A Painting A Day

Ah, the illusive brown egg shell! I tried the color recipe suggested to me by http://yeshuaschildart.wordpress.com/ and that was the correct base color. As I looked at the egg shell more, I used a pinkish mauve tone of that color in the mid range and more yellow in the light range. I think the egg shell has been eluding me because I think it has multiple colors in it. Perhaps that's because of the light from within? But overall I am much happier with the way this color turned out. ;)

It was surprisingly challenging to do this painting. The shape of the plate was particularly difficult and the color of the eggshells still eludes me. I wish some of these daily painters would post their color recipe for brown egg shells! If I get it right, I will post it.

Today is also a milestone in my painting a day journey, today marks the 20th day in a row that I've done a painting. Yay! I'm very proud of myself for sticking to it.

I love Sargent's work, and "A gust of wind" has always been my favorite. I've always thought that this one looked like an unfinished work, but tonight as I tried to paint some kind of semblance of it, I realized there was much more there than I ever imagined. The clouds to the right of her head outline her hat like a shadow. There is a much more detail in the colors of the dress. He makes each brushstroke count. How can he express so much, with such seemingly effortless strokes?

It was very foolish of me to attempt to copy a masterpiece in an hour of painting, but I did it anyway! ;) How else can I learn, unless I study the masters?

Wow! So crazy today - cooking, driving, eating, sharing. It was hard to find the time to fit a painting in. But I am on a roll - I think today is my 18th or 19th day in a row to do a painting (will have to look that up) so I can't break my streak.

I saw the light coming through this bottle and thought it was so lovely. I wondered how on earth I could capture the brightness of it. It took looking at it objectively for a while to realize it was a really really bright orange - or at least that is my best impression. I'm hoping tomorrow to have a little more time to spend on painting.

On a side note, I saw my neice today and gave her the portrait I did of her. Here is a picture of the final portrait framed. :) This was on a 24 x 18 canvas. She seemed really happy with it.

I love the whole concept of this scene - the way the light from the street silhouettes his face, the way his hat and hair obscure his face. I found this photo on someone's blog a long time ago, and always meant to paint it. This one spread off the brush like butta. Love it when that happens!

We are traveling tomorrow, so wanted to get an early start on today's painting - so this is my painting for Wednesday, the 26th.

Since I had some success with my abstract that I sent to I.O. Metro, and since I had to send it to them and won't get it back, I decided to do another abstract similar to the one I sent them. I used brighter colors and my inspiration for this one, like the last one was fire over water.

I find doing an abstract particularly hard to do. I'm so used to structure that it's very hard to get free. I am not really happy with this, but think that I need a lot more practice, and so will do a few abstracts over the next few days and see if I can get more comfortable with them. ;)

I would have liked to have had more time to spend on today's painting. Over the weekend, I had a little more time to work on my daily painting. The water and the tiny canvas were working against me today. I'm just happy I had time to get a painting done today, and I think that this was a good exercise.

So today I decided to surprise my sister-in-law with a painting. We were having her granddaughter's birthday party so I painted the birthday girl.

I do think this was a little ambitious to do in one day. I see about a hundred things I want to change, but I am going to try to keep it a little abstract - and not continue to change it.

My sister-in-law was really happy with it, and we had a lovely birthday party. In fact, this birthday girl wants to learn how to paint, so we got her some paints for her birthday! :)

I wouldn't be a good doggy momma if I didn't do a portrait of my other baby. This is Rex - my Irish Setter. It's not very good at all, and instead of blaming the obvious, I will blame not having enough time today. I had about 40 minutes to paint cause we have company.

I was skimming over blogs this morning, when one moved me enough to actually stop and read. It was the web site of Karen Robinson. idoartkarenrobinson.com She lost her son in a car crash 5 years ago, and lost her husband to cancer around the same time. She turned to art as her therapy. It's a moving story. She found something to help her cope. My own sister-in-law lost a son ten years ago this month, and I can't imagine what she's been through. I don't want to imagine it either.

That all brings me around to the "why" of my painting a day. I think the why for many artists is they are struggling to make a living as an artist and so need to create small works on a daily basis that they can sell reasonably. They try to create a following and get known in the art community. But for me I think unconsciously my art is my therapy. I don't know why I feel this need, but there is something inside me that needs to come out. That's the only way I can describe it.

