A Painting A Day

Changed the angle and the background on the roses
Also painted this one during the day so had strong side light coming through the window
This is an 11 x 14

I have taken quite the hiatus from painting. But I guess if you love something you will always come back to it.
I started easing back into it by starting an online course with Dennis Perrin on painting the flower portrait. The past couple of days I've painted some rather past their prime pink roses in a blue mason jar.
This is day one - "Having a Ball" will post day two next.

Plein Air Memphis had an outing this morning at the Botanic Gardens and I chose this little spot along the creek with the pretty cherry trees in bloom. But my painting was really awful! I wiped it off when I got home and did a quick do over. The composition is much the same but I tried to simplify and tried to capture the long shadows from the trees. Not really happy with the second attempt either, but it is better than the first. Landscapes continue to be so very challenging for me. It's difficult to process so much information and so many colors.

 Today I ran out late in the day for an hour or two to paint. I looked online and found a nice park nearby. It had an amazing fountain, but it was the light of the green grass in the distance and the interesting colors in the water that drew me to this spot. My technique was very messy and I had to leave very fast when a sudden thunderstorm sprung up but overall I was happy with this effort.

 I felt very in tune with my painting. My palette was so simple. I used alizarin red, cad yellow, ultramarine blue, white, permanent green light and burnt umber. I had also bought myself a round brush and experimented with the thin lines of the tree branches.

So much has been going on that I'm having to put painting on the back burner for now. But I did get to go to a live model session last Friday - this was the result. I absolutely loved the lighting and the working from her profile - it made it seem very dramatic to me.

I am thinking I won't have much time to paint until the Christmas Holidays, so I'm looking forward to that!

I hung these two abstracts at Market Central today. They are 24"x24" canvases gallery wrapped and then coated with clear resin.

 They were really fun to do, and finishing them with clear resin really made a difference. I like it that they could be hung any number of ways - both pointed up, pointed down, white together or red together. They were an experiment and I used a lot of paint making them. I really like the way they turned out!

 


So I'm excited to now be at Market Central, and will devote some time to putting together more art for this wall!!!

I I'm having a bit of a painting problem lately where I can't seem to find a subject that holds my interest. So I started looking on you tube and found a ton of interesting faces. This one in particular stood out to me. Love her full purple lips!

I have been traveling a great deal this month, and so I miss painting! Tonight I had to paint something - anything! So I found a picture online of Amy Winehouse. I can tell I'm rusty. There are a few things that may be wrong here:

1. I used bright colors
2. She looks too much like Elvira
3. I made her prettier (subconsciously I think)

I'm not saying I don't like it - I like the way she looks right through you. I also think it's good to change things up a bit and experiment, so I will look at it a few days and then decide if I really like it or not. I will also cut myself a little slack because I haven't been able to paint for about 2 1/2 weeks! ;)

If you're coming from Facebook - made ya look!! Haha!! The truth is I planned it this way so there is a suggestion of nudity. It really shouldn't be offensive to anyone.

I've been traveling and working a lot so I haven't had time to paint, and I miss it so very much! This morning I was able to go to the Friday paint group and get this done. So happy to be painting. This was the first time I've painted a male nude - I was pretty happy with what I was able to get done in 3 hours. I will be traveling a lot more over the next three weeks so I'm not sure if I will find time to paint, but I hope so!  

Painting from life at Nysha Studio in Bartlett this morning.

We had a great model! Beautiful girl. And it was a great group of artists - Sue Foell, Holly Wolfe, Terry Kenney, Jenny Miller, Tim Minshew, and Nysha.

 I really enjoyed this pose. I think the back is so beautiful. The skin tones were so varied with her tan lines and the lighting - making for an interesting study! So that's why I'm calling it "Bikini Line!" Haha It's a 12"x16" Oil on Board.

One of the hardest things for me (besides choosing a subject to paint) is to know when it's finished. I started to correct my mistakes - but after a few little brushstrokes decided that I like it just the way it is.

If I were to do more I feel like I would overwork it - and perhaps ruin it. So here's my final portrait of Mark Landis.

By the way, they posted the portrait on the Art & Craft Facebook page. You can see it here:
https://www.facebook.com/artandcraftfilm?fref=nf

I watched the best documentary I've seen in a while the other night.

It's called "Art & Craft" and it explores the forgeries of Laurel, Mississippi native Mark Landis.

Landis' crime was (in my opinion) fairly harmless because he didn't profit from any of his forgeries - he was being a philanthropist.

The thing is... the guy is really a great artist.

Anyway, I did this really - really quickly tonight. Just basically throwing the paint on the canvas. I plan to refine it more - I see about a hundred things I need to change. But I wanted to post a before, so I can gauge the "after"!

By the way, I'm planning to send this to him.

I feel like I've been on a painting marathon! Haha! The deadline to enter the MGAL National Show is today and of course I leave everything to the very last minute!

I started this yesterday. It's pretty large - on a 24x36 canvas and although I would have liked more time to work on it, I'm pretty happy with it. Cross your fingers that it gets in the show!

I had such a good time this morning painting with Plein Air Memphis. We got together at the Wolf River and spend about 2 and half hours painting. Afterwards we met up and got a group photo. Such great artists - they are an inspiration to me!

So this is my effort from today. For the most part I was happy with the values. So much green! So many variations of green! I used a limited palette simply because I was too lazy (or maybe too hot) to get some more. So I was proud of myself for achieving these colors with just ultramarine, viridian, cad yellow light, cad red light, black, and white.

This is my third time going on a paint out, and I can tell I'm getting a bit better. Trees are so incredibly hard to paint!

 Always love painting from life group on Wednesday nights! This was our model. She is getting married in two weeks so I don't know how she fit this in!

 I had a difficult time painting her but I was really proud of the pillow! Haha!

Yesterday I celebrated my ten year anniversary with this guy. So in celebration, I did a quick painting from this picture on our honeymoon.

I don't think I've attempted many self portraits, so it was a bit difficult to paint myself!

I'm not sure if you can tell but I did a little more on my Carnival of Venice piece. My husband said it looked like a Geisha girl in Venice - my son said the mask was not evident. Everyone's an art critic around here!

So I worked on it a little more. I'm not sure that it's any better and I may work on it more.

Last night went to live painting group but I was really not having a good night and that was a real shame because we had a beautiful model. I had been up since 5:30 and I think I was just tired.

Here's my unfinished piece that I am very unhappy with!
I'm breaking a new rule here. I was listening to a podcast on savvypainter.com with Carole Marine and she talked about how important it is not to post your bad paintings. I'm not sure if that really applies to me yet because I'm not selling my work - still very much in the learning stages, but it sure sounded like a good idea.

I am such a weirdo! Haha! I wanted to do a quick painting tonight and was just so fascinated with the Carnival of Venice pictures I found online that I did this.

 It's surprisingly hard to do a blue sky, and blue water, and blue boats. They were all different shades of blue. The sky graduated from an ultramarine to a cerulean to an almost yellowish light blue. As you can see ,I didn't spend a lot of time on them.

 But the thing that just absolutely fascinated me was the figure in that mask! I don't know if you can actually tell it's supposed to be a mask.... but that was what I was shooting for!