Luscious Fruit

Luscious Fruit         9 x 12       Oil        $145.00 

This little canvas was a last minute throw-together when I realized I forgot to bring my work-in-progress canvases to my Tuesday night class. I raced over to our neighborhood Publix Supermarket and grabbed what looked inviting and this little still life is the result. I didn't work on it very long, perhaps 2 or 3 sessions, and wanted it to be kind of loose. 

Awe Disaster

I spent all day last Wednesday repainting the sky....again! For cripes sake. I learned how to take out brush marks, thanks to the internet by "flogging" my painting with a soft dry brush and finally after days of drying time, this morning I decided I could live with the result. I had also repainted the flowers and felt that I only needed one more session to pull the painting together and call it finished. Today my friend came to help me clean my house and she was mopping the floor behind my easel and the painting fell, and hit something, we don't know what, because I was in my office on the phone and didn't see the resulting disaster. I am still feeling sick to my stomach about this. Obviously it ended the major cleanup of my house and I got on the phone immediately to a lady I met a few months ago who is a fine art restorer. I will take the painting to her this afternoon to assess the damage. Hopefully it can be repaired. If not I will have to repaint the painting...2 years gone in one instant. I am really devastated right now, and feel really awful, and my friend is beside herself as well. So there is more to come on this painting, which has been a total hassle from the start. It just can't end like this!!

This is the tear.

Stars and Stripes Finished

Stars and Stripes      Oil on Canvas     18 x 24      $400

This painting was done for our July/August show at Carrollwood Cultural Center, which is called "Celebrate America" with a widespread assortment of themes and images possible. This is my entry. 

WIP (work in progress)

Stars and Stripes     Oil on Canvas       18 x 24

Our July/August show at Carrollwood Cultural Center is called "Celebrate America" and I really wanted to get something to show for myself. As usual I tried to make something way more complicated than what you see here, and my ideas had to be scrapped due to time limits and energy levels. I was going to make my own fabric drapery using images I've taken across America, cropped into large star shapes, and applied to fabric using the transfer and iron method. It could have been interesting, but when I thought about all that difficult perspective and folds and weird images, I realized I might have it done by Christmas! So...the edited version is what you see here and I need to have it finished and dry enough to hang by the 30th of this month. I'm about to spend the rest of today working on it, also another day tomorrow, and hopefully Sunday as well, and then I think it will be close to finished. The canvas is one of those deep gallery wraps so I don't have to worry about a frame for it.

**WTF**????

When I overpainted the last mess with pure cobalt blue (Winsor and Newton) the wet paint looked fabulous and as it dried this is what I got. It is still slightly wet in a few spots, and so I'm back to wonderment with what is happening here. It is better than the last time, so I guess the next step is to cover it again with pure cobalt out of the tube and keep trying until it dries a solid color without the mottling. I can only say that in my 55 years of painting I've never experienced anything like this before and I am so frustrated. I'll let it dry another few days and see what happens next.

Two New Nude Monotypes

 Monotype Nude #1     14 x 20    POR

Monotype Nude #2   14 x 20      POR

I had a nice day with my friend Marcia who wanted to work on some more monotypes with me. She has done this before, coming out from Tampa to work in my studio, since I am now unwilling to schlep all my gear into Carrollwood Cultural Center for a one day Monotype Workshop which was a killer the last few times I've done it. So it is my studio or nothing from now on. When Marcia comes it gives me a day to get some of my own monotypes created. These are two nude studies I did that day using models I get from www.posespace.com, a nifty way to get wonderful models for not much money, who don't move and are never cranky or hung over, at least that I know about! At least I know they are going to show up...a common problem with live models, many of whom are not really very professional.

Monotypes are basically a print of a painting, created on a nonabsorbent surface (I use Plexiglas or acrylic panels) with inks, or almost any kind of paint. I am not overly enthused by my efforts to make watercolor monotypes, but they are possible. Acrylics are also possible, but I don't like to use them. Normally my best monotypes are made with oil paint on wet etching paper, Rives BFK papers, although I think these two were printed on Stonehenge printmaking papers, wet. I don't have a press so they were printed with my handheld press and a spoon.

Before I moved to Florida I did many monotypes. Back then I did some very exciting experiments in monotype and was constantly inspired by the work of colleagues in the Monotype Guild of New England. How I miss those days! I love doing monotypes because it keeps me spontaneous and loose. You can't get fussy with a monotype or the paint will dry and you get spots of white where nothing prints. Paint can be dry in a matter of hours, especially in our air-conditioned work spaces in Florida.

I suspect this, along with another monotype nude I made awhile ago, (here) is the beginning of a series of nudes using various models in PoseSpace.

I am definitely freaked out!!!

What is going on here? I am so puzzled...not puzzled isn't the right word at all...freaked, confused, confounded and disheartened. So...what to do next? I guess I'll just ladle on more paint and see what happens. I thought this miserable painting was done, or nearly done. Unfortunately it isn't. Oh my...this is a bad dream.

Miss Puss as Bookends

Miss Puss as Bookends        12 x 24
Oil on Canvas           $425

In between fretting about Awe I worked on this little fantasy piece. It was much harder than it looks!!

Awe - A better Photo as the Sky Dries

As the Sky Dries...sounds like the title of a Country and Western Song! Anyway, I checked the progress of the drying of the paint this morning and it looks pretty good. If I need to touch up the very top of the painting where that stripe was I can easily do it as it was Cobalt Blue out of the tube. I think I may have the problem solved, but it is still wet in places and dry in others, so I won't know for another few days.

