It Takes Two, 6x8 Original Acrylic Painting by Kelley MacDonald

The Donut Wars have begun! My blogger friend Susan Roden and I are engaged in dough warfare - I promise it's a fun 'fight' - and are painting our hearts out in donuts! This morning I trekked over to Allie's Donuts (the box, I swear, says Allie's Donuts... Rhode Island... as if everyone just KNOWS where it is), and yeah, we got lost .... twice. Finally enough of the "Don't you have your iPhone?" and "I thought you KNEW where this place was..." and we remembered - in our new car we have a built in GPS! D'OH! Rhode Island is a tiny state, but we had to drive over 2 islands to get to Allies, and pay EIGHT DOLLARS in bridge tolls! Yeah. For donuts.

I struggled a bit with the acrylic paint for no good reason. I am used to the creaminess of the oil paint, although I did the painting BELOW in acrylic, in a trip we've made an annual pilgrimage to P'town last Friday. No problems with the paint that day. With the perspective, with the flag, with the fleeting light, but the paint was fine! I hope you all had a good weekend, too!

Cumpcake, 6x6 Oil

SOLD

Well, it looked a bit better BEFORE I dropped it and smashed it against the easel and had to repair it! When I was a little girl my best friend was this adorable little girl whose first language was Portuguese. She only spoke English at school, and for some reason she stuck 'm's in a lot of words, one I remember is 'cupcake'. She called them 'cumpcakes'. ;) Hey, she was little!

Anyway today was my first 'real' full day at the studio with Paco. All I can say is I STARTED putting paint on the panel at 4 p.m. There is a video and short take on Paco's Blog.

Big Fat Jelly Donut, 6x8 Oil

Bad glare, sorry about that - I couldn't find a way that this background wouldn't almost 'glitter' with reflected light. I used only transparent colors to make it and I think that makes a big difference. Next time I'll try to remember to throw in an opaque color to stop the light dead. I think it was almost a year ago that I started my first jelly donut series - when I first discovered Emily Eveleth and was inspired by her. I think this donut is much better than the earlier attempts, whether that is because I've done about 200 paintings since then or because I've just learned to see a little better... I don't know.

Butler's Creme's, Oil 6x6

The end (for now) of donuts.  I'm thinking of doing larger pieces, but not (NOT) these Cream Donuts from Butler's.  #1 reason is that they're very difficult, being sliced almost all the way through like hamburger rolls then filled -I don't like the hard line on the soft pastry, and #2 reason is they are VERY difficult to resist.  Fabulous pastries.  Real sweetened cream and pastry that is just so fresh.  They fill them as you order them on weekdays. The long rectangular one on top, with the jelly, is called a Jolly Roger or something!   I think these were the least successful of the donut grouping because of the sculpted cream.  Either that or I should do 3 paintings of them - which would be deadly for my cholesterol levels ;).   I've posted a couple of new pieces on my studio blog - trying to get ready for the  Spring shows.