Glow At Bristol Harbor, 12x12 Inch Acrylic Plein Air Painting

ONE more from the Paint Bristol weekend!  This was so fun to paint and I had a blast with the many layers of blues and greens in the very 'active' water!  The end of the day brings a pinkish glow over Popasquash....  how lucky am I to get to paint in beautiful locations, both near and far?  Again I will honor the $325 price from the weekend for a week.  Email me if interested at kcareymac@hotmail.com

I start my class next week at the Providence Art Club.  We're calling the class 'Small Format Painting' for 2 reasons... so many artists think they can't paint 'small'... and after we work together, they find that they can work as small as 4x4 inches - and STILL come out with a compelling paintings.  Painting small lets you finish - soup-to-nuts, solving all the problems a painting requires, and the more you do it the easier it gets.  Also we dropped the 'Daily Painting' from the title of the class because so many people had no idea that Daily means... well, daily, or even almost daily.  :)

I look forward to teaching again, and having my own class at my studio on Saturdays.  That will start in a couple of weeks, always a hoot.  Always great people.  ALWAYS a lesson learned.

Mine, 6x6 Inch Oil Painting by Kelley MacDonald

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There are few things as fun to paint as whiskey and ice.  There.  I've said it!  Glass, ok, that too.  Now... I want to reassure everyone that I have NOT quit my blog.  I simply have had an avalanche of things to do for my painting career.  I'm teaching 2 classes... getting things in my gallery, the Art Stable Gallery in Westport, MA, entering and picking up paintings from shows and Festivals... yeow... not to mention family things and pet things and house things and.... and...  well... recently I DID take another day off (I think one a month is allowed, no?) and had my friend Mary Sheehan Winn (check out her blog!) over to my new studio in Warren!  Below you can see how enchanted she was with this big cow on our walk from the parking space to the delectable lunch at the Providence Art Club. (the meter maid saw us park her car, and we timed it perfectly for the 1-hour zone - 57 minutes!)

I've missed this girl!  She's back from a warmer clime, and came all the way to Warren to visit me.  We later had pizza on my porch, with a poor excuse for a sunset, but she was a good sport anyway.  

Also....

I'm going to be doing a "Painting Safari", where we have a plein air class once a week in the East Bay RI once a week, with a demo, and a critique (if wanted)... details coming soon.  I will also travel for a one-day plein air lesson - within an hour's drive of Providence, just email me.  It's almost summer, we might as well!!!!

Plein Air Demo, 5x7 Inches

Last week we had our first Painting Safari - a fun, plein air class that happens in a different location each week.  I swear I'm the luckiest person in the world - these students are amazing women and we have the BEST time!  Aside from losing my camera (found the next day...) it was a perfect day.  Above is an enlargement of a portion of it - I made use of Laurel Daniel's "mother color" which is ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson and a bit of burnt umber, to establish the darks.

  Then, because the light changes so much outdoors, I made "color notes - see below - so I'd have accurate colors from the MOMENT I had chosen to paint:

This image seems to have lost the lavender sky at the horizon, but you get the idea.  We believe we were looking across the river at Barrington, RI.  

If you live nearby, you can check the upcoming location for our Safari and join us!

Sue's Shed, 8x10, Oil

This was the plein air piece that was my favorite from my Marshfield paint out!  At this point in the day a few other painting buddies had arrived and we staked out this shed in the backyard of where I was staying - positioning ourselves around it.  My favorite part is the buoys hanging on the shed.  Or maybe the shadow from the overhang of the roof. It just flowed... bing, bang, boom.

*A note about the DailyPainters.com contest... only one vote per IP address counts, so that's good!

This painting is not a Daily Painting per se, and I am reserving it for a summer art show entry.

At Rexhame Beach, 6x12, OIl

Plein Air Perfect Day!  It was warm and sunny, very little breeze.  This is of the marshes in the back of Rexhame Beach - those buildings run along the dunes and beach itself - which was so, so gorgeous I couldn't hope to capture it!  I was painting with a friend who is a master of buildings in a landscape, so was inspired to do this view.  Tomorrow I'll post what I think was my best piece this week!  I've been internet-challenged for a couple of days - no email, posting, or even Facebook!  I think it's like fasting... something you should do every once in a while to get you grounded again!  Apparently evil squirrels had chewed a hole in the cable running across the street from the utility pole into our house.  The man fixing it said he'd never seen anything like it.  Welcome to my life ;)