Another Sky Redo (6-3-14)

The paint is still wet from my repainting the sky yesterday afternoon. I am hopeful that those streaks will go away once the paint is dry. I took out the very dark section of the sky at the top and put in cobalt instead of ultramarine dark. I did this to try to hide a very mysterious darkish stripe about 2 inches wide at the top. It was bothering me so much I couldn't finish the rest of the painting until it was resolved. I really like what I did with this, but I'm trying to get used to the difference. It isn't as dramatic as the dark sky, but I think I may have painted out that stripe, but in earlier efforts it popped up when the paint dried. I have my fingers crossed for this redo. We shall see what it looks like when the paint has dried. I can always go back and put that dark ultramarine sky at the top. I think the flowers look good against that more uniform blue. I cut the number of colors in the sky from 9 to 5.

Shoe Atop Star Box

Shoe Atop Star Box   Watercolor on Canvas    12 x 12   $150

I really love to work on this new canvas from TARA. Watercolors are hard enough on paper and I find I can control them better when I can wipe out sections that are going badly. The canvas doesn't stain like paper does, or fall apart from repeated scrubbings. I don't do many watercolors any more and this is from my "Sampling the Media Class" where I had time to do a demo for my students that I finished at home in my studio. It is a strange collection of objects...just stuff that was in the prop box. TARA has stopped making the 8x10 size and that is a shame. I bought a pad of watercolor canvas sheets, so I will see how they work, but I'm not likely to put them on stretchers myself, so it is back to mattes and glass with that. 

Easter Sunday...Awe is Resurrected! Oh Happy Day!!!

Notice that shiny area at the top of the canvas.
I tried to minimize the green and played down the yellow

I took this with my phone and it is fuzzy. It could be OK
this way but that yellow is still bothersome 

Easter Sunday 4-20-14. Vastly improved

My palette shows the assortment of colors and replicates those tones I used in the sky.

Over this week I made many changes to Awe. I had a difficult problem to solve with either my paint or the diamond-studded canvas that I bought 6 yards of for $250 or both! I feel like I have wrestled with the paint not behaving like it should, or perhaps I am just not used to expensive canvas. I don't know. But the problem arose when I noticed that there were areas of the sky that were shiny and others dull. I admit that I had used Oleogel Medium to make that dark blue paint brush on like it should. I get nervous when I use something like a medium because of future problems of cracking, and I don't like shiny paint surfaces, preferring a smooth matte finish to my canvas. This canvas was both taking in the paint too much and in areas it seemed to sit on the surface. After I repainted the sky, I guess on Monday, I thought it was OK but on Tuesday morning I noticed that there were brush marks and that shiny stripe at the top of the painting, that you might see in the photo of the previous post. Anyway, after much hand wringing, I decided to dive into again, and in the next few days I actually took up some sandpaper and sanded the whole sky. I have never heard of anyone doing that, but I did it, and took off the top shiny layer of paint. Then I put on more paint, by mistake I added some linseed oil to that dark blue, which was, again, not the right thing to do. I had more shiny spots and that stripe across the top was dreadful. So I got out the sandpaper again and really laid on it, and took off most of the shiny areas. This time I repainted the sky without medium getting more paint on it, and trying to blend in my brush marks. It seemed to work well, but it was still not quite right. Sunday...I started in again on it, and repainted the sky again....yikes. I was so exhausted by Sunday night I could barely function. But the painting is looking good, and there are no shiny spots this morning. I also began to work on the final go through working on the details, the flowers and the small vase was where I did most of the work yesterday. I am happy with my progress now, and feel that I am finally on the downslope with Awe! Yay!!!

You may not see the subtle changes I made, but I have reduced the green stripe significantly and downplayed the yellow above the trees. I like the green and yellow stripes, but we joke around among ourselves "don't get wed to a part of your painting" because it is often the one thing that should be removed! I finally decided that the yellow had to be minimized and it is so much better, because that stripe cut the painting in half, and was way to bright. I should have known...but I admit that I was wedded to it.

So having made these changes I am now ready to work on those details that from a distance you can't really see, but close up need attention. How much longer? Who knows. At the end of July it will be two years on my easel. I am definitely sick of it!

"Awe" 3 months later

I am having such a problem with the sky! I repainted it today, making the green stripe and yellow area by the top of the trees less noticeable. I like what I did, but I am having a big problem with the way the paint is showing brush marks. Before, when it dried I had areas that were shiny and parts that were sunk in and dead looking. I think now the only hope for it will be retouch varnish when the painting is finished. Hopefully that will take care of those shiny/dull spots.

I do have more work to do in places on the painting, and a bit more touching up in the flowers, and a few places I missed in the sky. I hope I can get it finished by Sunday afternoon. I think I am on a roll now.

Splat!

Splat!     Oil on Linen    10 x 10      $225

Did you know that certain chickens lay green eggs? I didn't until my friend Diane gave me one of her brother's chickens eggs. I was so intrigued I decided to set it up for a small Egg Tempera. I have a glass perfume bottle that has ruffles and ridges and I thought this egg would look great mounted atop this filigreed bottle. Of course just as I was reaching for the camera the whole thing was knocked over and went splat on the floor under the table. Between my cursing and trying to get the cat away, and then getting enough light to take a picture, the egg just slowly started to spread. I never did get a great photo of it, but enough to paint this little painting, which was great fun to do.

Apples in a Red Glass Bowl

Apples in a Red Glass Bowl          14 x 18        Oil          $450

Some of you will recognize that green striped cloth that you might have struggled to paint in one of my classes. I have painted it many times in the past and this time I think I may have gotten it about right. I love painting striped cloth but it is a brute to do, and just sorting out the confusion is something I like about doing art.