"Little Blue Tea Light" original oil 6x6"

I've had this little Ikea candle holder for about 10 years, and every time I light it, I think, "I would love to paint this." Finally I did! I love the warm flame playing against the cool blue glass, and all those groovy little hits of light bouncing around the rim. As always, I was trying to think about edges, edges, edges, and how to keep them soft, which seems to work best by painting the object out into the background, and then the background back in to the object. Losing the drawing and getting it back again and again is such an exercise in continually letting go.


I am constantly amazed by how precious a painting becomes once it's working, but before it's finished - suddenly I lose all my willingness to explore and instead begin wanting to hang on to what I have and not wreck it. Never a good place to paint from as it is so confining and takes all spontaneity and improvisation out of the process. How to let go of rigid control and still be guiding the outcome is an ongoing balancing act and one of the many reasons painting is such a complex and worthy challenge.


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"Peruvian Flower Ladies" original oil 6x6"

This painting was done from a photograph I took in Peru a couple of years ago. Call me crazy for trying to fit all this info on a 6x6" panel. Really. Crazy. I painted the woman on the left's face about 10 times, it was so hard to get it to read in such a tiny little space. What was fun were all the little background abstract shapes, it was easy to make stuff up that worked in this small format. Pulling that off on a bigger canvas would be more difficult, there seems to be a need for more information once I hit about 16x20. Unless of course you're Kevin MacPherson, check out how he handles this challenge, pretty amazing!

FineArtViews Painting Competition "Fav 15%"

"Perched" (6x6" oil on linen) was selected as one of the "Favorite 15%" of entries in January's FineArtViews Painting Competition.


I really enjoyed painting this little guy, there were so many interesting things to work with - the translucent lemon, the glow kicking up from the metal lid onto the underside of it, that little bit of light kissing the top edge of it - all were great little clues to help tell the story. The glass jar was really intriguing, the more I paint glass the more I see that you simply need to study it for a little bit and then pick what fun little squiggles and shapes will most effectively suggest it.  I also really loved the left edge of the jar lid where it matches the value of the background, such a great way to lose an edge - I'm always on the lookout for this.

"Solo Performance" original oil 6x6"

Ellipses are really, really tough. It is amazing how easy it is to get them wrong. I find I rarely paint them without having to make several minor adjustments in my drawing until things read properly. Painting them from life is even harder than from photos, because if you change your angle of view even slightly, the curves change. It's such valuable drawing practice, I find it's great to try lots of them from lots of different perspectives to build on these skills.

Greenhouse Gallery's Salon International 2010

"Peruvian Pony" (oil - 12x16")

Two of my paintings -"Peruvian Pony" and "City Lunch"- have been juried in to Greenhouse Gallery's Salon International 2010. This is a highly respected show held each year in San Antonio, Texas. There are lots of really great artists in this show, so I'm thrilled to have my work selected for it.

"City Lunch" (oil - 9x12")

"Stone Gathering" original oil 6x6"

The exercise that worked me the most with this piece was arranging the stones in an interesting way. I started with them in a glass dish, but I really loved the light reflecting up from the cloth into their shadow sides which you couldn't see in the dish. It is interesting to take a square format and a bunch of little shapes and figure out how to fill the space effectively. It took about 7 or 8 attempts to find something I liked, this is an exercise one could do again and again to develop their design skills.

"Kiwi Stack" original oil 6x6"

This painting was REALLY fun! Biggest challenge...getting the piece of kiwi fruit to stay standing. It kept flopping over and I kept squishing the bottom of it and standing it back up. I set the whole thing up on a piece of glass on top of black cloth, which gives an almost mirror like reflection.

When I paint translucent produce, I try and set the light up so it is slightly backlit, which really brings out a glow that's great to try and capture. It really is about paying careful attention to the value and  color intensity shifts and trying to nail them down.

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"Last Light" 6x6" original oil

Decided to shake things up a bit and do a little landscape. My intent is to paint primarily still life (from life) in my daily paintings as they are sooooo challenging and good for me, but I also want to play with my landscape and urban photo reference now and then.

This is the view from my studio window -  it catches this warm golden glow everyday just before sunset. I love the complementary colors of sun and shadow, and I was especially captivated with that little touch of red in the background as shadow turns to light on the snow slope above.

I find it really helps my development as an artist to be constantly observing  nature as I'm out walking my dog, driving to work, or even just sitting in my living room looking out the window. I play the "how would I mix that color / what exact value is that?" game a lot, it really deepens my observation skills and links them to the act of painting, even if I'm not painting in that moment.

"In the Spotlight" - 6x6"

More fun with backlit citrus fruit! In addition to working on translucence in this piece, I was also very focused on edgework, my current and ongoing "Mt. Everest". So easy to get stiff and tight, so hard to keep it loose and trust. A technique I have learned is to paint beyond your shape (ie: carry the orange segment brushstroke into the background) and then paint the background back up to it to sculpt it back in. Where the edges overlap, paint gets blended and naturally creates a soft edge. Sounds easy, as long as you are willing to totally lose your drawing and trust you will get it right again. :)

Probably the greatest beauty of these little 6x6's is they give you more freedom to play with ideas like this, as long as you can remind yourself to go in with the idea that they are exercise, and be willing to push outside your comfort zone and try new approaches.

