Sunflowers and Delft Cup- SOLD

"Morning Cup"

8"x 8" oil on gessoed board

first painting

Details of finished painting.


I’ve mentioned before the difficultly that I have in painting flowers. While at a friend’s I saw her lovely flowers in the yard and asked to cut some––they so inspired me to try my hand at flowers again. I gathered all the similar flower paintings in my "favorites" file on my computer and studied them planning my approach. I wanted to see the sunflowers as mere shapes. You will note a problem in the first painting. Before completing the flowers I realized the cup was too tightly rendered relative to the rest of the piece. Also the background mud was about as appealing as baby poop and not showing off the yellow flowers. After working over a 2-3 day period, I set it aside to dry not knowing whether I would finish it and was very unhappy with the direction it was heading. Last night I started painting over the flowers and darkening the background changing it to a purple gray. With the flowers I worked back and forth with negative and positive spaces and tried to use bolder strokes. Proceeding to the cup and foreground, I softened and smeared edges to loosen it a bit. The greatest change is in the cup. All in all it was a great learning exercise. Next I will again try roses. I just must quit avoiding flowers!

Peaches, Butter and Vanilla - SOLD

"Peach Cobbler?"
sold

6"x 8" Oil on gessoed board.

No, I did not make cobbler. I barely cut the peaches and ate them before they were too ripe, but it sure made me want cobbler. Hmmmm, cobbler or painting? I chose painting and am glad I did. I have painted many peaches before but I'm finally getting the peach fuzz thing right. I think this is my favorite so far. The vintage canister was a recent thrift store find and I centered the still life around it. It's very strange what things can inspire an artist.

The goal here was to focus on the left hand peach. I didn't want to mute the bright reds on the canister, but I knew that intense color could draw the eye away from the focal point. Composition was the device to direct the eye to the focal point. The right side of the vanilla bottle, the lines of the stick of butter and the blue stripe in the cloth all point to the peach and of course that spot where the stem used to be is the bull's eye. Then one's eye begins to wander to the canister, down the side to the right hand peach and follows the top edge of the cloth left back to the focal point. Let me know what your eye does. My other goal of the painting was to contrast the many textures.

San Francisco Hills- SOLD

"Joy Ride"

8"x 6" Oil on Raymar canvas panel.

Note: This is my second try at an accurate photo. I'm not able to get the contrasts correct. The distance is right but the foreground and middle ground are a bit more intense and sharper than appears on the screen.

This was a hard challenge from Karin Jurick's blog, Different Strokes From Different Folks. For me the goal was to simplify the detailed photo and to create a sense of distance and a bright sunny atmosphere. The street scene had electric wires going everywhere! I don't think I simplified much except for those wires. My focus changed into managing my brush strokes, keeping them simplified and painting shapes instead of objects. I have to continue to remind myself to think SHAPES! I'm pleased with the outcome although I still struggle when I paint on canvas at this small size. I think I'm finally getting use to piling on the paint much thicker when painting on canvas as compared to my preferred surface of a gessoed board. Click here to check out the other artist's version of the same scene and to see the photo that was provided.

Sliced Tomato-Sold

"Big Boy Slice"

5"x 7" Oil on gessoed board.

This is what I did today........glad you stopped by.

Click on images to enlarge.