I entered a competition!

Ok, here is a picture of me back in my 30's, it's an old headshot.
No, I'm not saying what year it was. Sometime in the 1980's.
The important stuff:
Well, I finally did it, I entered the monthly BoldBrush competition online. It is through FIneArtViews. The basket of lemons picture is the entry, and I titled it "Lemonade-to-be".
This is a juried competition, but aside from that, visitors to the site can vote for the pictures they like (yeah, here it comes) Up on the right side of this page is the picture, you can (pretty please) click there and it will take you to the competition and you could (wheedling tone) vote for me? It won't give me any prizes, but it would feel wonderful! My picture is a watercolor and the judges tend to be oil painters and select the same to win, but it still is exciting to be entered in a competition!

Last Sunday Florence, a friend from church gave me the most beautiful tomatoes! I started the painting that afternoon, after eating the smallest one in a salade, That's why I call this one "Vine Ripened Tomatoes." MMMM!




Then there is "Greek Offering," A challenge set by RookiePainter. That was a real challenge. Because of the smooth texture of the black vase I pulled out some Arches 140lb hot press paper. It is really smooth and I seldom use it because it doesn't absorb very fast. I found I need to practice with that paper more! Then the poor vase. It's lines are so smooth and I'd have little bobbles on the edges. I had to stop correcting because the vase was going to start getting bigger!









Then the boats. I remembered some time as a kid sitting in a boat on a pier or dock and pretending I was sailing off to adventure. (Except that other boat sitting across my bows!) It doesn't look very colorful, but I was thinking the adventure, the color, was all in my mind. I think I'll try it again, it intrigues me. I used to dream of sailing the South Pacific on a copra boat. Later, when I could read, I found out what copra was. Not very romantic stuff.

This picture makes me long for color. Back to the studio. I'm out of tomatoes, I think it will have to be apples!

Catching up on Challenges or never too late to learn how

A lot of painting has been going on since my mic went on the blink! It's been great though, I had a back log of challenges that, although too late to send in, were well worth doing. Here is one from "Paint and Draw Together," three figs (8X11), which was in time, and two from "Rookie Painter." I now need to do the current one from "Rookie Painter" and get it sent in (both are 8X11). They really do fulfill the term "Still Life" don't they. They are things that are alive, and yet they sit so nice and still while you paint them. Since these came to me as photos, I don't get to eat them, but I'll live.

Right now I have a still life set up that I've been wanting to do for a bit. It's a couple of old kitchen crocks from my grandmother, the shell I did a few days ago and this interesting square bottle I rescued from the kitchen of the office where I used to work. It was in the back of a cupboard and no one could remember what the stuff had been. Bingo, now it's posing for a portrait! I have it all sketched in, so now I'm off to the studio to mix colors.

Love to all!

A few small ones

Good afternoon! Yesterday was a long one in the studio. I did some final touches on somethings and started more. One is the lighter pink rose here. It's one of the ones I photoed in the garden. It's 12X8, but I think I'll crop it a bit. The other rose was a smaller picture for practice, about 4X8. The shell is a pretty little thing, A 4X6, the smallest Canson block I've found. I have a few shells around, some I found on beaches and some were given to me. This one is a lovely, delicate one with a world of detail. The shell is only about 3 1/2 inches long and the prettiest shell pink inside. I may do a series on my shells, they are intriguing to really look at closely. I hadn't done that for a while.

The world around us is so full of loveliness!

(Hmmm, I was trying to arrange the pictures in order and they won't go. I can hear it snickering at me.) Well, The Raspberries (7X10) were done first, they kind of remind me of the fuchsia triptych I did a while back. The luscious color of the berries against the variety of greens, I think I have to go to the grocers.
The Lemons are from my tree. I thought I would call it "Pre-Lemonade" (8X10) because that's what happened to all these lemons.
Hey, there were two more pictures, where'd they go? Excuse me a moment . . . (click, click, clicketty-click) Ah, there, I loaded them again, not sure where they will end up.
The rose is from my garden, I stepped out and took a picture or two, uploaded them and then painted them, BIG, about 11X14. Sometimes roses almost paint themselves, sometimes they are rather ephemeral. Some of it is knowing when to STOP. Now there's a challenge.
Speaking of challenges, the little ducky (8X10) was a photo from another blogger who offers Artists Challenges. I painted it this afternoon. I think it's well past the deadline for the challenge, but it was worth trying once I got started. What a soft, downy coat, and babies always have that fresh innocence that you want to preserve in the world.

And High Time Too!

OK, at the top we have an old one I'd almost forgotten about. It's the rose in the bud vase. It was done in class and we were learning more about wet into wet backgrounds and glass. The rose was supposed to be red, but it, well the background would just eat it, so I squinted at it and decided a nice bright golden yellow would show better.