Little Gould Island Plein Air, 6x12, oil

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Today was a gorgeous November day. The morning was all misty and atmospheric, and since I'm home-bound today, I thought I'd take Paco for his first real plein air session and trek over to the beach and paint the misty island in the river. Let us just say right here that Paco is a BELOVED pet but I was ready to put him on a bus after one hour. I walked carrying my heavy backpack, french easel, 2 leashes (one long, one short), a box to take the painting home in, Paco's best 'baby', water bowl and water for him, and HIM on the leash. First he 'helped' me unload the backpack (as the wind took the paper towels, the little canvases, the palette, then when we got settled down he picked up his waterbowl and shook it (yeah, I hear you all sniggering) all over my BACK (I was sitting at a picnic table, and he could scamper up on it). While I was replenishing his water he sneakily took my best brush and sat quietly under the table till I heard the big CRUNCH, (yeah... now I'm using language that cannot be put in a blog), then, when I thought he had settled down with his Baby, I hear plastic and see that he's unearthed some plastic ties and was gobbling them. Ok, maybe he's hungry, so cookies. Err... not so hungry, but found some nice, petrified dog poop buried in the sand to snack on.....

I finally hauled him & the painting home, nothing like painting under pressure! And let's just say he has a LONG way to go to become a plein air dog. Maybe I should bring his crate (which, BTW he only goes into at night to sleep)???

Three Chickens, 6x8, Oil, and an apology

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This one's been added today from my new computer, and is a better representation of the image! (above)

First off, let me say I'm sorry for going 'dark' on you, as they say in Vegas, this past week. Between my Open Studio Tour (which was FABULOUS! Thank you, everyone), and trying to juggle between my husband's two ancient computers.. it's been crazy. And in the computer department, thanks to my overwhelming weekend, I'm getting a brand new laptop tomorrow. Unfortunately ALL my files (photos) of my work, and even my family life (Paco's baby pictures, too) are gone forever. UNLESS I want to pay $800 for some super dude to try (no guarantees) to lift them from my old hard drive. Which, BTW, when plugged into the new computer, blew it up, so I am getting a new, new computer. THAT's the last you'll hear of my computer woes, I promise. And lesson learned about backing up files....

But I painted at Taylor Bray Farm on the Cape yesterday, and one of the paintings I did was this little chicken painting. I really like chickens, and these were so cool - black & white with red. Even though they've been raised in captivity, and never been in the 'wild', they knew, somehow, there was a Red Tailed Hawk in the tree above them. It was amazing, and they set up a sqwaking you wouldn't believe. Here they are trying to keep cool by digging a little impression in the dirt and getting as low to the ground as they could.

Hey - you're not going to believe this, but I got a painting in the Portsmouth Art Guild 'Abstration' show! How cool! Of course my image of this painting is on my fried hard drive. I'll take a photo at the Opening! Yeah, I know... ME! ;)

Colin Page Workshop

This weekend I attended a Colin Page (above) workshop at the North River Arts Society in Marshfield, MA. The class was overwhelmingly filled with my 'peeps' from the South Shore - and we had a lot of laughs as well as good lessons in observation and working with values and color.
The first day we were at Scituate Harbor, it being primarily a Plein Air workshop, and I struggled with this little lobster boat (they MOVE!). I was thinking of Colin's loose but definitive brushwork for the background trees, and his 'sparkle' in the water. The hardest part was the 'dark white' of the side of the boat in shadow.

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I thought what I loved about this painting above was the 'pop' of blue inside the boat, but what turns out to have grabbed me was the color changes in the water from blue to lavender to 'muddy' green... Also the man who owns this boat came to talk to me, and it turns out that THIS boat was built in Warren, RI, where my studio is! How about that?
The second day it rained, so we painted indoors. Oh, what was I thinking with this figurine (it was Colin's and actually had a smiley face painted on its belly)????? I was happiest with the blue pitcher in the background...
I painted this because there was nowhere else to sit when it turned out I had to move after we'd started painting. I have an allergy to turps except Gamsol, and there was someone using Turpenoid, so when my eyes started burning and lips started tingling I knew I couldn't paint the pink carnations in a jar I'd chosen. I was almost in despair over this (all blue? stripes? a painted pitcher????) but Colin helped me eliminate the non-essentials and calm down and just DO it. :) If you ever get a chance.. it's a worthwhile workshop!