593 Yellow Zin

Yellow Zin

oil on canvas

8x10"

$176

     What a lovely winter day with lots of snow for the puppy to play in! This zinnia is from last summer. Glad I photographed them while I could. They sure are gone now.

 

586 Sunflower Challenge

Sunflower Challenge

oil on canvas

6x6"

$80

     It has been quite some time since I participated in the DPW Painting Challenge. I should do it more often because it is such a good discipline. For example, here I am painting a flower, not my best thing. That is OK. It is good for me.

     This particular flower grew volunteer in my yard, so, naturally, I took its picture and I am glad I did. I needed it for this challenge.

556 Lemon Squeeze

Lemon Squeeze

oil on canvas

8x10"

$160

     I am trying to develop my still life painting, and I love to paint fruit, but utensils are a different story. In my kitchen I use the reamer regularly as I do my steel bowls, but I bet I will not paint them again any time soon. The bowl was not as hard as I expected it to be, but the reamer was ten times harder.

553 Pitcher with lemons

Pitcher with Gold Trim

oil on canvas

9x12"

$216

     I wanted to paint a still life in an analogous color scheme. The yellow lemons and napkin set the stage. I got my inspiration from Janet Rickus, and I plan to borrow more from her wonderful vision. One problem I have with that is I do not have a lot of crockery. She says she borrows from friends. I may have to do that too.

540 Poppies

Poppies

oil on canvas

8x24"

$300

     These are California Poppies that came up in my yard at the beginning of this summer. They grow everywhere. Sometimes they cover a hillside like a thick golden blanket. Sometimes they grow through a crack in the sidewalk. They are dear flowers, but they make painting difficult because they are so simple that your eye does not believe what it is seeing; and their orange and yellow against a blue sky looks almost childish, though beautiful.

     In this painting, I tried for a "surprise color" and surprised myself with the periwinkle blue that showed up in the stems.

Little Square Vase

Oil on Canvas

10x8"

$160

     These marbles are from an old Chinese Checkers game. I keep them because I think they are wonderful to look at, and I was happy to be able to put them in my little still life.

V Lake

V Lake

Oil on Canvas

6 x 6"

$100

     I needed a blonde to add to my collection. I chose Veronica with both eyes showing. I thought she was cute in Sullivan's Travels.

Susans Bunch 5

Susans Bunch 5

Oil on Canvas

9x12"

$216

     More susans, this time on a warm background. Painting the warm flowers on a cool background is a big challenge.  So easy to turn out as a 50/50 painting and I do not want that.

     Painting a series presents many opportunities to work out problems. The next composition is lined up and I am eager to get started. I will try again for the warm on cool and try to get the proportions right this time.

Susans Bunch 2

Oil on Canvas

12x9"

$216

     Black-eyed Susans, there must be hundreds of them in that little corner of the yard. One photograph yields dozens of compositions. Nature provides.

Library Poppies

Library Poppies

Oil on Canvas

6x6"

$75

     These poppies grew in the parking lot of my local library. The way the front petal dipped over was as pretty as a picture. Poppies are delightful with their pure bright color, but the trouble in painting them comes in choosing a background color. Nature usually provides the perfect complement, but in painting nature, my work sometimes looks...not so good. Here I kept the colors mainly in the same family instead of going complementary. Maybe not so bad.

Yellow Scarf

Oil on Canvas

6x6"

$100

     Painting from photographs can be tricky. The camera does not see as well as our eyes do to discern subtle variations in color and shadow. But when you try to paint from the black and white glamor photos from the 30's and 40's, it gets even trickier. The photographers would use back light, fill light, and I don't know what else. It is hard to know where the light source really is. Very tricky. But the beauty and glamor is thrilling to paint. I think I will never tire of it. Meanwhile, I get to work on my color theory. Nothing in a B&W to influence and confuse me.

Pale Pear Solo

Oil on Canvas

8x6"

$96

     I wanted to paint something very high key, lots of white. I like the way this turned out although it is not as pale as I had envisioned. How often my plans end up so soon forgotten. I might as well say, "Let's see what painting I will get today." 

