Flower Stand

This idea came from the Daily Paintworks site. They post painting challenges and I liked this one so I gave it a try - this challenge came from Carol Marine, one of my favorite artists.

Lots of fun to paint!

Flower Stand
12x12 Acrylic on Canvas

Blue Table

Finally a painting. It's been a while. I was sick for a bit with bronchitis and was also struggling with my painting. I went on vacation last week and feel rejuvenated.

I was in Maine and didn't do any painting but took hundreds of photos (actually over a thousand but I deleted half after reviewing them all). My photography has really improved over the past year and I think it has to do with painting - both because I take thousands of photos now and because painting has made me more attuned to composition.

This is a painting inspired by the back patio at the cottage I stayed in. It was a sweet little cottage.

Blue Table
8x8 Oil on Canvas

Teeny Tiny Paintings

This weekend was open studios at WAS. I don't open to sell anymore - or at least for the next 6 months or so. My door is open periodically throughout the day just so I don't seem completely anti-social but I do find the whole open studios thing incredibly distracting. It is busy and loud and its hard for me to focus so this weekend, instead of working on the big flower painting,  I painted 2 small paintings. And I mean really small - 2.5 x 3 inches. I took a picture with a pen as reference so you could see how small they really are.

 It was a lot of fun. I felt no pressure at all, I could do it with people milling around and talking and it was so satifying! I did one of the tulip vase and another of some peaches. The peach painting is a small version of one I did last fall.

That was Saturday, then today I did a couple of small paintings from my imagination so I could relax and enjoy the paint. So much fun!!

All and all it was great painting weekend. Which is bizarre to me, because I was not in a very good mood - the day job unfortunately was getting in the way.  But at the end of the weekend I remembered why I took the job in the first place and things were put back in perspective. Strange how the cosmos take care of you, isn't it?

Painting in Progress - Will It Survive the Wrath of the Frustrated Painter?

On my easel now. I started it a couple of Sundays ago and then put it down. The tulips are dead now of course. When you can only paint on weekends and maybe an occasional midweek-after-work-session, painting from "life" or at least "alive" is tough. I took a photo though - can't believe I remembered to do that - so I am now finishing it from the photo. I worked on it on Sunday afternoon and so far so good but who knows if it will survive to any kind of finished state.

Weekend only painting is a challenge. It takes a while to get warmed up to painting and I usually hit my stride Sunday afternoon just in time to wrap up for the weekend. Of course, having the attention span of a small child does tend to get in the way. My typical painting weekend day goes like this (aka, a day in the life of the ADD artist):

• Midnight Friday night:  "I'm going to get up really early  tomorrow and get to the studio by 8:30".
• 8:00 AM, roll out of bed, "Ok, grab something to eat and get to the studio"
• 9:00 AM: Still on couch after reading the last of nine "Real Simple" magazine articles, reach for the laptop to check Facebook "for a minute".
• 10:30 AM: After my 104th game of Bedazzled, my 15 year old son emerges from his dark, odoriferous cave and stumbles into the bathroom. I look at the clock and say "crap, I need to take a shower".
• 11:15 AM: throw a load in the washer, and, while folding the wrinkled mess of a load that has been in the dryer since last Sunday,  look at the clock and say "crap, I need to take a shower".
• 11:45 AM: back on my laptop. My son stumbles scowling through the living room on his way out of the shower, I look at the clock and say "crap, what the hell am I doing, I need to take a shower"
• 1:00 PM: in the car finally, on my way to the studio and drive by the junk store that holds all the interesting junky future still life items so I "just stop in for a minute"
• 1:45 PM: back in the car on my way to the studio after wandering aimlessly for 45 minutes in a store filled with ugly, useless junk and purchasing one plate for $3.
• 1:55 PM: SUCCESS - actually pull into the studio parking lot.
• 2:40 PM: only made it to the 3rd floor (I'm on the 5th) and in the third studio I've stopped into "for a minute" on my way to my studio.
• 3:00 PM: SUCCESS #2 (have to grab these little successes) finally in my studio." *deep sigh* I LOVE this little studio".
• 3:02 PM: Looking at the painting I left last Sunday and either thinking "Hmmm, this isn't so bad after all" or "OMG, what a piece of @#$@"
• 4:05 PM: after deciding that the 5' high bookshelf really should be on the other side of the room, moving it without actually taking anything off of it because I know I can move it without anything falling off, and picking up the half-dead Christmas cactus and broken harlequin teacup that I've had since 1977 (teacup not plant) that fell of the bookcase while moving it, I begin putting paint on my palette.
• 5:00 PM: Painting painting painting, painting, painting
• 9:15 PM: "OMG - how did it get to be 9:15 already? I just got here. Damn, I just don't have enough time to paint". Clean my brushes, hang up my apron, close the door, descend the five flights, get in the car, go home, eat, have a glass of wine, watch DVR'd "One Life to Live".
• Midnight Saturday night: "I'm going to get up really early tomorrow and get to the studio by 8:30".

