"Blue Sax" is IN!

I got the word yesterday, "Blue Sax" has been accepted for the show! Yippee. Now, I've got to get ready for a couple of other local shows coming up. What to choose, what to choose? Or what's framed, What's framed?

Art of the Blues II, Jazz and Blues Festival

Blue Sax, 8X10 Acrylic

This is from a photo by Lee Brown, he posted it last year for an artist challenge. I have wanted to do it for a long time and I kept picturing it as a study in blue. The announcement of the art show to accompany the Festival here gave me the perfect opportunity to give it a try.

It was tempting to use watercolor, but I kept thinking of oils. So, after some graphite sketching and then studies in Pentel pens in 5 shades of gray, I finally got up the nerve to put brush to canvas. Of course I waited so long that oils would never dry, so it ended up in acrylics.
I've submitted it for jurying, so wish me luck that it will be accepted.

My nephew likes to hang off the side of mountains: The Edge Craigieburn

I would write something here, but I'm still a bit breathless from the ride!
Whew.

While the oils are drying...

Silly me, I have three oils going right now. When I get exasperated at one, I move to another.  There are any number that I thought were finished. I take a look at them in on the computer and OOOPs. Why didn't I see that? It's the same as stepping away for a few days. You suddenly see what it needs. At least some of what it needs. That can be exasperating, but revealing.

Taking a break while pictures dry, I picked up the pen and ink. I need practice in portraiture, and there's so much to learn. (To cheap broke to pay for classes) Or something. Not wanting to offend anyone, or make them sit still, I thought of trying photographs of long gone composers. These tend to be old and grainy, to simplify values and shapes. They also tend to have lots of character in their faces.  So far I've done about eight, but these two are the only ones that anyone will see:

Toscanini 5X7

Tchaikovsky

You should see Rimsky-
Korsakov. Well, no you
shouldn't. He looks like
a walrus in my version.
"Do over!"

I feel especially embarrassed about Bernstein, he's a handsome man and I grew up on his wonderful music. OK, that's another do-over.





Last weekend was really cool. On Saturday there was an Artists Flea Market in Pleasanton. I also did some painting, it's a very picturesque town.
After church on Sunday a ran back to finish up and take a picture with the light "just right" (I forgot on Saturday). On the drive back I passed through Sunol, another painters dream, and decided to paint some more. There was a group of painters on the street! I parked nearby and painted a different scene.
For lunch I waddled across the street to pick up a sandwich and soda, passing near the group of painters. I thought I recognized one. Yep, I stopped and said a brief hello to Mark Monserrat! He was working with this group! They all had great pictures going too! He's an upper level instructor at San Francisco's Academy of Art University. I've been there(she bragged...as a model).

Back again, formats keep changing!

All at once scanning a picture has become an ordeal. HP Devices can't find the HP scanner. The scanner can't find the computer, but when I Print it finds it, no problem. Unless I go through the System Preferences and choose the Printer/Scan and go through a guessing game of which will work this time and how to get it into iPhoto once I finally get it into Photosmart. Sheesh. And now the format for blogspot has changed. Oh give me patience and persistence!

Light & Color, 5X8 Pen & Ink

(Heavy sigh of relief) I was able to actually find the two scans I managed and upload them. Maybe it's time for a little workshop in how this new system works. This is a Pen and Ink from a little challenge by Light & Color (or vice-versa) found through David Lobenberg's blog. An interesting challenge, too bad it isn't plein air.

Peony, 5X8

Here is the other item I was able to upload. a close up of a peony. I wish I could grow these! We don't have the right climate, I'd have to refrigerate the plane for a a certain number of weeks. Can you imagine trying to extract the butter by reaching around a peony?

OK, I need a nap, and the laptop battery is running low. And it's time for lunch! Then I'll visit all my favorite blogs again and see what everybody else has been doing!
Love to all.

Forgive the delay, been painting...

Ok, Ok, but it's plein air season! When it isn't raining I try to work outside, so, I've been doing a lot of work in the studio. (Sigh) Mostly it's been oil and acrylic, and I have not mastered the art of photographing shiny pictures without getting a flash on them.

Winter - Acrylic 12X16

Now, this h'yar paintin'. . . (cough, wheeze, sorry) This picture is one of a set of Four Seasons to-be. In earlier blogs I have posted Autumn and, well, early Summer. It's not quite finished yet.

North Coast, 6X8 Acrylic

Well, always practicing. The clouds came out OK. The rest needs work. Or not.

With flash.

