Hydrangea with Eggshell

Above, the finished paining; have to take advantage of the hydrangeas blooming.

Below, the setup and painting in progress.

And the rhetorical question, Where is the summer going?

White and Brown

Decided to step back from the intense blue backgrounds and go for something more subtle.

I said I wasn't going to complain but it is snowing again tonight in Connecticut--- for the umpteenth time this winter.

Perched

The title may be "Perched" but as I look at the painting, that pear on the right really looks like he is ready to do a swan dive into the little cup. Oh no, don't do it!

You Look Familiar

This painting was dropped off yesterday for entry into the Guilford Art League Annual Juried Exhibition. Nothing left to do but wait for the postman to deliver the little accepted/not accepted slip. You never know.

Three Pears with Bowl

The pears managed to paint themselves rather quickly. The bowl, however, was most uncooperative. I couldn't get the sides to even up or maintain the same angle so the bowl grew and shrunk about a dozen times.

Creamsicle Dream

Today's title is inspired by the heat, the fact our AC is on the fritz and lastly by the orange hues in the painting. The new little glass vase with the cute flared bottom was the reason to paint.

Mushrooms and Red Onion

I wanted to paint something different and both the baby bella mushrooms and the red onion were new subjects for me.

A save the date reminder: for all those in the New Haven, Connecticut area, the opening reception for my upcoming show "The Art of Everyday", will be Sunday, April 1oth, 1 -4 pm at the DaSilva Gallery. Please come and say hello.

Ranunculus

Ranunculuses versus ranunculi-- apparently both are correct but both sound funny. This is the painting I had just completed before moving on to the Lincoln challenge.

Lincoln

The Daily Paintworks site currently has a paint Lincoln challenge and since I happened to have leftover paint on my palette and since I had not done any self portrait paintings lately (as I promised myself), I gave Lincoln a go. This was on a black gessoed panel so the dark bits were lifted back out. The greens and reds were leftovers from a ranunculus flower painting that I had just finished. Bizarre looking but fun and no disrespect intended to Mr. Lincoln.

Strawberry and Pear

Although, in the end, I was pleased with this painting, it was a struggle. The background color changed several times -- initially it was a much warmer color, almost a flesh tone. You can see remnants of it, mixed in with the gray.

Self Portrait

I am posting this self portrait because I ran across an artist whose work I really admire. She is Catherine Kehoe who was born in Connecticut and teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her still life paintings are great but her self portraits are particularly engaging. In an interview, she said that she does her self portraits quickly with the paint left over from her other paintings. Although I suspect that I will not repeat this exercise often, this week I thought I would try to follow her example.

Red Handle

I was reading Hawthorne on Painting, first published in 1938. In the introduction, he talks about seeing the beauty of the ugly and the commonplace; "it is better to make a big thing out of a little subject than to make a little thing out of a big one."

This red handled fork is old, fairly beat up and at one time was probably commonplace.

Daisy with Limes

The above painting is now hanging in an eight person group show at Case Memorial Library in Orange, CT for the month of December. The group is the Artclectics whose members have been painting and drawing together once a week for over 5 years. The Artclectics work in a variety of mediums and their work ranges from abstract to representational. Come join us if you can for the opening reception on Thursday, December 9th from 5 to 7 p.m. in the library's second floor meeting room.

Chicken Little

We use this little pitcher for maple syrup but I thought he looked better with eggshells than with scattered pancakes. This painting was done a few days ago. Yesterday's painting was a scraper--all the paint scraped off with the palette knife after many hours of work. I think everyone who paints has had that experience (well, maybe almost everyone).

Sunflowers

Like some previous paintings, this was done on a panel first toned dark green. This eliminates having to fight all that white in the beginning but necessitates laying down the lighter values with copious amounts of paint.

Chocolate Covered

I was in the mood for something more decadent than a pear. The doughnut was from a local shop, Whitney Donut. It was funny looking over the selection not with taste but with visual appeal in mind. At the time, I wasn't thinking about including the bag in the composition but I liked the white bag and the bag was the more challenging to paint.

Single Blue

In this painting, I used a variation of a technique learned at Stanley Bielen's workshop. I toned the panel with dark green acrylic -- because it dries within minutes there was no waiting to start painting. The challenge was to get the illusion of petals without painting each one individually.

As always, these dark paintings are more difficult to photograph accurately, the background is not quite as dark as it appears and excuse the glare on the upper right.

Lemons (Twice)

The painting below was painted a while ago and put in the not good enough to show, not bad enough to throw out right away rack. It just felt too timid. This week, I had another go at it and the result is the above painting.

Eggs, Three Ways

This painting continues my keep it simple mood. Before I started this, Humpty Dumpty came to mind and I thought it might be less messy to use blown out eggs. I had to google how to do it and I must say it took some severe lip pursing to get the job done.

Big and Small (A Second Look)

I didn't have much time for painting this week so I mucked about with the painting below which was previously posted. The rather sharp transition from the light to the shadow side of the large mug bothered me so I made it a more gradual change. Somehow, the background color ended up changing as well.