Painting #287 - Nov 7 - Such a busy day, getting lots done and SWMWS meeting tonight

Well, I knew I was going to have to be organized today, I forgot to go the the meeting last month because I was working in the studio and lost track of what day it was, I have a backup plan for today, my friend Carol is supposed to call and remind me at about 4:00 this afternoon, I do remember today though, but just in case I do get engrossed, she'd better still call me, I'm heading over to the studio now to work up a painting for the Arts Alive display, the theme this time is Eat Drink and be Merry, I have an idea, but I may not get it done today, we'll see, hopefully I will manage to come up with something unique.

The painting for today was a demonstration for the Thursday watercolor group, they are trying to get some Christmas cards done and Pat was trying to paint this one so I demo'd it, I changed it up quite a bit, I didn't want it to be the exact same, I decided to put the sun in, obviously this is early morning, and cold, brrrrrrr! I used the basic formula that she was working on but I decided to make the snow reflect the color of the early sunshine and to put the sun in the picture and to blur out the trees right in front of it. I also put in some extra branches and left out some things, so this has become my painting, I like this little painting and I hope you do too.

Painting #286 - Nov 6 - A beautiful day, sunshine and warm

I was beautiful out today, it would have been a great day to paint outside, well, I didn't manage that, it is Sunday, after all, and the day that I spend with my Husband (all except when I have to paint my blog painting), since I don't want to spend a great deal of time painting. We usually do our shopping on Sunday, and then, sometimes we go out to eat, which we did today. I kind of keep it simple when I'm trying to spend some time with my hubby, so I pick a simple subject that can get done in a reasonable amount of time, thus, I chose flowers, I'm well acquainted with flowers, being a china painter, I've been painting them for over 30 years, there are several that I can just paint without reference material, I have painted iris without reference material, but today I did have a photo today, I love iris, and I love the rich color of this one, the sunlight made the highlights blue, I decided to stylize this one and to make it stand out, the contrast had to be stark, instead of dark, I decided to go white, since the flower was really dark.

I started out with just painting the underneath color, what you could call the middle value of this wine colored iris, I used orange and a red violet to make the body color, since the purple of this one was muted. I then put in the leaf shapes, and I liked the way it looked, so, I left the background white. I used the periwinkle blue for the blue highlights, and then, I added the Lucas color, Neutral Tint to darken the purple to make the darks, I really like this little painting, and I hope you do too.

Painting #285 - Nov 5 - Two days in a row of portrats

I didn't intend to paint this little girl two times, well, actually 3 times, you saw her a couple weeks ago, but today's painting was started yesterday, it's the one I started on paper and then decided to do one on claybord, so I was getting my things around to paint this afternoon, and that paper portrait was laying on top of my photo's and grabbed my attention, before you know it, my brush was in my hand and I was working on it again. Well, I couldn't stop, it just became my today's blog painting, it's slightly different from yesterdays, this one, she was looking down, the thing that put me off yesterday was that the shading on the face is so flat, but, today it didn't seem to make me crazy, I just kept painting, and smoothing, and painting and smoothing, this is a very similar process that I do when I'm working with my pastels, I don't think I can do the transparent watercolors doing portraits because I have to make so many corrections, I even had to make some corrections tonight after I thought it was done, I decided to take a photo of the painting with the photo I used, when I looked through the camera, the face was too wide, so I trimmed it up, I'd have a hard time explaining what I did, mostly because I kept working back and forth, when you work with opaques, you think it light enough and then you have to constantly make adjustments to lighten it up when it's dry, which sometimes work and sometimes don't, the reason for that is that the paint looks the right value when you're painting it, then it dries darker, I like this little painting now and I hope you do too.

Painting #284 - Nov 4 - An Unusual day, good but unusual

The portrait that I did a little over a week ago is gone, well, it was a commission, it took me a long time to get into it, I started it 3 times, not counting the 4th, which was quite a job, worked on it all day a week ago Wednesday, but it got done, I worried that she would think it was too dark and fussed about it for a over a week, but she liked it, said it looked like her, well, she also said it was big, I guess she was expecting one of my 6" x 6", she bought a 10" square frame to put it in and it was matted to 11" x 14", so, she had this frame and now I am doing another portrait of her grandchild, well, I don't know what got into me, I just felt like painting that portrait, I worked on it for several hours, I started it twice, once on paper, but I didn't like that pose, so, I started this one, it's on claybord, it's 5" x 5", the frame she bought had a wonderful mat already in and we might as well use that, it's going to really look nice in that frame and I will put it in the frame for her since I brought it home. I knew I'd have trouble making it smooth enough, and it does look just a little blotchy to me, but, that was what I managed today, I'm tired, and need to get to bed so I'm going to make this short, I really need to start these major projects earlier so I don't make this blog operation so late, well, I like this little painting and I hope you do too.

