Resting at the Portrait Gallery. Oil on Linen.
During a recent visit to the National Portrait Gallery, I saw two marvelous women, each sitting in one of the deep window seats that back up to the courtyard. I decided to be bold and ask if I could take their pictures for painting purposes. To my delight, each agreed. Here’s the first – a petite little lady perched on the long cushion, resting her feet. Another palette knife attempt.
Yesterday I read an interesting post by Daniel Gerhartz about the hubris of ‘needing’ to paint a grandiose image, while neglecting the “profound, staggering elegance of the subject right before my eyes”.
matching trees and white clouds outside my window on a drowsy spring morning. original iPad painting.
He’s talking my walk. I love looking at everything in my path. Right before seeing Dan’s post I had been mentally composing an image based on the condiment bottles before me on the kitchen table.
The sunlight was falling ‘just so’ on the tops of their caps, making stair-steps of light down through the bottles shaded by the window will. It would make the perfect line drawing or a juicy value painting.
salt and pepper shakers, meeting their match in the napkin holder. original iPad painting.
And looking up and out the window I noticed that distant treetops were the same yellow-brown-green as my neighbor’s weeping cherry, now that its flowers had fallen. And gorgeous clouds were slowly sweeping across a strong blue sky.
In honor of Dan and the daily, I decided to grab my iPad and make a few sketches of the loveliness at my fingertips. I also took some pix of the stair stepping bottle tops — they deserve a painting on canvas!
stairs on my table.