Oh, Dahlia! 6x6 Oil

This painting is a 2nd time around painting today.  I started this morning with a 4x6 vertical format, and the design was awkward and .... just generally a wipe-off.  I was frustrated because I'm trying to re-learn eBay, and it really took a while this morning.  Like anything else, after you've done it a few times it's easy, but today, after, I realized, a year and a half - everything looked new and more complicated.  Hopefully starting tomorrow all my paintings will have the "click to bid" button, which will take you right to my eBay auction.  I'm learning so much about the business aspect of my work these days, but I feel very confident about it - you can take me down a pin if it all goes awry!

Lemons In Blue, Oil, 6x6

This is my renewed goal:  to paint & post each weekday.  I know some people post 7 days a week but I think I'll still be able to improve my paintings if I do 5.  These lemons were in a square blue bowl, and while I painted them I was trying to keep in mind my lessons from my Carol Marine Workshop.  So it may look a little 'Carol Marine-y', but as I absorb the lessons, my own style (?) will come through more.  As it is, I can't help but slather on the paint.  And I love dragging the little bits of color with the brush when it isn't completely mixed on the palette. And to all you bloggers who love Carol's work - you should take her workshop - she is completely grounded in terms of solid foundation work, and you WILL benefit from her lessons.  (And can I just say here that I'm completely in love with NM and Santa Fe area in particular?????)

Click To Bid

Workshop Over!

These paintings of peppers were my last painting of the workshop.  
Well, it was a fabulous week.  This was well worth the effort & $$ to get here.  To tell you the truth, I thought this would be sort of an 'easy' workshop, and really just wanted the experience of watching Carol paint!  To my surprise it was a very challenging workshop - no easy ways to do these deceptively simply paintings!  Values, Color, Composition, Edges, Brushstrokes... all had to be 'spot on' to make a successful painting.  Carol was a good teacher... no gliding by with a "that's nice!" - she took every person's painting seriously, for every exercise.  I would highly recommend this workshop for all levels.  She gave invaluable advice on the last day about blogging, marketing, and general business of art.  I found her candid and warm, and incredibly serious about what she does.  You all would have loved it!  The women in the workshop bonded very well, too - please check out my Studio Blog for a little surprise regarding them!

Carol Marine Workshop, Day 3

These paintings are reserved, as I use them for reference

Today we had two lessons. The first was getting the color accurate and not blending the strokes, letting the eye of the viewer blend them - wait... that was the 2nd one. I think the first exercise was getting the darks in and accurate, and in general accurate color. That would be the peppers painting. Than we had the hardest assignment. Every brushstroke had to be singular, one mix of color and one stroke. Then the stroke next to it had to be mixed anew, no blending, just letting the eye blend. You could use a little pool of paint in a different area, but up against each other had to be freshly mixed colors, and although it was a little like giving birth - every thing I ever do in painting seemed to go against this - I wanted to bring my brush back, or lay another stroke right next to it - I did end up loving it. And I choose a subject that I'd always feared - a pinecone! The raspberries I did in the last 1/2 hour, kind of thinking of both lessons. This is a great workshop - I do recommend it to all levels of painters. She's teaching all over the country!

Day 2, Value Studies and Tomatoes

We all did tomatoes today and here they are:

Mine is below on the far right, with the bright green background.

This was one I forgot to put in from yesterday.....  I thought the feather would be the hard part, but it was the Baby Roma tomato!

We did value studies today - nothing new there... EXCEPT Carol was teaching us about the dominant/medium, squinch aspect.  Every painting  (successful painting), is divided into 3 areas, light, medium and dark areas, with one of them being dominant (like half), one medium (like 2/3 of the other half) and a squinch (the last, smallest little bit).  OK, squinch might not be the right word, but it's a work like that.  So we had to do 3 value studies, trying to use one or all of those designs.    OH, and the little numbers on the top left were the number of minutes we had to do them - start to finish - whew!