Bottles, 8X10 Acrylic, no flash

Here's what happens when you try to photograph a shiny picture. This is "source unknown." I think I got a photo somewhere on the web, so I can't give the attribution. Ooops. But it was good practice, I wanted to paint something dark.

Fogged in Fishing Fleet, watercolor

I just got this framed. This is a much bigger piece than usual. I painted it in 2010, but it took forever. Sometimes watercolor is NOT fast. To get the fog effect I ended up doing washes, layer after layer of white, with a little Designer Gouache in it, then lifting it back off in certain places for depth. Sheesh. I was painting it for my brother, and about then he announced he didn't want me giving him paintings for his birthday or Christmas. It seems he figured his walls were already full. What can you do. You'd have to know him.
Well, today's his birthday, and I decided to give him a really big card. In a frame. (schnert, schnert)

Carquinez Straits, 8X10 oil

This is a plein air I started last summer but couldn't finish. This week I dug out the photos I took that day, brushed on a little linseed and went at it again. I have decided it's finished. Ta-Da!

On the Square, Sonoma 6X8 oil

 This too was started late last year, and last week I dug this out too, brushed on the linseed and played with it. The proportions are all wrong, but I've decided to pull out my "Artistic License" and use it.

Garin Pond, 6X8 oil

This is plein air, it's up the hill from my house. After a demo recently by Mark Monserrat, I started experimenting with a limited palette. This came out heavy on the blue-green side. I think it needs more reflections of the darkest of the yellower greens in certain trees to give it better balance. Hey, I think my trees and shrubs are looking less like fluffy balls and more like vegetation! Oh, I forgot, I still need to put in trunks and branches. I'd better do that first and see how it affects the color scheme. Or is it theme?

Work in Progress, 7X14 oil

This is just getting started. It's Coyote Hills Regional park. I went to a Paint Out there last year and this is a view I photographed but had not painted yet.

OK, that's what I've been up to since the last time I posted. I hope to get back to being more frequent.

New Tools, New models

I'm Baa-aack! I was house-sitting (and kitty-sitting) this last week. It was an opportunity to try out some new tools I bought (Moleskin 5X8 journal, Tombow Dual pens, Faber-Castell 8 set). Everybody was right about the Moleskin journal, no bleed through, good quality, handy size.

It is quite a while since I had the extended opportunity to sketch kitties from life, and I tried to make the most of it. These two are older, so they slept a lot, also very good for me. Most of the pictures probably look like balls of fur. If I got the fur right. The 1st ones are raggedy looking because I was finding my way with the new pens and getting to know Miss Rusty Ginger and Mr. Bubby the calico.
So here they are, the "all-levels" attempts"

My first attempt with the Tombow Dual pens. I didn't try the "blending" bit just yet, I was trying to get familiar with the kitties at this time. Miss Ginger is the rusty one, Mr. Bubby is the calico. I did him with the Faber-Castell pens, trying different sizes and tips.

 These two are Bubby napping. One is the early morning nap and the other is the mid-morning nap. I know, it's hard to tell sometimes.
These are water colors done at the kitchen table looking toward the backyard through the windows.

This could also be titled "Elevenses with Bubby" the tea cup lives on the window sill, but it looks a little like a tea break, right? Bubby is sweet and plump and loves to be petted, he also knows where the light shows him off at his best!

 This is Miss G on her favorite pillow in the living room. She is a tiny lady who was rescued. She had belonged to some neighbors that moved. As I understand it, they didn't abandon her, she got out and they couldn't find her, eventually they had to go. She tried living wild for a while, but it wasn't working out. Finally she was pretty frazzled and my friend was able to lure her in and adopt her. She checked out as still healthy, just in a bad state, and she has been coddled and petted until she is doing quite well now in her new home. She still likes to play, which exasperates Bubby a bit because he seems to feel beyond that sort of thing.
This is also with the Tombow Dual pens, using an aqua brush pen to blend and soften. I think I'm getting the hang of it somewhat.

This is a watercolor also done at the kitchen table. No cats this time, I was trying for the florals and this oval watering can. It was a gorgeous sunny day and the house was full of light.

Here are some more studies of Miss G with the Tombow pens. Origianlly I hadn't tried any blending with these but went back later and played with it a little. These poses were on the large round dog bed as she drifted off to cat-nap land.

 Two more of Bubby with the Fabe-Castell pens, no blending. He is a black and white calico so it works pretty well. I may come back and add the delicate pink inside the ears.

The same medium again. The eyes are surrounded with black, not white, but I was concerned about getting it too dark and losing the location of the eyes. For this it might be good to have some of the gray pens for hi-lights.

