An Apple A Day

I wish that is all it took to stay in good health.  The season of festivities is great until stepping on the scale or not being able to remember the last time I hiked more than once in a week or two.  So the diet begins.   Healthy food and thinking about what is best and not what tastes best.  I did enjoy the season and now it is time to pay for it...OUCH!

$25 starting Bid

sold

Holiday Dine

Getting in the holiday mood?  This is a 6x6 oil.  After doing still life for a while it starts to make me crazy.  It is always a good exercise for so many things, but the items selected can get silly.  Like this one of silverware, christmas balls, stripes and polka dots.  

Click Paypal $50.00

Looks Familiar

I managed to get this posted on Daily Painter Originals, but missed my blog.  This 6x6, is pastel on Pastelbord from Ampersand.  It has a much more even texture than the hand textured boards I did on the last 3 posts.  I like working on these hard surfaces.  Mainly because in the end it is easier to pop them into frames.  I still need a spacer and glass, but it goes together much easier and handling is easier as well.  The pastel seems to stay put and I am getting uses to the sound of applying the pastel to the surface.  That might sound funny, but it is important to feel comfortable.  Soft surfaces make one sound and hard surfaces make another.  When I work there is a rhythm that happens, almost like music.  It feels tribal and I love how sound inspires me.  Sound creates movement.  That for me inspires creativity.  I find art is completely sensory and good music, sounds, rhythm, vision and beautiful movements are  important as I create.

Bloom'in

Here is another composition of the little vase and dish towel.  Funny the difference it makes when moving that little view finder around.  I changed the lighting to a cooler bulb too.  I figure I will learn more by experimenting.  

DPW Auction click here!

High Grass Trail

This is what my allergies just love.  Even though my eyes start to water I  think it is wonderful to be out hiking in the tall grass every once in a while.  

I enjoyed the handling and laying in of color with pastels on this and feel a little abstract application coming on.  I found myself working in vertical and horizontal strokes, loving the balance of each mark. I think what I love most about pastel is the fun of the application.
High Grass Trail, 14x11, soft pastel on Pastelmat paper
$475

Quicker

12x12, oil, sold

This is Quicker, a lively, but camera shy pooch.  He is the loyal friend of a dear friend of mine.  Still working on him.  Think I am down to a few strokes. 

Onto chicken painting for DPW.  That will be a first for me. 

HOME GROWN

9x12, oil, sold

We have 2 Valencia orange trees in our yard.  Most of the time these trees are bounitful.  For years at Christmas we would put our christmas tree in the bay window and take photos of our boys standing in front of it.  Always in the background just outside the window hung branches burdened down with fruit.  Loved sending those photos oof to family and friends in the midwest and east coast to share.

TREE LOVER

6x9, oil, $90.00

Revisiting old paintings is lots of fun.  I drove by this tree today in Peters Canyon and was reminded just how much I loved painting it in all seasons.  I went home and pulled up some photos and went to work.  I choose a photo from mid summer (thinking warm) from a few years ago.  I am in the process of figuring out which landscape 6x9 will be good to paint in a larger format of 24x36, I am not fussing as much and just getting it down.

I am also feeling a bit more confident with the process of developing ideas.  Gee wiz I love painting.

BREATH OF FRESH AIR

6x9, oil on gesso panel, $90.00

Returned to an old favorite spot to work on landscape.  There are many aspects of landscape that I love.  Mainly getting out and breathing in.  

"DENISE IN GREEN"

9x12, pastel, $200.00

Oh it feels good to get back to pastels.  This actually has an under painting in oil, which was fun to incorporate since I love oils.  This was done today at a model session and Denise was our beautiful model. I just returned from Portland where i attended a color intensive workshop with Kitty Wallis.  It was good stuff.  All the things I have been avoiding all rolled up into 4 days.  Well not everything.  Lots of color value and studies with a hugh push into the world of expressive color.  It was great and exhausting.  The last day we took it a step farther in that we learned how to mix and make our own pastels.  I loved it.  Wonderful, wonderful color...I am totally in love and want to make more.  There is nothing like mixing a color and then creating values of it in chunks of pastels that I can hold and covet in my hands.  Anyway it was a great workshop.  Oh and I love Portland Oregon!!!  I was ga ga over the atmospheric color and the colors in the changing of the seasons.  Sure makes So Cal look like a desert.