Going back into an older painting again

I've been at the studio a lot the past couple of weeks getting ready for Open Studios next weekend. I have paintings I want to show, but it is kind of wierd looking at the earlier ones because I've progressed since then. So I went back into two more paintings this weekend.

This flower painting was originally done as a quick study in my MFA painting class. It was done in a couple of hours and it really was a great exercise. It was the first, and one of the few, large paintings that I've done - I think it is 24x40 or something. I had a lot of fun painting this because it was so big and my teacher kept urging us to be quick.

But there were things about it that really bugged me - especially the background.


So Saturday I just said "f@#$ it" (sorry Mum) and started changing things.I am having a blast - just painting away and using my imagination.



- I have 3 pictures - the original, yesterday's changes, and where it is today. I'm going to keep going. The background is interesting now, but not right. Also want to put the tall flowers back in, but I'm waiting until I settle on the background.



Here's where it is now:

Laying It On Thick

I was back in the studio this weekend after a couple of weeks away. I went on vacation to Maine, which was fantastic, and didn't do any painting or drawing while I was there. Not sure why - I brought everything but I wasn't into it for some reason.

So yesterday I needed to paint something fun and loose to get back into the swing of things. Very different than the way I usually paint, but wanted to experiment with lots of paint and just laying it on thick. It really is a mess, and damn those leaves are uuuglly. I think it was good in that it helped me loosen up - but I did get a bit lost in what I was doing. I had a lot of fun just going crazy with the paint.

Googling Google for Google Bugs

So after spending a couple of hours trying to get Analytics working on this blog I'm ready to post something. You'd think that since Google owns both Analytics and Blogger that they would work seamlessly but you'd be wrong. After much Googling of Google to find Google answers to Google bugs I FINALLY think I got it to work. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out.

Back to the painting. This was my first large canvas and it was in February. Abby (painting teacher) wanted us to try going big so this canvas is probably 2'x4'??? (guessing). We had to do the whole painting in a couple of hours. I had been too nervous to paint on a big canvas before that (there's that stupid fear thing again) and it turned out to be really freeing. You have to use a lot of paint so you get less finicky, and because it was so much bigger I was much looser. Also, since I knew I only had a short amount of time I went fast which also made it looser and more spontaneous.

I was told that the vase was a "breakthrough moment" and I have to agree with her. Because I had to go so fast, I couldn't agonize over the reflection and the transparency and I laid the paint on quickly. Most of all, I didn't have time to go back and over work it. There are issues (of course) the background is a bit muddy and I'm not crazy about all the vertical brush strokes.

Before this painting the biggest I dared go was about 16x24 - now I actually prefer large canvas.

Amaryllis

I started an oil painting class at the MFA (Museum of Fine Arts) in Boston in January 09. It was a great class and I got so much out of it. My teacher, Abby Zonies is a fantastic teacher. I had done one oil painting years ago, before my son was born, in one of my attempts to get back to art but I really didn't know what I was doing.

I can't say enough good things about Abby's teaching - she is positive, but gives solid critique and teaches the basics really well. She has a good sense of how much each student can really take in, and tailors her individual comments to the student's level.

This is the first painting I did in my studio after my first class. I really thought it was terrible the day I did it, but when I looked at it again a few weeks later I saw things that I liked.

I've discovered that I do this with almost every painting. After about 3 hours I start getting frustrated and think that what I'm doing is a piece of crap. Sometimes it is, but most of the time if I just walk away and come back the next day I can see it more realistically. There have been times when I don't do that, and then I either over work it, or get so aggravated that I destroy it with big sweeping paint strokes.

The background on this painting is a problem - but I like the vase and some parts of the flower.

Snapdragons

I did this in July or August of 08. There were things about it that I liked - the flowers (snapdragons) are loose and vibrant. The shape of the pitcher is nice. The fabric is stiff and hard looking. But flowers are a lot of fun to paint, because I don't get all wrapped in the perfection, I just go with the color, light and shape. I wish I could do that with everything - but hopefully time will get me there. I should probably do more flowers because it loosens me up. I can be a prissy little painter :)