# 267: Cutie Spread

6" x 6" oil on canvas

Well this did not work out very well. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

# 266: Strawberries with Tea

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I got back to painting more of the traditional still life with objects today. Nothing much to say about this except that ellipses are a pain to paint and that capturing the surface strawberries in paint is difficult without going into detail. Strawberries are the only fruit with their seeds on the outside.

# 265: Little Bear

6" x 6" oil on canvas

No time to paint today, so instead, I did a quick re-work of an older painting. This little bear needed a some spicing up and so a bumped up the background blue and made other small changes as well.

# 264: Pile Up

6" x 6" oil on canvas

Strawberries in December are nice treat and another reason I love living in SoCal. It was a beautiful crisp sunny day today but I felt like I was sleep walking through this painting and might to adjust some things tomorrow. 

Tomorrw is here and I made some adjustments...but some paintings are just not meant to be saved .

# 263: Pepper Riot

6" x 6" oil on canvas

The feisty peppers were fun. The perspective is just a bit off and therefore bugs me...grrrr Patterned backgrounds are a good challenge and I need to work on the balance...the background should lay back a bit more.

# 262: Elegant Pears

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 261: Orange Dots

6" x 6" oil on canvas

This was a fun idea, but I quickly became obsessed with getting the perspective of the dots right and so it got a bit tight. It would give it another go, but I ate all of the tomatoes.

# 260: Onion Wheels

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 259: Pastoral Wedges

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I love painting apple wedges and should do it more often. The only problem is that they tend to brown (even though I coat them with lemon juice) and I tend to paint what I see and not what I know or want to see and so these little guys got  toned at the end.

# 258: Contented Pears

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I forgot to post yesterday and so there will be two posts today. Still pushing the color...too much?

# 257: Regal Pepper

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I am continuing my compositional studies of simple fruit and veggie arrangements. The goal is to have a bunch these to hang together on a gallery wall. Doing a series is a great way to focus on things beyond the subject matter...especially when the subject matter is so common.

# 256: Tomato Glow

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I have gotten a lot of mileage out these orange tomatoes.

# 255: Pepper Pursuit

6" x 6" oil on canvas

This one turned out a bit "pinker" than I intended. I like muted festiness though. These simple paintings are a joy to paint, but they do not tend sell well on the DPW website. I am hoping that they sell better when shown together on a gallery wall. If they do not, I will learn something. but the best lesson is that I really enjoy painting these simple grouping. I get a kick out of how one can animate and create a bit a drama with a few fruits and vegetables.

# 254: Tomato Transpostion

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I am starting on a series of arrangements of fruits and vegetables on a simple background, focusing on color and composition.  I have done similar paintings in the past and aim to do a bunch more for a gallery presentation. They are a fun and refreshing activity to engage in during the darkest time of the year and tend to be easy to accomplish during precious daylight hours.

# 253: Threes

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I got some color and composition inspiration from one of Carol Marines paintings for this. I have a tendency to get tight and so it was a challenge to stop before I tired to "fix" everything. however...now that I see it on the screen I can see  a lot that needs fixing. It is always a balancing act.

* 252: Cornered

6" x 6" oil on canvas

Oops. I forgot to post yesterday

# 251: Tomato Tango

6" x 6" oil on canvas

Painting bowls and ellipses is not an easy task and sometimes, it is only after see it on the screen that I see my mistakes with clarity. I am not sure about the composition, but something pleases me about it and I ma pretty happy with the color as well.

#250: Tangerine Striptease

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I really enjoyed working with the color palette of green, orange and purple and I am happy that some of the blue under painting survived. It started to get a little overworked at the end. I have hope that the more I paint, the more I will know when to stop and when I am not painting but merely pushing paint around. Painting is a process and needs consistent practice to develop a fresh and spontaneous painting style (my goal). Now that I have been spending mer time in front of the easel, I am feeling more confidant and I believe that it is showing.

# 249:Rodeo Pear

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 248: Ready for Sauce

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 247: Somethings Blue

8" x 5"

I haven't decided how I feel about this piece yet. Ask me next week. For now the aggravation that I went through to get it to this point is still too fresh and I can only see the things that I just couldn't quite get down in paint. The painting I ended up is far away from the one I had planned in my head. That could be part problem. I had so many ideas about what the painting should be, that it wasn't until I was entirely over it and near the point of wiping it all out, that i really started to experiment. The objective was to work on blue again....this adding more neutrals as contrast. I seem to have difficulties managing grays. Those gray areas allow for a lot of interpretation.

# 246: Blue Bird

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 245: Pig With a Purpose

9" x 6" oil on canvas

Well this was a bit of a mess. The simplicity of the surface should have been easy, but when painting porcelain, there are a lot of choices that need to be made that can get one a bit bogged down,,,which I did. it is especially difficult to decide on warm vs cool, and I tend to avoid, for some reason a neutral gray. The frontal view was also a challenge..no tricks of shape distortion and perspective to sell the form. I did enjoy the subject will try again.

# 244: Something to Crow About

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I enjoyed painting this little duo. I seem to be stuck on an avian theme lately , but never fear, tomorrow it is back to miss pig. I am happy with the way the little blue bird turned out...the Rooster? well, not as much to crow about there.

# 243: Covert Cutie

6" x 6" oil on canvas

The Cutie has been caught spying on the eggs while they have been hatching iniquitous plots. Let's just call this a play on focal point and color. Something about the balance of the piece is bugging me, but maybe the sense of imbalance just adds to the tension.

