Painting #103, very interesting day

What a day, I've had a very interesting afternoon and evening, the studio called my name about 12:30 and I've been at it pretty much since, it's 10:45 p.m. and I just got in with my new painting, I cut mats, again, and sorted through a bunch of old class projects, cropped paintings, coated paintings with gesso (only the ones that were not interesting enough to fix up), I still have a few to do, but all in all I think it was a great day.

I've decided that I must clean up some of the class project paintings that have been in my bag for months, if not years, I'm really good at starting them, and unless it really grabs me, I'm bad about finishing them. I cropped a bunch, this painting is one that I worked on at Blue Moon about a year ago, after we watched a Shirley Travena video, I don't know how she does it (Shirley, that is), but I love her stuff, even after watching the video, I can't do it.

We put up a bunch of little objects (they were all Susan's, since we were at Susan's house), when Shirley starts some paintings (sometimes she does this to get inspiration or just to practice), she picks up each item one at a time and turns it and looks at it and starts painting while it's in her hand, so we decided to do that too. Tonight when I was working on this painting (it originally started out 1/4 turn counter clockwise, it was a vase with flowers but, a totally different vase than the one you see), I was painting some leaves, and turning my painting, when the blue dish (it wasn't blue at the time, it was white), and the vase jumped out at me, I believe I found a much better composition, I really like this one, I couldn't leave my hands off it. I added another pitcher, and the brush was sitting there waiting for me to paint it. I had a blue blob in the middle of the table, and decided to make it sunglasses. This painting is quite a different approach than my usual style, but a lot of fun, I really like this painting, and hope you do too.

Painting 102, a bit late today

I didn't accomplish much of anything today, family stuff going on and the Coldwater Art Walk tonight, of which I had to man the refreshments table at the Tibbits, we had our South West Michigan Watercolor Show going on at the same time and we were having a little reception besides that, so I didn't get to my painting until after I got home, then had to eat, so there goes some time, and you name it, I can come up with any excuse as to why I didn't get my painting done, it is technically tomorrow, except that I didn't go to bed yet so I'm not counting it as tomorrow, I'm counting it as today, Friday, so you will get to see Saturday's tomorrow, lol.

I spent about 2-1/2 hours on this one, I think I managed to do a pretty good job of the cow, he wasn't in the photo, well, as a matter of fact, I couldn't find the photo, I did this mostly out of my head, originally I had the sky dark for a night sky, but I decided that the cow would be sleeping so I decided to put it in the daylight, this picture is so not like the photo, it's almost out of my head, well, that's not all bad, anyway, I ramped up the barn, it was a brown barn and I decided that the barn should have some color in it, especially behind the holstein (my husband says I should just say black & white, as I'm unsure of the real spelling, oh well) cow, I had to look up a picture of a cow, since I'm not a country girl and cows are kind of like aliens to me, but I like cows, so, I thought this painting needed something as a focal point, so the cow went in. my fence posts were too short for a cow pen, so I made those longer, so, here is today's painting, it's a lot less complicated than the last couple days were. but that's the way it goes some days, I like this painting, and hope you do too.

Painting #101, thinking gets you in trouble sometimes

Thought this one would be fairly easy, so, I decided to give it a try, I love the play of light on all the foreground objects, I did really well with the milk can, and the fence wasn't a problem, but I sure did have trouble with that tractor tire. Thought it would be so easy since it was just put in the shadows, well, don't know how I did, but I messed up on the tire treads right away. I struggled to get them right and they aren't totally right yet, but it's as close as I can get it. I think it looks fairly well, but I don't think I'll do a tractor tire like this one again. I do like it though.

I coated this paper with gesso at the same time I did the one I painted yesterday, it is done with the opaques, primarily translucently, but I did get into the opaques pretty heavy right at the end, I put in the trees in back and the grass, I painted around the fence and tire and then when that was dry, I started with the pale wash on the milk can and the tire then the fence, the detail was done at the end, the grasses and putting in the wires and tree branches in the back, then in the front I put in some weeds.

I love the composition and the eclectic collection of items. I did not pose this, this was taken on a photo trip with my friend in Indiana. She had a workshop at her home, one where she organized where we would go to take pictures, and we found this one by accident, after we took the photo's, we went back to her studio and painted one of the photo's we took, well, this one has been in my computer for a while, and I keep looking for something new and unusual to paint, well, today I decided that this one would be a good one, I do think it is, but it sure wasn't easy, but when things are easy, it doesn't necessarily mean that it will be a success, and, on the other hand, when it hard it doesn't mean that it will be a success either, so you will have to decide, do you like it or not, I do, and I sure hope you do too.

PAINTING 100! Wow, thought I'd never make it.

Another good day today, although I didn't get as much done as I intended, do you ever? I always think I can get more done than I really can, the only time that really gets tough is when you have a deadline and you wait until the last minute to do it, which I'm very good at. Or, I always underestimate how much time it will really take me to do it, always fun, oh well, hard to change old habits.

It was Blue Moon night, I took all my stuff to work on my blog painting (I didn't get to the painting until I got to Blue Moon), but, I didn't paint on what I thought I would, my dear friend Carol brought a basket of Pansies, so I really got excited to paint the flowers, I had planned on a landscape, but the flowers were a big pull. I really enjoyed these flowers, it was like painting plein air, I decided to not draw the pansies and just jumped in with the color, the first one I laid in was the white one, a bit difficult, if you think about it, white on white, but I got some very pale blue and added a bit of yellow ocher so it wasn't the same color all over for the shadows, then I started with the burgundy flower at the bottom, the one all folded up, and that was a lot of fun, so I just kept going until I had the burgundy ones all on the right side, then I decided to start adding green, I painted a light layer, trying not to fill the whole space in, I skipped around and made little lines and so on, so it would have spaces and character. then I decided to put the bud in on the left (you almost can't see it) and the purple ones at the top, then, I decided to start to fill in some negative spaces with a darker green and pick out stuff that was behind by painting it negatively, a tricky process, if you have't practiced, but it's one of the things I love, so I just moved around and picked up some darker colors where it was needed and I called this one done, it took about 2-1/2 hours, more or less, and I love it, hope you do too.

