Artichokes, Marketing and Mediums

So I do a lot of fruit & veggie paintings - not because I'm obsessed with them, although it looks like that, but because they are the perfect subject for me to learn all the things I need to learn about painting. There is an endless supply - I just stop at the grocery store on my way to the studio and look for interesting shapes and colors. I am that weird lady in the produce section picking through pears and apples and nectarines, holding them up, staring at them, turning them over, comparing them to each other. Taking fruit waaaay too seriously.

During Lowell Open Studios a woman asked me if I had any paintings of artichokes because she loves artichokes. While I failed miserably as an art marketing person by actually telling her she didn't have to leave her email address - just check my blog - it did get me really into the idea of painting an artichoke. Dropping the ball on the art marketing is sad considering I've been doing marketing for a living for years - I guess when it is my product that I'm marketing I find it harder.

Anyway - here's my first artichoke. It's another small one - 6x6. I had a hard time with the photo, the focus is off. I'll probably do a couple more because I enjoyed this and I worked through a lot of painting challenges. My favorite parts of the painting are the leaves on the table.

Oh, I also tried a new medium on this painting. Medium - for those non-painters out there - is not some new age psychic coming in and checking the painting chakras, it is the stuff you mix with the paint on the palette to get it to flow better, dry faster or slower, add gloss and probably other stuff I'm forgetting or I don't know about. I have used Galkyd (my first oil paintings) and linseed oil (the past 3-4 months) and I liked both of them. Then someone told me about Liquin and that's what I used on this painting. I'm not sure I'm digging it actually - I think I really like linseed oil the best, but I'm going to use Liquin a few more times before I decide. The advantage of Liquin is that it allows the oil paint to dry faster, which is great because you can come back the next day and it's almost dry - or at least dry enough to paint over. Galkyd supposedly does the same thing, so I need to go back to that again now that I have more of a clue what I'm doing.