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"Getting Acquainted" 6x6"

                                                            

I really had fun with this composition, rolling the cherries around until they fell into a playful pattern. I especially liked the stem shadows, they really seemed to tie everything together. The more I play with setting up these still lifes, the more I learn about design - how to create groupings that are balanced, interesting and connected. I am definitely finding this training as valuable as doing the painting itself is.

There's also something about lemons and cherries together that I find very visually appealing, not sure why, so all and all this little painting was a very enjoyable experience.

(For purchase details click here)

Haiti Relief Fund (Oxfam)

All proceeds from the sale of this painting will go to the Haiti Relief Fund via Oxfam. The best news about this is that the Canadian government is currently matching all donations, so if you bid on it you will not only get a piece of art, you will have the satisfaction of making a significant donation to a very worthwhile cause.

"Studio Snack" 6x6"
It was interesting to watch the brie under the hot spotlight over the 3 hours I spent on this piece as it got warmer and warmer, drooping slowly into the plate - kind of like trying to catch the light you originally see when painting outdoors. Near the end you have to do a lot of painting from memory. The french bread was the hardest part of the painting, could NOT get the texture of it's surface. There wasn't butter on it, but after much effort with no success, I realized that it was kind of reading like bread with butter so I cut my losses and got out while the gettin' was good. This is a challenge I will have to take on again in the future. The olives were the most fun! Such great little patterns of dark and light, could do a whole series just on olives.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have subscribed to my blog and are following my daily paintings, your support and interest is very much appreciated!

"Plum Party" 6x6" Oil on Canvas Board

This was the very first "Daily Painting" I did, shortly after I got home from Carol Marine's workshop this summer.

One of the interesting challenges with these little 6x6 guys is composition, and I find more often than not it's most effective if you crop your subject on at least one side. In this case cropping 3 out of 4 sides really seemed to keep a circular rhythm going - with the bowl edge leaving the canvas on the right side and entering back in on the left.

Something Carol taught that really works for me is to set up my arrangement and then use a viewfinder to scout out various compositions. When something flutters in my stomach, it's time to paint!

"Gerbera Trio" 6x6"

This was one of my first daily paintings, done this summer. Gerbera daisies, crikey! Didn't realize 'til I got into it how challenging it is to paint daisies, especially white tipped ones, without making them look like pinwheels. Had to keep squinting to find places where I could lose edges and group individual petals into cohesive shapes. Am learning to do this more and more, I find I really have to keep playing back and forth with massing and reintroducing elements of detail, then whoops!..too much detail, back to massing. It's quite a game of cat and mouse to finally get a result I'm happy with, good thing these little paintings are all about the workout! The beauty of oils is that you can do this with a fair bit of ease, I really can't imagine painting in any other medium.

Forgot to mention on my first "daily painting" post, that "daily painting" is a term I use loosely. To be honest the idea of posting every single day right from the get go totally freaks me out, so I'm going to ease in to it until I get warmed up to the idea...

"Daily Painting LAUNCH!"

"Study in Orange"
Original Oil 6x6"


I am excited to announce that after working toward this idea for some time, I am finally launching the introduction of my small daily paintings for sale by auction on ebay!


I have created a little inventory of these 6x6" paintings to give myself some breathing room, and I am kicking it off with one of my very favorites - "Study in Orange". This piece was painted as I was starting to figure out the magic of how to capture the translucence of backlit citrus fruit. Any artists out there, I encourage you to give it a try, it is surprisingly easy to achieve this effect by simply applying a slight shift in values as you are painting the orange segment.

"Different Strokes Portrait Challenge"

Karin Jurick's at it again, she has presented 180 keen artists with her second portrait challenge. Both times I have participated I have found it to be a very interesting experience painting an anonymous person, one you have never seen and know nothing about. In each case I have found that for the first few hours I am focused on shapes, drawing, trying to get things accurate. But as the person begins to unfold on the canvas, I start to notice the tiniest subtleties of expression that show their character, and as I am nearing the end, I feel a real sense of who this person is.


The biggest challenge with this portrait was that I didn't realize until very near the end that I had made the distance from her chin to her eye too short. There was a strong temptation to try and fix this by making some minor adjustments, but then I remembered something I had read about John Singer Sargent. "He never attempted to repaint one eye or to raise or lower it, for he held that the construction of a head prepared the place for the eye, and if it was wrongly placed, the understructure was wrong, and he ruthlessly scraped and repainted the head from the beginning." 


As I contemplated the options, this rang very true. For the purpose of this exercise I couldn't justify the time, but it certainly impressed upon me the need to step back and assess all of the relationships on the canvas more often during the painting process, and I will remember this in the future. 


See all the portraits here: http://differentstrokesfromdifferentfolks.blogspot.com/


Note: January 9th, 2010 
I have been in touch with the woman I painted, her name is Prabha Narayanan and she lives in India! How cool is that? You can view her work here: http://www.curveandline.blogspot.com/