Category Archives: Oil Paintings

Summer 2022 ~~ and our Art Exhibit at Oasis Gallery ~~ has come to an end.

This past Spring, the Oasis Gallery invited the Seven Palettes (some of my art buddies and me) to mount a live exhibit at its Washington Metro location in Bethesda. Our exhibit ran from Monday, May 2d to mid-August 2022. Understandably, the show didn’t get much traffic, given Oasis’ use of zoom classes during the Covid hiatus, so I thought I’d post one last look at the paintings I contributed to the show. You can see the work of the other artists at the link above.

Fruit Portraits

I’ve done a number of simple still life paintings of fruit from life – primarily in watercolor. Key goals: paint an accurate – and hopefully interesting – ‘portrait’ of the items and integrate them into their space so they’re not just isolated lumps. The excellent Ed Praybe has been our lead in these endeavors!

Still Lifes in Oil ~~ Dried Plants and Household Treasures

Here are two of my favorite still life compositions, ‘homework’ painted in oil under the guidance of Ed Praybe. He’s a fabulous painter and equally great teacher. Check out his site.

Dried onion stalks and ceramics. Oil on Arches huile paper. 8 x 16.
MomMom’s Pitcher, Ceci’s Scissors. Oil on Arches huile Paper. 12 x 16.

Inspired by the Masters

It’s a time-honored tradition for artists to deepen their craft by studying, copying, transcribing components of, or gaining inspiration from old and newer master painters. In various zoom classes over the last months, I’ve had occasion to do that kind of work.

An abstraction of a Titian nude:

After Titian’s ‘Venus of Urbino’. Oil on Linen. 9.5 x 16.

An abstraction of van Veerendael’s A Bouquet of Flowers in a Crystal Vase.

After van Veerendael’s Bouquet of Flowers in a Crystal Vase. Oil on lInen. 9,5 x 13

Modern subject (Cuban art students studying on a busy boulevard on a Sunday morning) in the style of Vuillard’s paintings of women working.

Cuban art students at work, after Vuillard. Oil on linen.

Some Quick-Hit, Limited Palette Landscapes

In a never-ending pursuit of quickly and accurately matching colors using only 3 or 4 tube colors + black & white, I did a series of rapid landscapes to share with some painting buddies and a more experienced guru, Bernie Dellario.

Multnomah Falls, OR. Oil on Arches Huile Paper.
Marshy View, Eastern Shore of Maryland. Oil on Arches Huile Paper.
California Coastline. Oil on Arches Huile Paper.
Mississippi Marsh. Oil on Arches Huile Paper.

Practicing the Knife!

Bernie Dellario tasked our zoom-based art group with painting a fairly complicated scene using only a palette knife. The idea was to force ourselves to simplify. I selected a photo that I’d taken at a Nats night game, courtesy of friends Doug and Toni. I loved the vibrant colors, the dramatic lighting, the sharp green grass, the movement of the crowd and vendors. . . .

Here’s the painting and references. A note for composition buffs: For a bit of extra drama and clarity, I combined positions of orange hands from the two photos. I also omitted the wonderful yellow foul marker because it would been too much for a small square painting. . . . Maybe I’ll do a larger version some time so I can add that color into the mix.

At the Nats. Oil on Arches Huile Paper. 10″ x 10″.

Some Scary Selfies

Took an online workshop recently from Zoey Frank ~~ ‘self-portraits from observation’. It was weeks long – with almost 300 students (critiqued by five or six assistants). I didn’t get around to finishing the one self-portrait I started – just made a couple of smaller studies . . . before giving up in boredom at my composition.

I’m now taking a watercolor class with Ed Praybe. He tasked us with doing THREE monochromatic self-portraits during one week – facing front & diagonally to each side. Under the short and specific deadline, I produced these three. Warning – it’s impossible to smile AND paint simultaneously, but . . . here they are anyway.

Been taking workshops ~~ time to show some work!

In the most recent session with Bernie Dellario, my ‘7 Palettes’ buddies, sister Ceci and a few other folks, we made speedy, simplified interpretations of several Old Master paintings. With a limited palette of the 3 primary colors and about 20-30 minutes each, I painted these images :

A figurative, after the nude Venus of Urbino, painted by Titian (1538); a floral, after a magnificent bouquet by van Veerendael (1662); and a quick gouache study of Madonna and Child, after a beautiful one by Bellini (1510).

New Facebook Challenge ~ 10 Paintings in 10 Days ~~ per friend Kathy Stowe

Ooof! I did one of these challenges not long ago, but here goes! Day 1 of my mission to share something from my art, my studio, or my life for ten consecutive days, no explanation needed, and nominate someone to do the same. I nominate Penny Smith to share some of her beautiful artwork and carry on the call. The idea is to promote positivity and bring art into each other’s lives.

Here’s what’s on my easel at the moment — inching toward a dual portrait of my deceased brother-in-law Albert ‘Terp’ Ward, and his widow, Donna Garnett.

Double Portrait – 2d session
Initial drawing, using Catherine Kehoe’s method of building a web of intersecting lines until features emerge.

A Series of ‘Limited Palette’ Paintings

Painters have a wide variety of ‘tube colors’ to use in trying to achieve their desired hues. I’ve got 30 or 40 tubes of almost every color you can imagine, most of them untouched. For quite awhile, I’ve opted to limit the number of tubes I use, challenging myself to mix a broad variety of colors from a handful of basic hues. Painters call this a ‘limited palette’. It lightens the load of what you have to carry around with you and it helps give a unity of color to your painting. Nice attributes.

There’s no specified set of colors for a limited palette. In the past, I’ve typically used a ‘split primary’ group, which includes two versions of each primary color, plus white and maybe black. Each of the two selected primaries ‘bends’ toward a different adjacent secondary color. For instance, cadmium red tends toward orange (yellow), while alizarin crimson tends toward a purple (blue). Blues may include phtalo or cerulean blue which tend toward green (yellow) and ultramarine blue which leans toward purple (red). Split yellows might include cadmium yellow light, which tends green (yellow), and cadmium yellow, which tends toward orange/red.

If you want to mix a bright saturated orange using such a palette, you’d combine cadmium red and cadmium yellow, rather than alizarin red and/or cadmium yellow light – a combo that produces duller, less saturated oranges. And so on.

Here are a few of my paintings using the split primary palette.

More recently, as a result of a zoom class with Bernie Dellario and a number of painting buddies, I’ve been working with an even MORE limited palette — just three primaries + white & a neutral earth red: Hansa yellow; pyrole red; ultramarine blue; transparent red oxide and Titanium white. What a challenge, but I think I’m getting the hang of mixing a broad range of colors from these meager starting points. Here are some recent paintings using this palette.