Lemons on Sale!

It must be lemon season somewhere. They were 37 cents each at my local supermarket. I picked up a couple and paired them with my Deruta Italian vase, a small Clementine and a blue ceramic cup. I was thinking about how the blue cup echoed the blue in the vase and how the fruit did the same thing. It just seemed to come together more easily than usual.

11" x 14" oil on canvas

Bud from our Portrait Group

Bud is our model for February at the portrait group. He is a retired guy and he was going to bring a prop - like a gun, but he forgot. He had a difficult time holding his head still and finding a focal point so he may not be the best model we have ever had. But he has an interesting face. His face at rest appears somewhat grim, which is the opposite of his personality; he is a very jovial guy.

11" x 14" oil on canvas

Jonagold Apples

These apples were in the refrigerator and they were not looking too good. I got them out with the intention to bake a pie. I quickly lost my enthusiasm for that project when I saw how pretty they looked in my old woven basket. So I painted them instead. I can still make the pie tomorrow.

It is great when food does double duty.

I posted it on Facebook and sold it the same day so that is even MORE awesome.

11" x 14" Jonagold Apples

SOLD

Engaged Couple double oil portrait

This client had a grainy image he took with his cell phone of a proof on a computer screen. The couple attended a wedding and the photo was in the wedding set proofs on line. They did not buy the photos because they had just begun dating. Fast-forward two years and they are now engaged and realize this was their favorite picture ever. Could I possibly paint an oil of them from this perspective-skewed, faded pixelated image.

I still don't know how I did it. But they're happy.

11" x 14" oil on canvas

Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Sometimes food is pretty enough to paint. I had some leftover paint on my palette and a small 6x6 inch gessoed panel, so I did a quick painting using mostly the palette knife. It was really fun to pile on the hick paint to imitate frosting on the cake. It's really a pretty similar motion to frosting a cake.

Copper Reflections

I purchased this copper incense burner and the antique medicine bottle on eBay a few weeks ago with the intention to use them in my still life setups. The first time I paint an object I am learning its shape, and it takes longer. I have discovered that the more times I paint the object the more accurate I become. The same goes for fruit. The first time I painted pears I struggled with the anatomy and now I paint them quickly, while keeping in mind the variations in shape and form from variety to variety as well as from specimen to specimen. These are Bartletts, I believe. When I purchased them they were quite green and they seem to be moving toward a more delicious if not as attractive yellow. It end to reply on my instincts when it comes to composition. If it looks good and fills up the space and there are interesting angles when I look through my viewfinder I am good to go.

Copper Reflections 11" x 14"

People are interesting

When my daughter was seven she told a fiend that she didn't like coming In to my studio because there were always so many eyes staring at her. I was just beginning to paint a lot of portraits then and to attend a weekly portrait group where artists worked from the live model. I would prop the paintings up against books in bookshelves, lean them against the wall or hang them on a temporary hook to let them dry. All the people seemed to be in the same pose, most often a three quarter view of the face. I rarely arrived early enough to get a straight on view of the model.

Yesterday we didn't have many people show up for our portrait group so I was fortunate enough to get a head on view of our lovely 14 year old model, Katelyn. 

11" x 14" oil on canvas