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.

2022 Art on the Green - mark your calendars!

 

Come on down! I will be participating in this years Art on the Green, which is in its 3rd year.

A Weekend of Art in Greenwood Village

 Saturday and Sunday, September 17-18

10 AM-5 PM 

Curtis Center for the Arts

Great Spangled Fritillary Butterfly

 

Great Spangled Fritillary, 10x10, oil on panel available

 

My apologies to anyone who has clicked on this post to find it empty! It appears I did something to delete the original post of which I still have no clue as to what that might have been.

This image came from a hike I did last summer up near Vail, CO. I did not know the name of this butterfly so had to do some research. It was taken with my phone camera and I used 'portrait' to get the image up close and the background blurred.

In drafting this painting I did a thorough drawing of the butterfly so as to get a feel for the pattern on the wings before diving in to paint. The flower petals were drawn in as well as I felt I could get the flow of the petals better if I drew them in first. I used a red colored pencil which is still in evidence. I am not known for soft edges so the background blur was fun to play around with.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

After: Waiting on new window-back to original size. plastic for now

This week's painting is interior. I had my main floor bathroom remodeled during the month of July -I live in a house built in 1890 or thereabouts, so no ensuite bathrooms in this ole gal-and to save $1000 I took on the painting of said bathroom with assistance from my daughter and son-in-law. Then, since the basement is not finished according to modern standards, there was quite a bit of dirt, dust and other detritus that fell through the old floorboards during the tear down and rebuild onto the basement floor. Since the floor and surrounding area had to be cleaned anyway, it seemed a good time to paint the old wall and floor, at least in that section. I am not a glutton for punishment, after all! Between that, having a friend come for a long weekend along with the two of us driving back and forth to a Kaiserslautern High School reunion, it has been a busy time. Then the bathtub refinish was the last item and happened Monday. That was less than stellar so now the same kid is coming back today to try and buff out the many imperfections in the new finish. When he masked off the bathroom - all sparkling new - his tape ripped off the paint in several areas so I need to go back and touch that up once he is gone today. Not sure if he will tape it off again, so I am not willing to do it any more than necessary. 

Before: ceiling above shower raised back to be level with the rest of the room; toilet, medicine cabinet, light and sink replaced.

Here is the painted floor in the basement-nothing glamorous but looks fresh :

Remake - Sausalito Houseboat

Original with a few adjustments already begun

Almost finished, but not quite, 20x16

This is a remake of an old one I did when in class over 10 years ago. It is quite ugly and every time I came across it I wondered why I didn’t just throw it away. It is of a houseboat in Sausalito CA. Richard and I had stopped there on our way back from San Fransisco to his parents house. It isn’t a pretty boat to begin with, but I sure didn’t improve it any! I could not find where I had ever taken a photo of it that is how much I disliked this painting.

So as you can see, the top one is the ‘original’ from class, when we were studying textures. Which I did very well as far as that goes. But it was so dark. I had already decided to take out the wooden structure on the left and you can see my corrected drawing, in pink, as to the top of the boat so there would be more sky and better proportions. The siding should be white but it looked so gray and dingy. So will it ever be a great painting? No. But it gives me a feeling of satisfaction to fix something like this. I still have to finish the big window and put the bike back in a few more finishing touches, but you can see the difference, which is all I wanted for today. Side note: I wrote this almost two weeks ago and then was distracted by a bathroom remodel so never posted. Here is the painting today as I did get some work done on it between painting walls and trim.

I used the side of an old credit card to get the illusion of rough wood with peeling paint. It is fun to do, although would not work for most of what I paint, it works well for this. 

Sausalito Houseboat, 16x20, oil on panel, available

Here is the 'finished' painting, at least for now. From the last photo, I dulled down the wooden screen in the window, finished the plant, redid the reflection and finished the bike. 

Door series

Two weeks ago

A month ago

Since this is how I sent what I was working on to my aunt in a letter, (yes, I still write letters, and she is 96) this is how I am presenting them here as there is no other means now to show the progression. In the bottom image is the first image I sent her on where I was at that time, about a month or so ago. Mostly blocked in and taking shape if not yet pushed to finished. The first painting in the bottom image going from left to right, Georgetown CO, Morrison CO, the green door is from Bavaria, the blue door is Orleans FR from a photo I took in B&W back in the early 70's, and the old metal chair is in front of my garage, and the only one painted plein air.

The top image has most of them nearing completion although since I took this photo a few weeks ago, Georgetown hadn't made much progress, but now is almost done. I have also worked more on the Bavarian Green door. I will post the updated grouping once I finish Georgetown. 

I have been working on some larger paintings and I started to do these 9x12's as a way to break up the monotony I sometimes get into while working on large (30x40) for me paintings. I hardly paint this small anymore unless doing studies from life. It has been fun, and I have a few more in mind to continue and riff on this theme. I showed them to some friends of mine recently and I was surprised that they both liked the same painting the most, the one I expected the least attention from. Can you guess which one it is?