Carol Marine Workshop, Day #1

Well, here I am in Santa Fe, and after a slight bout of altitude sickness, I'm loving it!  My computer is weird, and I hope this posts OK.  First day painting - it's HARD!  We did a value study, too, as we seemed as a group to have a little trouble there.  This is my set up and my painting.  Blood, sweat & a tear or two went into this one!  Carol's as nice as can be, and it's a joy to watch her at work!   Oh, yeah, on the top of my painting there's a little shadow from the thumbtack used to hold the canvas panel in place.

The Last Of The Harvest, 6x6 Acrylic

The very last eggplant and little Heirloom tomato posed this morning.  This will be my last post before Carol Marine's Worshop in Santa Fe.  Fighting off a cold and trying to organize myself and my house (heh, heh... only kidding about that last thing) before I go, I have to stop painting.  **sigh**  Well, I'm going to try to blog from Santa Fe, and I'll take pictures and show what I've accomplished through the week.  I'm excited because I've never been to Santa Fe, and I've been wearing out the pages of "American Art Collector" magazine trying to pick galleries to visit.  Hmmmm, and Harry the cat was snuggled into my suitcase yesterday, between the t-shirts and the shoes... I think trying to be a stow-away.  The cats definitely know when I'm going away and start acting all crazy as soon as I pull out the suitcase!  Anyway.. it's supposed to be wonderful weather here and in Santa Fe, so I'm definitely counting my blessings!

Lemons 1,2,3, Acrylic 6x6

Up at 5:15 a.m. because my orange kitty needed me to wash his face (I'm not kidding, I have to pretend I'm his mom and let him wet my thumb and run it all over his face and ears before he settles down), I couldn't get back to sleep.  So I came downstairs and saw 3 lemons in a blue bowl and said to myself "Might as well get the Daily Painting started...."  Of course after I painted them in a bowl I decided I'd rather use the fabric I got to take to Carol Marine's workshop next week (YAY!).  So I placed a small folded piece of the purple-y fabric on my stand and repainted it.  I have one HUGE lemon, one small lemon, and one teeny lemon.  Kind of like the 3 bears, only citrus-y. :)

Off Season, Acrylic

The whole board:

Yesterday a bunch of us piled in our cars and met on the Cape to paint the lovely cottages at Chase's Ocean Grove.  We met some really nice people, and a fabulous bulldog named Monty, and got some sun and sand in before the huge dark clouds overtook us.  Instead of trying to do a complete plein air painting I thought I'd be better served by taking a big board (18x24), dividing it up into 4 rectangles and sketching with Prussian Blue and white acrylic paint.  Just really trying to work on composition - choosing a site and making it a welcoming visit for the viewer.  Some worked better than others...

Sweet Red Pepper, 4x6 Acrylic

This pepper is from our garden - Tim and I thought it was a Bell Pepper, but... no!  It's sweet and beautiful, too.  We've been having a nice summer harvesting all kinds of tomatoes, eggplants (which I'll try to paint this week), and some sort of globular cucumbers.  I tried actually not to be conscious of what I 'should' and 'shouldn't' do as I painted this... consequently it went very fast!  I think sometimes I 'think' paintings to death.  But after a while you can kind of let it go and paint on autopilot.  Let me know what you think...

WIP

Sakonnet Point

Below is a view through the summer homes at Humarock Beach, Marshfield, MA

And below is a tidal area on the bay side of Dennis, MA on the Cape as a storm moves in:


Computer acting up after the latest 'upgrade', sorry if I posted & sent out a blank!  These are 3 of the plein air pieces I've been working on this week - little paintings have not been happening and I apologise.  Will get back in the swing of things this week. 

WIP, Hull View 18x24 Acrylic

Orange Rose, 4x6 Oil

This rose is stuck way up towards the sky, about a foot above the rest of the bush.  I loved the contrast between the sunlit petals and the sky.  I think... practice makes (almost) perfect, I am more confident about roses now.  2 months ago they made me shudder....