Fishing Day

oil 6x8 inches Last Saturday after painting out at Yorba/Slaughter Adobe it was still only 10am. I went home for lunch and got a chair and my little Malti-Poo, Sandy. At Prado Regional Park we plopped down under a big shady tree and really enjoyed ourselves. I consider all my plein air work practice/experimental. I'm happy with the water and distant shore. This is the first time I've tried adding moving figures to a landscape. Fun.

Red Truck -sold

oil 6x6 inches sold I couldn't resist Carol Marine's Daily Paintworks Challenge. Love painting anything red.

Field Sketch-Barn

oil 8x10 inches click here to bid Yesterday I took advantage of a cooler day and got outside to paint. I drove out to historic Yorba/Slaughter Adobe where I've painted before. Along the road is this view of the barn. I really enjoyed myself as you can see by the wild application of color. Maybe it was sound of gunfire closeby. I was right next to the shooting range. I kept wondering about stray bullets and without realizing it, I painted much faster than usual.

Double Delight

watercolor 8x8 inches Click to Purchase I hadn't worked in watercolor in a while, so Wednesday night at my painting group I thought I'd tackle Carol Marine's DPW challenge: a rose. Yeah, try something really hard since I haven't done it in a while. My friend Martha told me it's a double delight after she served wine with bugs in it. She didn't mean to. What's a little extra protein? Double delight!

I've been framing to get ready for the LA County Fair. The Franken Frames Carol Marine mentioned are great. Looks like the cow wants out, though. Someday I'm going to build my own frames, but until then these work well. Also pictured, I'm using the "mirror trick" I learned from Roos' video. For an explanation, see the comments in yesterday's post.

Old & Dusty Galleano

oil 9x12 inches Click to Purchase I paint what excites me. Sometimes I'm surprised by what excites me. Here, bottles and fake grapes are covered with a hearty layer of dust. The scene had an old world feel to it. My scruffy bristle brush made nice rough edges where I wanted them. Drawing the bottles, I used Roos Schuring's mirror trick to check for accuracy. Worked wonders. This shelf is outside, in the carport at Galleano Winery. Painted from a photo reference.

This painting is available at Vander Molen Fine Art, Arcadia, CA

Galleano Windmill

oil 10x8 inches Click to Purchase Recently I discovered the work of Dutch plein air painter, Roos Schuring. I stayed up late one night pouring over her work and watching her videos. Painting in extreme weather and covered in paint, she gets down on canvas a powerful impression of light and atmosphere. Incredibly inspired, I adopted just one of the many ideas gleaned from her and for this painting simply used a different brush! (Duh) I put aside my perfectly shaped synthetic bristlons for a scruffy hog bristle. A not-so-perfect mark sounded good. Out at Galleano Winery about 5pm I scrubbed on the paint and had a ball. The light changed dramatically. I kept painting and goofed up all my values. I decided to take it home and look at it the next day to correct it or wipe it off. Here you see the finished painting, the photo of the scene and the field study. To check out Roos' work, click here.

Bottle Necked -sold

oil 8x8 inches Click to Purchase Don't know much about wine except it's great with garlic bread or in a nice sangria, and the bottles are pretty. I save the ones with the artsy labels, as you can see.

This painting is available at Vander Molen Fine Art, Arcadia, CA

Floral Bowl- sold

oil 6x6 inches click here to bid This ceramic piece is a favorite of mine. It has three little tubes in the center you stick the flower stems into. When we went to San Diego recently our friend, Angie house and dog sat for us. She likes to keep busy, so there are always surprises when we come home. (One time she built a gate!) This time I found this cheerful little display in my studio. I added some green sprigs to break up the round cluster, and it looked like a painting.

Red Show -sold

oil 6x6 inches click here to bid I liked the blue-green band on the tea cup as a foil to all the red. The yellow-greens put in some extra kick. Adding back in cad red medium to my palette seemed necessary for the geranium and it gave me cleaner color than I got in "Cherries Meet The Giant Peach."

