Eggplants as inspiration

 These eggplants were the last I harvested from my garden before the temperatures dropped. I decided to memorialize them as I wasn't sure I would be able to eat them all. I set them on my dining room table being to lazy to go up to my studio as well as wanting a different venue.

#1

Here they are in front of my seat at the dining room table

#2

Then I went to the chair across the table and did the reverse view. I must be easy to please as I had so much fun doing these.

#3

Deciding I did not want to move the set up, I left it up and did this painting at the table. I did not have any clean 9x12 panels so I grabbed a panel with an old painting on it that was not worth saving. I like painting over old paintings anyway. This was painted in less than an hour. 

#4

Of course, I then had to do the other side too! The painting below is the one underneath #4. It had been varnished, which tends to absorb the paint on top of it which you can see in the top of the new painting. The whitish effect from the varnish. I liked the red 'swirls' coming through from below. These paintings are done just for the pure joy I get from doing them to see the effects. I could have spent more time totally obliterating the painting beneath. This was done in less than an hour too.

These acorn squash and peppers were also the last harvest from the garden but way back in the day. I want to say 20 years ago.

The Pears have it

Last week a bag of little red pears were on a manager's special of $.97 for 3 pounds! How could I pass that up? The first thing I did with them was to do some continuous line drawings. I started doing continuous line drawings because it is a good reminder to look at what you are drawing not at what you are doing so much on the paper. I had done some eggplants and clementines the week or so before and had so much fun doing them, so I am trying to do some every day or so. 

Here are the pear sketches. As with the eggplant, I ended up doing a painting. Each of these sketches takes about 5 minutes or so. No more than 10. So really no excuse not to do something every day.

#1

I don't always add the shading but it helped to keep my pencil on the paper to do so with this set up.

#2

I thought I had done more than one from this perspective, but I only have one. I know I thought about it. It gets the creative juices flowing to play around with the set up.

#3

I did lift my pencil to do the solo pear but otherwise each section was done without. I dumped these out on the table to see what it would look like.

#4

The drawings lead to this little 6x6 painting. Which was great fun to paint.

#6

Then I sliced them all up and dried them~ dried pears are the best and still so beautiful.

True Confessions

I started this post two months ago-then promptly forgot about it.

Many of you may not remember the publication from back in the day and truthfully, I don't know much about it. The title sure stuck in my brain, however. It is a humbling experience to review ones work and find some of it, surprising in its lack of what one knows as a foundational principle.

This is one that first struck me as decidedly 'off' and yet at the time of its execution I thought I had done such a good representation. Which I had done. The thing was, I ignored what I knew and copied the image with its distortions as if it were true to life. One thing I had forgotten, or neglected to observe, and it is a big thing, is how the phone camera distorts perspective. What's wrong with this picture?

It is that all of the vertical lines should be parallel and straight up and down. The difference in color is from the devices used. The remake is with my iPhone. I think the image above was with my digital camera. A stark contrast...surprising or not, the iPhone image is more true to the painting. It did not take much to straighten the window edges out.

View from Above, 9x12, oil

There will be more revised paintings coming as I pulled a number of them out to revisit. I am so out of the habit of writing and posting that I am way behind. Thankfully, there weren't very many with the perspective lines out of whack. 

This painting is from my last trip to Italy. It reminded me of myself as a child living in France. Our house had three stories and I often sat in the window overlooking a street through our city that was a thoroughfare. I ticked off on the windowsill how many cars with British plates on their way to or from Paris.