On the last day, Wendy brought in some a bag of asparagus and I snagged three with which to wrestle.
Asparagus 1. Watercolor on Paper.
Asparagus 2. Watercolor on Paper.
Asparagus (or Asparagi???) Paintings from Artin Workshop
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Category Archives: Still Life
More Paintings From Artin Workshop ~~ Another Radish & Two Beets
Here are a few other paintings I did last week during the Artin watercolor workshop. No more nudes for now!
Radish 2. Watercolor on Paper.
Beet 1. Watercolor on Paper.
Beet 2. Watercolor on Paper.
Eeeeek! Bad Cropping, Facebook!! Gasp. Here’s Something Better to Look At!
Sorry sorry sorry, y’all! My last blog entry contained paintings of two full length nudes, neither of which was ‘out of bounds’ (IMHO). So, I was aghast when I checked to see if Facebook had re-posted it and found that the images had been sliced and diced in an unexpected manner (to say the least). I hope you clicked over to my blog to get a better sense of the overall paintings!
In any event, here’s a ‘palette cleanser’! It’s one of the radishes I painted during the Saturday afternoon session of my Wendy Artin workshop, followed by one of Wendy’s gorgeous still life watercolors — also of radishes.
Radish 1. Watercolor on Paper.
Wendy’s radishes — again, quite a difference:
Radishes, 2001, watercolor on cotton Khadi paper, 11″ x 12″
New iPad Images: Buzz Lightyear and Friend
I haven’t done much iPad painting over the last year (carpal tunnel issues), but every now and then I see a subject that’s compelling enough so I can’t resist. These two pieces were inspired by grandson Max’s toys: Buzz Lightyear (perched on Max’s dresser) and a red robot whose name I never got. Do you know who he is??
As with all of my iPad art, fine quality prints are available at reasonable prices.
Buzz Lightyear. iPad.
Red Robot. iPad.
A Year-long Painting Project is Completed!
After struggling (really, procrastinating) for over one year, I have finally finished a large oil painting, Mary’s Orchids.
Mary’s Orchids. Oil on linen, 2′ x 3′.
My sister Mary asked me to paint this work, requesting orchids, cherries, and a piece of pottery by Walter Anderson, the wonderful artist who lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast near our home. She also asked for it to be sized at two feet by three feet. Gulp.
I bought the canvas panel, arranged the elements in dozens of compositions before settling on this one, roughed out a drawing on the plastic wrapper of the panel, and then STOPPED. I was intimidated by the difficulty of the composition and its sheer SIZE. I hadn’t attempted anything that large since the portrait I did of our dad for his 90th birthday three years ago.
I have at least four pots of yellow orchids hanging around the house. As each orchid lost its flowers, I’d buy another pot in the expectation that I’d be starting ‘soon’. This went on for so long, the original orchid re-bloomed! So I decided I better get cracking, especially after passing the one year mark.
Finally it is done, about to be varnished and shipped down to Mary in Houston, TX. Whew.
If you’ve got an extra minute to spend, check out the site of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, MS. It’s a fabulous museum, built with my dad’s help, honoring a fabulous artist.
Getting Bolder with Flowers
I made this flower study during a recent workshop with Duane Keiser. He plopped the vase down on the table one hour before the session was to end and suggested we paint quickly! I was slinging and slapping that paint around like mad. I completed it in the allotted hour. Actually, it’s more accurate to say I ‘stopped’ at the end of the hour! Duane encouraged me to go for the bright blue background — which the composition had in ‘real life’. I was about to tone it down to something insipid. I’m glad I followed his advice!
Red Roses & Frilly Purple Things
A Spring Bouquet ~~ Painting Flowers
I’ve never had a ‘comfy’ relationship with painting flowers. Like to look at ’em but shudder when I think about trying to paint them. I’m going to post one of my efforts here and will post some others as the days go by.
This one says ‘spring’ to me.
Yellows & Pinks for Spring
Now paint some striped fabric!
Danni upped the anty with her next assignment: paint striped fabric so that the stripes drape properly with the twists and folds of the material, with shadows etc.
I didn’t want to be boring with two simple pieces of material. So I composed a still life with a red and white striped towel, topped by a bottle of red wine, standing next to a bottle of sparkling water, atop a green and white striped towel. I thought of it as a ‘Face Off’.
Rubber Ducky in Gouache and iPad
While in Maine, Ceci and I stayed in an aging (i.e., inexpensive) resort hotel which had a beautiful waterfront view. Another delight (for me, anyway — Ceci thought I was a bit nuts) was a cute little rubber ducky. I couldn’t resist positioning him here, there, and everywhere around the room for a series of silly photos. Later at home, I memorialized him again by painting him in gouache and on the iPad. Here are the paintings, followed by some photos:
I’m nuts!
love that fish pose!
Selected poses.
Paint the Kitchen Table. Paint the Kitchen Sky.
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.