Hot white walls shimmering in the heat. Gleaming gold dome. Massive foreshortening complementing the bulbous domes. I know the perspective is distorted in my snapshot from our Cuba trip last year. But I like it that way. Had to paint it that way. More fun!
Skewed in Cuba. iPad.
I was conjuring a warm, sunny day with this one, too. Every time I visit Los Angeles I fixate on the palms. I’ve got a thing for them. This one took a lot less time than the C&O Canal painting, but it also had its challenges. Wispy fronds and barely-there cloud fringes . . . .
Palms of LA. iPad.
I hauled out my iPad quite a bit over the last month. Thought I’d share a few, bit by bit. As our days grew shorter and chillier, I started conjuring a scene from our C&O Canal walks last Summer. This was a real challenge, with all the different elements and reflections.
C & O Canal in Summer. iPad.
What was under the water’s calm surface was just as interesting as the shadows falling across the surface and the contrasting views posed by the two banks. It’s time to clean this baby up again!
We have had a peaceful and joyous day. And it isn’t over yet. But while there’s a quiet moment, I want to reach out beyond our home and send love and hugs to you and yours. Here is an iPad image I painted, based on a stone carving on a Capitol Hill church. I had it made into Christmas cards, but since they haven’t gone out yet, I’ll post it here, with my very best wishes for the season and 2014.
Our two-day exhibit at the Yellow Barn drew steady streams of visitors as well as pleasantly crowded scrum for the Saturday evening reception. I believe every one of we Seven Palettes sold one or two framed paintings, along with ‘bin art’ (unframed originals and prints packed with mat and backing), and greeting cards based on our art.
A framed print of “The Red Hat”, an archival giclee of one of my favorite iPad paintings, found a good home, as did “Red on Yellow, C&O Canal Autumn”, one of my gouache paintings. I also sold several matted giclees and a print on tempered glass from my “Fruit, Veggies & Flowers” iPad series. I don’t think I’ve shown you what the glass printings look like. Here’s a snapshot of several (the black around each is padding to protect the tiles during shipping).
Some iPad Prints on Tempered Glass
Many of the visitors asked questions about the ins and outs of iPad art, as well as gouache, so maybe there will be further opportunities to teach those techniques,
Here’s a new painting I made in gouache a few weeks ago — thinking it would appeal to people who love the C & O Canal as much as Pat and I do. It’s based (loosely) on a photo I made last Fall on one of our walks. Pat can’t get much exercise when I’m constantly ‘braking’ to take shots like these!
I decided to hang mostly gouaches this time, with only singles of oil paintings and iPad giclees. (There will be many more matted & backed in the bins, though, along with lots of greeting cards printed with some of my favorite paintings.) Remember: Saturday & Sunday noon to 5, with reception from 6 to 8pm on Saturday. Yellow Barn Studio, at Glen Echo Park.
Now, here’s a look at the other pieces that will be framed and available to bring home at show’s end:
I’ve done a few iPad images lately — good fun while sitting around at night. I just finished a drawing with the ArtRage pencil tool of a sprinkle of fairy lilies against a background clump of ornamental grasses.
Fairy Lilies, original iPad painting, 2013, 1:1 aspect ratio
And I also had fun doing a more stylized rendition of Pat’s scarecrow standing in our garden, stopping passersby with its cuteness, but doing nothing to deter the critters from eating our veggies. Pat actually built this wooden adjustable man, based on one our son Sam had seen in a magazine and really wanted. Sam enjoyed it for years and then Will inherited it. Pat has now re-clothed it in his old duds for scarecrow duty.
And I did a quick wild fun sketch of the ballpark when Pat and I went to an Oriole’s game in Baltimore last weekend.
The next (huge) task in painting my Dad’s portrait was to meld the many photographic references into a single coherent whole. I needed to get the head, arms, torso orientation all into similar sizes and then try to get them to connect to each other in a reasonable way. If I were a better Photoshop practitioner, this might have been a snap. But my attempts were so lame that I seriously considered resorting to cut and paste.
Here are a few of my horrible Photoshop mashups, along with my much more useful iPad sketches.