Painting #99, a wonderful day

I really got enthused about today's painting, I think part of it is because I prepared this board a few days ago, I, in my ignorance, purchased a couple of sheets (30" x 40")of illustration board, hot pressed, I thought I was getting hot pressed watercolor board, sending it back was more trouble than it was worth. When I first got it I attempted to paint on it, boy, was that a big ugly mess, well, the paint doesn't really work well on this, it's so smooth, it's even worse than using Yupo, if you can imagine that. So this is what I did, I coated it front and back with gesso. Now, you might say that painting on gesso with watercolors isn't much better, but I disagree, painting on this was almost as fun as painting on the clayboard. Now, I think I will be preparing the other boards that I have in the same manner.

I'd like to mention that this photo was taken at a workshop in Hillsdale a few years ago, I'm not sure, but I think this may be my friend Lynn's photo, I know she did a painting similar to this one, and she was much better at getting the scenes then I was, I was so wrapped up in close up for detail and I thought that I wanted to do panorama pictures, so I took lots of photo's just a little overlapping so I really appreciate Lynn sharing her photo with me.

This painting is the full 10" x 10" size, so I will have to mat and frame this one to about 16" x 16". I started it by sketching the rough shapes, I wanted to make sure that I left the figures unpainted since I'm using a basic watercolor technique for most of this painting, it's painted with the opaque paints but translucently, I wanted to leave the whites as the unpainted, so I painted around them with the green and pink thrown in, a light color at first and then went back in with the darks to pop the whites, then I painted the path and the trees and the shadows, I was having so much fun with those figures that I really didn't want to stop for lunch, but I did, then I had to put the watercolors away and paint china, so when I got home, I finished it, this painting took me between 4-1/2 to 5 hours to finish, I probably won't get this detailed and this large again for a while, I can't afford to spend that much time on one painting, but this was a lot of fun, I hope you like it as much as I do.

Painting #98 one of my favorite places

This is from a photo taken on a trip we took to the North Shore of Lake Superior a few years ago, this is either just before Split Rock Lighthouse or just after, very close, if you've never taken that road and driven along the North Shore going out of Duluth, you will be amazed. You will find so many things to paint, falls that come right out of the rocks along the highway, and if you follow it, it goes way back, and then you come to Gooseberry Falls, wow, you will not believe that place, I just can't explain the wonder of it all. I took so many photo's that I had to get more storage space, I was using a camera that used 3-1/2" floppy's and I had 20 with me and had to buy another 20 to store all the photo's I took, and I was even downloading them onto the laptop as we went, all I can say is, you should go see it for yourselves.

This painting is done with the opaques, but I painted it on paper, so the sky and water were wet in wet, I tried to add the far coast line with the darker blue, but it melted together too much, so after I got the trees in I went in with wet on dry and added another small strip to indicate the coast. I waited for that to dry and then painted the headland in the middle, I fine tuned that before I went into the trees in the foreground, then the reflection, after that was dry, I painted leaves on the foreground trees, opaque Naples Yellow then some burnt sienna to add the brownish look to the leaves and some green, then I fine tuned the tree trunks, once that was done, I jumped into the foreground brush and got that looking good, I like this little painting, and sure hope you do too.

Painting #97 and a second one too (very small)

Today's paintings are fairly simple, by the time I got to painting today I hadn't much time, I spent the morning cutting those mats, and as a result, my shoulder hurts, shouldn't do so many at one time, but I don't have much room, and the mat cutter is big and heavy, I teach china painting classes on Thursday's, so I have to keep putting it up and down off the table, it would sure be nice not to have to lift it on and off the table, maybe someday. the first one I did is just a little landscape, I got a sample of textured clayboard in the mail a couple years ago, didn't know if I liked it then, I found it a few weeks ago and decided to paint something on it, may as well use it, it's only about 2-1/2" x about 4", so you see, pretty small. I started this at one of our Blue Moon gatherings, but never finished it, so decided to give it a try today, hope you like it.

Now, that was just a small thing, so I started this other painting, the one I'm calling #97, yesterday, I actually started another one too, but I didn't have time to work on that one, maybe I'll get it tomorrow, but, on with this one, This little ditch was taken on a trip we took to our friends home in Gillman, Illinois, it's a very small place but big farms, you could go for miles and miles and see just little tiny houses on the left, and then maybe on the right, way far away, and very flat. Anyway, they took me on a photo expedition while we were there and I got lots of farm stuff, you've seen a couple, the cows 5 or 6 weeks ago and the barn doorway, just a couple, I have some other photo's that you will probably see too.

This is one that I really liked because of the water and the ditch and I just liked the composition and simplicity of it, the sky was wet in wet, I added opaque white for clouds and then dashed a bit of purple with brown in it for under the clouds, I put in far away trees and painted around the small shed there in the background, the rest was just the green, I left the water in the ditch for later, when the green was dry, I put the blue in for the water, and then I filled in the pile of rubble (I'm presuming that it is either a fence row or junk they took out of the ditch), then I put darker green to indicate the ditch sides and then the grasses in the foreground and the bushes. I fine tuned the shed and then spattered a bit in the foreground and put some branches on the bush and called it done, I like this painting, and hope you do too.