This is two studies. Bubby is one, of course, and the other is a potted plant in the living room. I didn't want to waste the page and I had no cats in view at the moment. These were the new .30 rapidograph.

Bubby Sleeping

 This was the Rapidograph too. I had a .25 I was learning to use. I loved it and treated it right. Except if you drop it and it land point first on the floor, there is no recovering it. The point broke off. My Bad. So I ordered this one and started in sketching right away. I got the whole shoott'n match too, the right ink, the disk for disassembling and the cleaning kit. It's worth it. I love this pen. The .30 is not noticeably larger in sketching than the .25, but it tends to scratch the paper less. Or I am learning how to use it better. Take your pick. Either way I LOVE IT.

 This is Miss G sleeping again on her favorite pillow up on the back of a chair. It's the new Rapidograph, of course. There is something calming about a sleeping cat. Miss G seems like a kitten because she is so small, but she is actually very much a mature cat. I refuse to say "old."

Studies of both

Here are both of them on the same page. I drew her on her throne-pillow, then there was plenty of room to do another of Bubby, too.

It was a great week, and plenty of time to practice on drawing from life. The pictures started out a bit ragged, but I was getting more pleased with them by the end of the week. It was sunny all that week, but this week is rainy, so I can't go out for the plein air dates I have on my calendar. However, after these rains the country side will be wonderfully green for a bit, and I hope to be painting outside a LOT!

More pictures next time

Sorry about this, I'm in withdrawal. I'm out of town for a bit and sans scanner. It's really odd to realize how much I use the thing!

Carquinez Straits W.I.P.

Here is something I've been working on that I don't think I've uploaded yet. Probably because it's not finished. It's a 6X8 oil and I need to redo the little bridge on the side of the hill plus so many other things. I've ordered three new brushes in smaller sizes because I can't seem to get some of the smaller lines right, especially on architectural elements. Or something? As for the twin shadows under the big white bridge? If you aren't from around here, that's what it looks like. If you are, pretend you didn't see it!

A plethora of sketches

The Goose Family

Let me introduce some local friends. This was at Lake Elizabeth last year, I'd forgotten it, as I was digging around for fresh sketchbook to carry around with me I found this in a partly used one.

This a a dry river/stream bed near here. There are a lot of these right now, we are way behind on our rain. Fortunately, the rain that has missed us has floated on over and fallen as snow in the Sierra, so it will go into the watershed.

From a Lee Brown photo, w/permission

If you haven't checked out A Day Not Wasted, by all means do. The photos are wonderful, especially for painters. This is a photographer with a painter's eye! I received permission to give three recent pictures a try. My proportions are all out of whack on this sketch, but it's the first one (excuses, excuses) but I hope to do a watercolor of this. The foreground boat is a lovely turqoise against deep green pines of the Northwest forests. I'm still finding my way around this picture. The other two are seascapes, one of which I have begun in acrylic.

Les chats des Paris

This one is thanks to "Paris Through My Lens" a wonderful blog. This photographer lives in the American south but loves Paris and visits it often and takes the most atmospheric photos I've seen of it. This one is in Les Jardins du Luxembourg. Thank you Virginia for allowing me to work on this one! A tree in the foreground has been removed, artistic license. This was a test, it shows me that it will be necessary to mask the trees and wash the background in dark, then make the kitty a lot brighter tortoise shell so he/she becomes the focal point of the painting.

Two for one

Two separate sketches scanned together, lazy me. It is just sooo much more fun to draw an experienced face! Could you ever get a comparable expression on anyone under 40? No! It takes years of experience to really polish the art of expressing oneself. I got the idea from Carol Marine, on her blog she did a series of wacky faces.
The hand is a bonus, an empty page, and I have the model with me wherever I go.

Paper Work

I spent today, well, too much of it, doing the paperwork part of business. It was necessary, and the results are encouraging. However, for art I spent a long time on another sort of paperwork. The results of that have to wait, it's from some one else's photo, I've asked the photographer's permission to post it.
So for today I thought something old (last year) that I haven't posted before, and it's on PAPER!

Veggie Puzzle

This is a 12X16 watercolor of a jigsaw puzzle I used to have around here. I'm not sure if it's still around, but I loved the picture. After it was assembled. I cropped the other half of the gate, I wanted the focus on the veggies. Hmm, the low wall on the left looks odd in the photo. Not sure what happened with that. Funny how they can look different when you take a picture or scan of them. What took the longest? The gate? No. The squash? No. The radish leaves. They have been, well, you know the old saying, "try, try, again?" Well, my mom used to add,"then stop, don't make a fool of yourself." It's time to move on.