Painting #283 - Nov 3 - got lots done but little to show for it.

Class day today in Marshall, it always starts out with china painting class, I really didn't get to paint much but I got a plate measured out for a very complicated design, and it took quite a while, hopefully it will be wonderful when it's done, when I do get it done, maybe I'll show you.

Then, we have watercolor class in the afternoon, well, I got 3 started, but nothing finished, mostly because I was demonstrating quite a lot, showing them how I would do it, that really helps them figure out how to proceed. Well, since I didn't finish in the afternoon, I had to work on it during my evening class, which didn't start out too well (painting wise that is), I did a lot of talking, and so did they. Well, finally I decided to jump on these California poppies (which really makes it 4 paintings I started today, and only finished one, oh well, they will get done another day).

They can be many colors, usually you think of them as being a simple little orange flower, but, these were pink, white, orange, and yellow, I did have fun painting them, once I figured out what to paint, they went fairly quickly, good thing or I'd still be painting, took me about an hour and 15 min., but I got one done, that's what counts. I just got out the indian yellow and and some cadmium orange, I got some permanent rose and some of the Jauan Brilliant #1, I just painted in the flowers and then went in with some green for the background, the leaves of these flowers are very fern like, so I tried to indicate that without too much detail, I like this little painting and I hope you do too.

Painting #282 - Nov 2 - It was a very nice day

I'm going to make this short, I'm a bit late getting to Blue Moon, haven't heard from them to say it wasn't going, so I guess I'm just a bit late then, so this will be quick. I kind of decided on this, one reason is that it is Fall and that time of year, but I have been intrigued by the misty quality of these fall photo's, this may not show that as much as I intended, but I think it works.

I always start with the sky, I laid in a quick wash of the tree colors, yellow and orange at the top and kind of a purple gray to indicate the tree branches far away, then some green and yellow, then I put in the foreground green and yellow ochre, when that was dry, I put in the fence posts, and the tree, I decided to try to enhance it with a bit of pastel, I did rub it in quite a bit, so it's very smooth, I finished off by darkening the shadows under the fence posts and the gate, I like this little painting and I hope you do too, got to go, it's Blue Moon night.

Painting #281 - Nov 1 - It's another pink day

I think this one is the pinkest, literally, it's so pink it's day-glow. A few months ago, I ordered some paint, a new brand that I hadn't heard of before, when the box came, the total contents of this box were covered with this day-glow hot pink, you can't imagine how awful this looked, luckily, all the stuff was wrapped in plastic, so nothing was ruined, what happened was that the shipping company had delivered the box upside down, and the paint was on the top, well, the hot pink tub ruptured and, evidently, the box was heavy enough (I had ordered a bunch of those Aquabords and Claybords for my blogging operation), that they had to roll the box instead of picking it up, which really spread the paint all over everything, the tub of paint was, of course, replaced by the Company I ordered it from, so there was a bit left in the tube, and now I have another tube, well, this paint is so hot and bright that this is the first painting that I used it on, but it's perfect for this painting, the light was so bright and it showed through the petals which made them glow, wow, it really made these petals pop, now, I'll have to figure out something else to use this color with, it's even more intense than Holbine's Opera, and that's pretty intense.


The first thing I did with this is draw the shape of the flowers, I just didn't want to rely on getting the shapes right just jumping in with the paint. then I just painted a layer of Flamingo pink (a Cheap Joe's paint - American Journey) and a bit of yellow for the throats, I also used a purple (reddish) that I don't know what the company is, and a bit of periwinkle blue (another Cheap Joe's American Journey paint), then the green was a mixture. I decided to put a purple/gray mix in the background, which was flat at first, when I got the flowers the way I wanted them I decided to lighten the background a bit in the upper right corner, mostly so I could darken the other corners up to make the flowers pop, then I went in with some green and some darker purple to indicate that it was among a bunch of these (Snap Dragons if you couldn't tell), and it's looks good to me, I like this little painting and I hope you do too.