Okay, so I couldn't bring myself to paint another fruit or vegetable. I had some poinsettias, but they didn't thrill me either. So I took some pictures of my dogs and settled on this one of Rufus. He's a mixed breed dog that we adopted after he and his siblings were abandoned in the park.

I wanted to stay loose on the painting and not do a lot of detail. I think I accomplished that. He's very hard to paint because his face is so dark. I didn't use black at all - instead mixed it with my cheap ultramarine (see previous post). I thought it turned out just okay. He's much much prettier in person!

How about that? Two posts in one day! Ha! The other painting didn't count because I did it several weeks ago. So I had to do a painting today! This one was fun. At one point while painting it I thought it wouldn't turn out well at all. I was having trouble mixing the brown of the kiwi fruit. I still didn't get the color just right, but did have to break out the burnt umber! I've been limiting my palette and mixing everything. I find it really good practice to mix my blacks and greens and browns and purples. I was so rushed, I just slapped everything on the little canvas and didn't spend any time at all on detail. I was thinking the whole time it could be kind of abstract. I think I should just call that laziness. I need better brushes! I will have to break down and buy some. Also I bought a store brand ultramarine and wasn't happy with it at all. I guess you get what you pay for. A huge tube of it was only $4.99! I wasn't getting the same color mixtures, so will have to invest in a good brand of ultramarine. Overall, I'm happy with this. I think my son will enjoy eating the kiwi too! ;)

Several weeks ago my husband told me about a contest at I.O. Metro (very cool furniture store chain). They were looking for local art, and the winners work would be reproduced on canvas and sold in their stores. I don't normally do abstracts, but my husband encouraged me, and so I did this one and entered it in the contest. Today I found out my piece was selected! My art will hang on the walls of the I.O. Metro stores and maybe on the walls of many homes! All I can say is WoW! I am so thankful, and so happy!

Yay! Got a painting done today. The picture is really dark - I couldn't take a good picture of it. I keep meaning to look up how to take better pictures. These are what I believe are mirasol peppers. They are HOT! Put some in gumbo yesterday. I used surprisingly few brush strokes on this and didn't try to do detail at all.  

So color class today! It was freezing in the old church where the class was held. Important things learned today were: On Compliments (what you use to get shadow) The compliment of any primary is the mixing of the other two primaries. That may require a little explanation. If you have red - and you want to get the shadow color and you don't know what the compliment of red is - just mix the other two primaries together (blue and yellow) and there you have it - the compliment of red is green. The compliment of a secondary color is the primary color left out. To explain that further - secondary colors are green, violet and orange. If you want the secondary of say orange, you know that you mixed red and yellow together to get that color, so the primary that is left out is blue. So the compliment of orange is blue. Puttitng it that way - breaking it down into very simplistic terms is extremely beneficial to me. Now I won't have to carry around my color wheel all the time! We didn't paint a painting in class today - instead we practiced mixing colors. So I did this rather quickly when I got home to have something for today. I'm not very impressed with it, but a little orange does warm up a cold day. Ha!

I was worried I might not have time to paint today. So glad I made it! Yesterdays pears came to an untimely demise. The canvas literally snapped in half! I tried to put it back together, but it just wasn't going to happen. So my lovely little painting is going to decorate a landfill somewhere. :( I am using really cheap canvas boards so I guess when I run out of these I might spend a little more than .47 per canvas. Ha! I could use some better brushes too. I guess now that I am getting serious about it, I should invest in good materials. So since my pears from yesterday are gone, I had to revisit the subject. I tried again, and this time I finally got around to putting something other than white under my glass sheet that I use for a palette. The color is an off white. I do think it helped me when mixing to have a different color under the glass. Tomorrow is color class! So excited! One thing that's funny is that every single one of these paintings I've done lately is on the same black countertop... and looking at the paintings not one of them has the same color background! I imagine it would be boring to have the same background on every painting, but I would much rather it be intentional!

I can't seem to take a good photo of my painting today. It's raining outside, so going outside to take the picture is out of the question. Everywhere I put it - or put the light on it - I get a glare. I will have to research how to take better pictures. The pear shapes were a challenge for me today. I never did get them right. On the bright side, I had an epiphany about my painting. In the past, I've used waaaay too much mineral spirits while painting. Doing that washes my paintings out. Today I think I dipped the brush in the thinner maybe two times and just a little dab when I did. It seems like ultramarine is always sticky and needs a little help to move on the brush. My thinner was clean at the end of the session. In the past it's always been muddy because I was cleaning my brush during painting. Now instead of doing that I am trying to use the light and the dark brush - and wipe them with a paper towel between colors. It's amazing how much it can help to change one seemingly unimportant thing while painting. I am proud of myself. It's now been 9 days straight of painting each day! But I'm running out of room! All these wet paintings are taking up a lot of space in the garage!

