was hoping to find some with green tops at my grocery, but all they had were the cello bagged ones. Not earthy enough. With the leeks, trying to squeeze an 18" leek into a tiny square seemed undoable. Something would have to go.

The response was go ahead and substitute other fruits for these long ones. Phew! What a relief.

Commission: Day 3

'

I must say that this daily or almost daily painting is the best way to get over all the fears or hangups that have been in my way over all these years. I feel completely relaxed now. So relaxed that I neglected to shoot these paintings when they were still on the easel. Duh. So I have tried to capture them flat on the drying table, and have encountered the glare off wet paint problem.

These red fruits were HEAVENLY to paint. Glossy and vibrant and intensely red. I went for happy on the tomato and dark and mysterious on the pepper. Fitting.

And for the banana, British Men's Club, with dark woods and lots of cigar smoke. Must make it reflect history.

As for the background colors, there are enough variations that it will be interesting and not matchy-matchy when hung as a group. I am glad I was challenged to do neutrals now, or I may not have gone with the darker backgrounds on some and this could have resulted in a different mood. I am hoping the set will look sophisticated.

The Commission:Day Two

.

What a fruitful day! Thanks to you for all your encouragement about the neutrals. I went with the rust/mossy backgrounds and it seems to be working.

I decided to do a different lemon, as the original one was so simple. Then I dove in and did the artichoke. There is nothing shiny or reflective on this artichoke so I depended on the lighting contrasts to give me that zing. Then the Anaheim chili and the plump white/purple garlic.

Suddenly I was out of veggies or fruit and had to make a grocery run. I couldn't believe that I found the leeks, which I did. Big beauties, which will become Vichyssoise later this week. Frieda Anderson is visiting for 3 nights and 2 days, midweek. I will be cooking and chattering and giggling. O Boy!

The Commission Day One

The assignment was to use a neutral background. Omigod. I am so lost when it comes to neutrals. I thought I had a light blue gray, and what it ended up being was teal. That is the apple's background. So then I switched to the onion, and used the same fabric for it's background as I did in the original Onions painting. Still not very neutral.

The pear came next. It was nearly the same color as the background I had used on the onion, so again I switched it out for a more rusty purple color. I used it again for the warm yellow lemon.

I am second guessing myself which is why commissions are so hard for me. Me thinks the apple is too bright against the teal. I love it, but it is hardly cohesive with the rest. That's why I ordered 25 canvases than the 16 I needed.