     I still like the idea of a very pale piece so I will give it another try another day.

Big Yellow Dahlia

Big Yellow Dahlia

Oil on Canvas

11x14"

$308

     I do much better with flowers when I leave them loose. Otherwise they always look amateurish and corny. This way I can see that I was at least having a little fun.

Ft Bragg Dahlias

Oil on Canvas

11x14"

$308

     First a landscape and now flowers. Hope! If anybody tells you that painting these two genres is easy, my advice is don't believe them. It would be easy to paint them to look dopey, trite, boring, and childish. It is a rigorous quest for me to paint them to look the opposite of those things.

Glass Challenge

Jar of Red and Yellow Flowers

8x6"

Oil

$96

DPW $76

     This Challenge is to paint glass, so I did, but you can hardly see it. Such a small part of the jar shows. It was fun to paint anyway. It is almost like painting what you don't see. And then suddenly there is so much to see. A lot of looking goes into painting glass.

     This painting presented me with other challenges. I wanted to paint something with lots of blue, a blue painting. Now I am not completely comfortable with it. Is it too blue? Should there be more blue in the flowers? Too much? Not enough? Wrong blue? Sometimes I just don't know. Maybe blue is not my color.

Golden Pear

Golden Pear

8x8"

Oil

$128

DPW $96

    Here is another example of an analogous color scheme. I enjoy doing them, probably because the color harmony is built in. I have tried doing blue ones and violet ones, but I just cannot manage to like them. There is something about the golds and reds that makes me feel good. I guess they are my favorites, but I am sure a cool green or blue would be pleasant to look at if it is done right. In my efforts to develop, I must give them another try.

     (I did not do the Challenge this week. We had to paint a blue object. Mine turned out bad.)

Cherry with Stem

Cherry with Stem

6x6"

Oil

$72

DPW $60

     Here is just what I need for a daily painting. A simple subject and a simple color scheme. I really love setups like this because I can devote all my looking to the smallest variations in value and the tiniest detail. 

     I painted this and thought I was finished, but something kept bothering me about that highlight. Today I decided to look again and see what I could see. I found that the highlight was not bright enough and yet had very hard edges. I thought that was what I had seen in the cherry, but now I think I was wrong. I softened the edges and left some halo around a very bright spot for the highlight. Now I like it so much better.

     Simple setup does not mean simple work.

Pears Yellow, Green, Red

Pears

12x16"

Oil

$384

DPW $288

     These pears are starting to log on the mileage. They just turned out to be the right size and color, with leaves. I will probably paint them again before they are lunch.

     I like the way the red is in the green and the green is in the yellow and the yellow is in the red, etc., etc. I did not contrive the fallen leaf. It really did fall from the pear, so I just nudged it a bit into the picture.

     

     

Begonias

Red and Yellow Begonias

8x10"

Oil

$160

DPW $120

     As I have often said, flowers and landscapes are not my best subjects. Yet here I am again giving it another try. So stubborn.

    "Paint the color and value, not the flower." In the first effort, the yellow flower was more interesting than the red one. Stepping back I could tell it was because of two important things: first, the yellow-white paint was fresh, hardly worked or blended at all while the red one was overworked, flat; next, the yellow-white one had shadow because of the light source while the red one was flooded with light rendering it flat to begin with.

     In the second effort, I expanded the shadow around the red one, hoping to give that light source even more presence and hoping for the fresh interest I originally saw in the pale petals.

     I won't even begin to discuss painting the pistils and stamens in the flower centers.

Fig Trio

Fig Trio

6x18"

Oil

$100

DPW $80

     I continue my work with the extreme rectangles. I find the compositions interesting, odd but simple. I am putting very little into the subject matter, freeing myself to invest my effort in the smallest and subtlest details. With these canvasses, I concentrate more on color theory and character of paint in a brief process. This is the idea behind the daily painters: paint small and often and learn.