The landscape is after a woman artist from the early part of this century. Abby Williams Hill was a California painter (oils) and this is Laguna Niguel before Hollywood changed southern California. In fact this is quite a ways south of L.A. but it is built up now. I spent a lot of time this spring painting the mustard bloom here in northern California, and I loved her portrayal of it down south. My watercolor version (this is the "can't leave well enough alone" part) didn't have the, well, in acting it would be called "Presence", that her's had. So I just kept fiddling with it until I ended up with a storm coming. I had seen something like this and as I was developing the shadowing in the distance, the storm was just sort of born. So, my thanks to Ms. Hill for the inspiration! It's 11X14 inches too, it felt wonderful to work larger again. Things were starting to get pinched looking. That's what happens when I focus too much on detail for too long and work small.

I had taken a look again at the Lone Cypress picture and, although it shows the crystalline atmosphere there was that day (very rare), I keep wondering if I should have worked bigger and softer. Or am I second guessing my second guesses?

The fish picture is here again because I took a better photo of it, I hope.

Once more with feeling!

Lately I've painted a lot with which I was not too pleased. Don't worry, they are not going on line. The backs can be used to try again.
When things sometimes are not turning out as one has hoped there are a number of things to which one should resort. I start Spiritually. It's as basic as you can get, like "centering," it's the time to reaffirm Love. Then I might just paint a pear. This time I added an apple. They are about 8X8" watercolors. I layered them with color endlessly to build glazes. The background ended up so dark, for the signature, instead of painting it I removed paint. That felt better.
I'm going to offer these at about half price, $110.00 each, as a pair.
For sometime I've been wanting to take a drive up to Sonoma for a visit and some painting, but I have had trouble prying myself out of the house. It's an old habit from when I had to be here if I wasn't in the office or the grocery store. Part of that Spiritualizing of my thinking freed me from a "captive" thought. I painted the fish in the previous post, got the scheduled maintenance done on the car and headed out to the vineyards yesterday!
It was wonderful, nice cool breeze, bright sun, fresh air, all the good stuff. A perfect painting day. I sketched most of the day, but there were distractions. The plaza in Sonoma is a lovely place and truly the center of the town's activity. I relaxed and snapped pictures and sketched the ponds and enjoyed myself. Traffic can be more of a parking lot between there and my home, so I delayed going home quite a while.
Well, that was an extra good thing too. A farmers market (perfect for an agricultural area) etc. set up about 6PM on the drive in front of the old City Hall in the middle of the plaza. So...I got tomatoes and onions, then I sat down and enjoyed the live music. While I was just sitting there happy as a clam, a lady walked by who had just bought a big bouquet of flowers and she gave me one, right out of the blue! What a perfectly lovely gesture! Love is reflected in Love. This sweet gesture lingers as I look at this pretty salmon/magenta zinnia today.
A bit later I moseyed (well, waddled) back to the car (right at the plaza) and drove home. I missed the bad traffic and got home in good time. Dinner was some nuked leftovers, Nova, and some more painting. Heaven. I wish all of you the same.

Using magazine photos

This is a little guy I found in National Geographic from last January(2010). There is a whole article on clownfish with wonderful pictures. In one of my rare streamlining binges I pulled the pages out that I wanted and recycled the rest without getting the photographers name! My apologies to that artist. They were amazing. It brought back lots of memories of diving in the waters around Okinawa too. Tropical fish in the wild can be so much bigger than the ones in the tanks.
Anyway, I used the full page of the largest Arches block for this, it didn't feel right to do my usual small format. The results are that it's too big to fit in my scanner so I snapped it with flash and downloaded it. It's taped to the front of a frame that was on sale at Michael's that looks like will fit OK. I noted the source with my signature, but I'll have to do some research to get the actual name of the photographer. I should because I'm going to have to paint some more of those amazing photos!
The background on this is very subtle, providing perfect contrast to my finny friend, but it doesn't photograph too well. At least by yours truly. I ended up using little more than a "dirty water" wash for most of them, some orangish to catch the reflection and others blueish for contrast. Like Christmas in Thailand!
ADDENDUM: Got it, the photographer is David Doubilet.

A Challenge, with a do-over

Here is one of the first challenges I ever did. I just discovered "challenges" this spring. The pale one was first, and the most realistic. It was a pale photo, and it was an interesting challenge to match the qualities of the photo. But then, remember that "she can't leave well enough alone" thing I have going? I wanted more color, and to crop it a bit, tweak it. So I did. Not very adventurous perhaps, but it felt good.

Take Time for Art, Monday is for Marketing!

Hello everybody, what a beautiful morning. The only thing missing to make it perfect is I haven't picked up a brush yet. I have been loading pictures into etsy for sale, then realizing I hadn't watermarked them, so I am in the midst of going back and fixing that. Ah, this time saving device, the computer! I spend a lot of time on this thing. Especially for something that saves time. Anyway, here is a painting of the mustard bloom in the Napa/Sonoma area of California (9X12 inches). I finished up toward evening, but the tree shadow seems to be hung up around noon. I'll have to fix that.
The vase was fun, practice for painting glass and crystal. It's 5.5X6.5 inches.

Well, I have some poppies waiting for me in the studio. When I've watermarked the pictures listed on etsy, I can get out there and put brush to paper and be Smil'in! Love to all!