Todays topic was radishes! A lovely red cluster of them. The leaves are very abstract in this - honestly it's because I'm not sure how to paint them. Ha!

Not a lot of time today to work on this, but overall am happy with the colors. I think I was a little afraid to really put the highlight on the onion though, so I held back! Ha!

We had our first frost this morning. These little guys were still clinging to life, so I brought them inside where it's warm and painted them. I'm not happy with the flowers themselves - I didn't spend enough time on them to do them justice. So they are the impression of flowers! Ha! I thought the little vase turned out okay. I'm working on very small canvas boards (6x8) so didn't really have enough room to put in the lovely reflection of the glass on the countertop. There's just a hint of it. I'm wondering if I really am getting better? I wonder am I just rushing through or am I actually learning something each time I paint. I imagine time will tell, and it only makes sense that the more you do something, the better you will get at it. Next week, I start a color class with Sue Foell. Judging color values in the midtones and mixing them seems to be my biggest challenge and I'm hoping I will come away from this class with more of an ability to mix the right color and judge the color values more accurately.  

So here's todays effort. It's very abstract I think. Honestly I just didn't want to fuss too much over the details. The challenge here was not just the garlic, but also the double shadows. There was reflected light off the back of them and light from the side. In the class I've been taking we use two brushes. One for the lights (anything that will have white in it) and one for the darks. That's really important. I just can't get those darkest darks if there is any white in the brush. I've noticed lately that my paintings are very dark, and so was trying to lighten this one up a bit. So I didn't really stay true to the background which was black. I think it might be time to invest in some colored tablecloths! Overall I'm happy with todays painting. I am trying to keep it loose and I think I achieved that today. Now tomorrow... that's another story!

It was cold and rainy today, so it was wonderful to have some sunshine in art class! I have a little more to do to finish this, and will probably follow up on it later today. :) I am looking forward to the day when I actually want to sign my paintings. I think with today's effort I'm feeling closer. Today was the last of our 6 classes, but I start back up again next week with a special class on color. I'm so looking forward to that. Color has always intimidated me, but I'm a big believer in facing your fears. What's the worst that could happen? Ha!

Todays painting was a study in orange. A bright orange bell pepper and two tangerines (who honestly had seen better days).

It was interesting to read about the color online today:

I'm trying to get in the habit of painting a little each day. I went back to Carole Marine's web site and thought it's taken her over 500 paintings to get to where she is today. I have my work cut out for me! But I do believe that if I do a little each day, I will improve. These tomatoes are really not good, but I want to post even my bad efforts so I can see where I am a year from now. :)

I just had to pick up the paintbrush. I meant to do it earlier, but did this late tonight. It was hard to judge the values with it being so dark. The apple was really easy, but the mug was a different story. I was painting a white cup on a black countertop. There didn't seem to be enough contrast in the color, but I was trying to paint what I saw, and that coffee mug didn't seem to have very much white on it at all. Ha! I have read that white in shadow is darker than black in light.

Yesterday I worked more on a painting that I have been working on "on and off for a while now. It's far from finished, but want to take a snapshot in time of the work in progress. It has a long way to go still! Will post again when I get further along.

I never realized how hard it is to paint eggs! I will have to revisit them because these are pretty sorry excuses for eggs. The one on the right "might" pass for an egg, but the other one has absolutely no definition.

I was proud of the reflection of the eggs in the black kettle. At least I can find one redeeming quality in the effort! Ha!

I wasn't really happy with my grapes today, but I didn't spend a lot of time on them. I thought the glass turned out fairly well.

I really like the method we use in class, which is start by outlining all the shapes - using a mixture of ultramarine blue and transparent oxide red. Then we make our shadows by taking the color of the object, it's compliment and a darker version of the color and we block in the shadows on the objects.

We use two brushes - a light brush and a dark one. After we have the shadows in, we block in the lights by mixing the color, adding white and if it is too bright using a tiny bit of the compliment to it.

Then we come back with our dark brush and do the darkest darks. Then transitions, then highlights.

;)