# 242: Four Eggs

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 241: Cutie Consultation

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I started of trying to avoid cutting the painting in half with an edge, but then I forgot and so there it is. I think that there is enough activity with the oranges that it is not really a problem. It might even provide some necessary stability.i have been feeling more on the ball with the painting activity these last couple of days. Working out a little color template before I start seems to help me keep the hues and values singing.

# 240: Half a Dozen

6" x 6" oil on canvas

Painting from life again. i started with a small color this time, based on the palette of a painting that I admire and i am trying to push the color and to kick up the contrast a bit.

# 239: Blue Collection

6" x 6" oil on canvas

Blue is really difficult to keep bright and saturated. I am going to Minnesota for Thanksgiving so I will not be posting for the next couple of days

# 238: Squash Huddle

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 237: Blue Marble

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I had fun with the palette and lighting, but have to confess that the little blue marble took way to long to paint!

# 236: Three Gourds

7" x 7" oil on canvas

I was inspired by the Caravaggio exhibit at LACMA and worked to push the contrast

# 235: Crab Apple Jam

8" x 8" oil on canvas

I have never seen crab apples at the market before, but they were there the other day, looking a bit irrelevant next to their more hefty cousins. When I was a little our neighbors had a crab apple tree and we used to munch them...though they are quite sour.

I haven't been painting as much as a should be lately..I was sick last week and then being unemployed sucks! The lack of structure of going to work is very difficult for me...I imagined myself doing so much painting during my tome off and it just hasn't worked out the way I imagined.

I promise to be better and to spend time perusing and commenting on other blogs as well

# 223: Oh Happy Day!

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 232: Golden Hibiscus

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I felt a little better painting this today. I have been a  bit of funk, wondering what and why and how to paint.  I have been too hard and not enjoying it very much. So with this I jsut tried to be open to creating something fresh and to capture the beauty of the paper petals. Keeping it simple.

Why do we sacrifice so much energy to our art? Not in order to teach others but to learn with them what our existence, our organism, our personal and unrepeatable experience have to give us; to learn to break down the barriers which surround us and to free ourselves from the breaks which hold us back, from the lies about ourselves which we manufacture daily for ourselves and for others; to destroy the limitations caused by our ignorance and lack of courage; in short, to fill the emptiness in us: to fulfill ourselves. Art is neither a state of the soul (in the sense of some extraordinary, unpredictable moment of inspiration) nor a state of man (in the sense of a profession or social function). Art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light. Grotowsky pages 211 – 218.

 

# 231: Three Vessals

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 230: White Zucchini

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 229: Tea Time

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 228: Four Oranges

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 227: Red Refreshments

6" x 6" oil on canvas

Working through some of the color harmonies. This one, in the split complementary range.

# 225: Shy Mandarin

6" x 6" oil on canvas

Oh how I struggled with this! My still lives have been very simple lately because I am focusing on color harmonies. Another triad, but this time of the secondary colors. It is an unusual palette for me. Even though I couldn't seem land this painting, I do enjoy the triad effect.

# 224: Katrina

12" x 9" on canvas panel

Another 3 hour session extended to a 4th hour of over-working and "fixing" without the model. Still there were some good moments. Katrina is a great model and is capable of holding a lovely S-curve for 25 minute stretches

# 223: Pomegranate and Blue

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I was out of commission for a few days with a nasty sinus infection and then proceeded to have a couple of bad painting days  (the evidence of, I choose not to share at this time) and then had a camera breakdown. Those are my excuses of not posting for almost a week.

I have been attempting to paint pomegranates and I am mystified as to why they have been causing so much anguish. They end up looking like bright red alien eggs. Anyways this one turned out OK....still a little alien, but OK.  Perhaps the triadic color harmony helped.

# 222: Blue Bottle

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I realized the other day that I hardly ever paint anything that is blue and so I decided to take on the blue glass subject again. It is difficult to keep blue fresh and bright especially in the ultramarine and cobalt range. I did enjoy the palette however and so I will give it another attempt tomorrow.

# 221: Funky Red Shoes

6" x 6" oil on canvas

These Earth shoes are hand-me-downs from a good friend of mine. They did not fit her tight, but on my feet they fit perfectly and I love wearing them.

 

My friend will be gone for three months. She is an academic and was granted a fellowship in Vienna (She is pretty smart). Anyways, I am already missing her and her family, though they only left yesterday. And so I decided to celebrate our friendship by painting her shoes.

# 220: An Earful

6" x 6" oil on canvas

A friend had given me these plaster models a couple of months ago and I though that it would be a fun and useful study since, I have trouble painting ears and noses.

Pair of Nudes

16" x 24" pastel on paper

I didn't get a chance to photograph my painting today and so posted some figure drawings instead. I practice from the live model once a week, but now that I am on sabbatical, I will be doing  a lot more drawing.

# 219: Wile E Scull

6" x 6" oil on canvas

Bones are beautiful structures and they are not that difficult to paint either because the surface is matte and opaque.

# 218: Mellow Yellow

6" x 6" oil on canvas

# 217: Half Carton

6" x 6" oil on canvas

I have not been very consistent about painting lately but that changes today. I am on sabbatical...i.e... I am unemployed as of today but I am treating it like a sabbatical in between job searches. I intend to make the best use of my time by drawing and painting every day, spending more time on this blog and promoting my self as a painter. Everyday will be a new adventure.

I enjoyed the subject of the egg carton but I could have done a better job with the contrast...also the half egg in front was a stumper and it looks a little flat. There tends to be that one thing in every painting that eludes all attempts to be set down on canvas.