Primaries

oil 6x6 inches Click to Purchase I've used this mug in several paintings. Indigo blue and extremely reflective. This is my response to the Daily Paintworks Challenge. I used three primaries: ult blue, cd yellow med. and reds (aliz, cd red med. and cd. red lt.) Oh, and of course TWhite. Hope I was operating within the "rules." :-)

Cherries Meet The Giant Peach -sold

oil 6x8 inches This grocery store peach had an amazing array of deep color, and a leaf to boot. After having been away from my easel for a few days, I felt a bit rusty. I see a pattern developing: when I go a while without painting I tighten up. The more I paint, the looser I paint. Later, the giant peach got chopped up over a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Summer in a bowl.

Tea Cup With Fruit -sold

oil 6x6 inches click here to bid Admittedly, I ran out of titles for fruit paintings a long time ago. I like this painting. Can I say that? When I finished I decided to sneak tiny bits of red into the grapes and the cup for unity's sake. When I looked hard, I could find little red specks in the grapes, but for the cup I just invented some. The cherry edges are quite soft so that the cup can try to steal the show.

Summer Fruit (and a little history) -sold

oil 6x6 inches click here to bid We're having a great time in San Diego, but not much painting going on! Here's a still life I did before we left. I'm especially happy with the grapes here. They're loosely suggested, and the green is natural, not overly saturated. Today we visited the San Diego History Museum which included an exhibit of artworks from local artists of the past. These two paintboxes were from 1916. I was surprised to see little Grumbacher tubes and a corked glass tube for oil in the smaller one. The larger box was completely lined with tin, having two little square holes for medium in the front right corner. Fun to see.

Flower Happy

oil 8x8 inches click here to bid I love cut flowers, but don't buy them often because they die usually sooner than later. Not so with this bunch. Got them at Ralph's grocery store (!) and they're still good after 3 paintings and more than a week. For this painting I strayed from my limited palette and mixed in some permanent green light for those bright green notes. Tomorrow we're off to San Diego for a few days of biking and sightseeing...maybe painting and posting too.

Studio Flowers 3

oil 10x10 inches, FRAMED magnify/purchase Continuing with the same idea but a different design, I backed up a bit on the subject allowing for breathing room and made the painting in the back more prominent. In other news, I'm excited to announce that I'll be in the Millard Sheets Gallery at the L.A. County Fair throughout September. I'll demonstrate and have paintings for sale. This weekend I'll prepare my inventory. Please come find me if you visit the fair!

Studio Flowers 2

oil 9x12 inches click here to bid Every time I take a bunch of flowers into my studio I love the way they look against the taupe walls. This time I noticed a painting on the wall that complemented the flowers too, so I put it in my painting. Maybe it's hardly noticeable in the back, but that is the typical pear and grapes still life. For this painting I swung the taupe toward violet for those yellow sunflowers. I was a "loose woman" :-) with this one. Today is my birthday. I'm happy to be alive and thankful for a million blessings. Off to the beach now to lie in the sand.

Snap Peas & Tomatoes -sold

oil 6x8 inches click here to bid Mostly I like my subject to fill the picture plane, but when I painted this I thought maybe I'd plan for some breathing room. I don't know if I like it better or not. For the past couple of months I've been using a more limited palette. Cad red medium is one that I have taken off my palette and I wondered if just cad red light and alizarin would give me the reds I needed for these tomatoes. I think it works fine.

Five Cherry Tomatoes -sold

oil 6x6 inches click here to bid I planted Sweet 100 Cherry Tomatoes in a pot in our backyard. First time growing tomatoes in a pot and the plant doesn't seem to mind at all. They're tiny and oh so sweet.

Mass Contemplation

oil 10x8 inches Click to Purchase We visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on the day "the rock" opened for viewing. Titled "Levitated Mass", the sculpture was many decades in the making. Interesting. Kinda creepy to walk under it. There were lots of figures to choose from for my painting. These two showed the puzzlement that I think many of us were experiencing.

Old Glory 3 -sold

oil 8x8 inches click here to bid Happy Fourth of July, everyone!