I will post some of the things I did there over the next few days.   It is still sinking in as it applies to pastels and how it will effect my work in oil.  So fun to get new info.  I think I was starving.

"A WALK IN THE CANYON"

6x6, oil on raymar canvas, $75.00

Out for a hike on Sunday morning.  There was a beautiful break in the rain.  The trails were muddy in spots, but vistas were worth the messy boots.

"LONG RIDE HOME"

6x6, oil on gesso panel, $75.00

Interstate 5 can be a very long ride home through the Central Valley, from the Bay Area to So Cal.  The view is field after field of farm land with distant hills and mountains.  Depending on the season and crop it goes from green to brown.  I am always drawn beyond the fields to the hills and mountains low on the picture plane.  The sky becomes a big open canvas.  So when a storm comes rolling in, it paints a vision for all eyes to behold.  As a passenger I can sit back and enjoy the gallery of changing light, color and form.

"SWEET TEARS"

8x8, oil on 3/8 gesso panel, $100.00

An unlikely pair, these two.  Funny how still life set ups turn out.  A knife, a pear and an onion, breaking down space on a two dimensional surface.  Doesn't always make sense.  Although I have had a salad I like very much that has these two in it.  I like the color most of all.  Again hoping for fall to arrive.

"PERHAPS...APPLE PIE?"

16x12, oil on raymar canvas panel, $220.00

It is the season when apples are abundant.  So many different varieties.  I say Granny Smiths are one of my top favorites.  They make wonderful pie filling and have that bit of sour in each bite.  They also make yummy apple sauce.  Oh how I enjoy this time of year.  

"A SLICE OF VITAMIN C"

8x8, oil on 3/8 gesso panel, $100.00

Blue and orange are compliments, another set I am exploring in this painting.   Orange and blue can be bold and harsh in advertising, but they really grab you.  It is difficult to dismiss any graphic done with these two colors.  You don't have to like them for them to grab you.  In oil there is a lot more going on with color  mixing and moving around the color wheel to venture into neighboring colors to turn the form and sculpt the painting.  In the process there is a cast of supporting players that push and pull the subject from a graphic statement of bold eye catching color to something with more depth and more to see.

"FEELING GREEN"

6x6, oil on 3/8 gesso panel, $75.00

Color is so much fun and compliments are even better.  

"A DAILY PRESCRIPTION"

8x8, on oil on gesso panel, $100.00

I love the saying, "an apple a day keeps the doctor away."  I personally think a bouquet of flowers can do the same thing.  Not that we should eat them, but admire the beauty and the loving feeling when receiving such a lovely gift or purchasing one.  So I say buy those flowers you love or plant ones to cut and for insurance eat the apple. 

"APPLE TO APPLE"

8x8, oil on 3/8 gesso panel, $100.00

With autumn right around the corner, it seems a good time to paint apples.  The green ones are particularly good for painting as they reflect great light and color, yet still have wonderful depth in values.  

Setting this up was particularly interesting.  I have 12x12 sheets of colored paper usually used in scrap booking that I uses as back grounds when setting up still lifes.  It is very quick to change out the color and see the effect the color has on the subject.  After playing around the choice was harmonious.  Just staying in a small area of the color wheel for the obvious color scheme.  What's fun about doing this is looking for spots of color that may or may not be there that optically pop up in areas of my vision.  I like to experiment an lay in a color to push another color usually by using compliments.  I've had more of a chance to do this since committing to daily painting.  It's kinda changed up my excitement and interest with my long love affair with art and particularly painting.  

"LEMONS IN WAITING"

6x12, oil on 3/8, SOLD

Color studies are fun to explore.  Seeing color in reflections and shadows that are not obvious to the main color scheme help exaggerate and bring color forward.

"LIME TANGO"

6x6, oil on raymar, $75.00

Another still life.