Catch

8x8 oil on canvas

$85 - click here to email

I've been sketching this little boy playing with his beach ball off and on for a week. Yes, in sketchbooks, but also on envelopes, napkins, and grocery lists. Everywhere I look in my life right now, there he is. And so, when I woke up this morning and knew I wanted to paint him, it happened quickly and easily. The only question remaining was the color of his bathing suit. I settled on UT burnt orange because that's what the boy in my family would want.

I just want to say that Mr. Right is my hero. The art room is arguably the best room in our house - it has windows on three sides and is located smack-dab in the middle of the action. Last night as I painted he was grilling our dinner. Today he and Lavagirl were playing in the pool, laughing and splashing, not 20 feet away. How lucky am I?

As Relaxing as a Day on the Beach

Easy Read

12x12 oil on canvas

SOLD

Painting this afternoon was pure pleasure. Another one of those days when I'm reminded how lucky I am to be Bliss Following.

This One May Be A Bit of An Oyster

Calm Before the Storm

18x18, oil on canvas

You know - acts better than it looks. This all started when planning a lunch with a twisted sister who is married to a restauranteur. Thinking about her got me to thinking about him which got me to thinking about his (yummy!) restaurants which got me thinking about painting restaurants which reminded me of this photo and... well... you get the idea. So, there I was, painting along on my typical little 8x8 when Mr. Right appeared at the art room door and casually said, "You ought to paint that big." Challenge issued.

Within minutes there was a huge expanse of blank canvas in front of me and, let me warn you, nothing good comes on after the Craig Ferguson show. It was so fun to paint big! By the light of day I like all save her face and hands. Sigh. Those are so hard. I think she's better in person than the photo looks. My hero of the painting is definitely her uniform - I'm a sucker for black and white.

Different Strokes from Different Folks

Somebody's Grandpa

8x8 oil on panel

SOLD

I painted this yesterday for Karin Jurick's Different Strokes from Different Folks challenge. Click here to check out the DSFDF blog. Karin is a brilliant artist who, graciously, posts a new photograph every couple of weeks for artists to paint. She then posts all these paintings to the DSFDF blog. The results are facinating and so inspirational. I've actually done several challenge paintings but this will be my first time to submit. I won't be (too) disappointed if Karin doesn't post it as my blog is only a few months old. Now, do yourself a real favor and grab a cup of coffee and click here to check out Karin's work. Jeepers... talk about your inspiration!

Update: Somebody's Grandpa is up on the DSFDF blog! Just keep scrolling 'til you find us.

Deep Summer

Good Day Sunshine

8x8 oil on canvas

$85 - email me here for info

Deep summer is where laziness meets respectability. (Sam Keen)

The 17th day of July fully qualifies as deep summer around our house. Personally, I'm into forced laziness: Sharkboy borrowed my car today and so, alas, no running errands or carpools. Pity (she says as she sighs and shakes her head). Nevermind about the cupboards that I committed to myself would be cleaned and tidied before school started in August. Today I painted and listened to my favorite radio station: The Penthouse. Find it on iTunes, under Radio, then Jazz. Or you can pick it up here. If this blog had a soundtrack, it would be the Penthouse.

Just Time for a Sketch: Cover Girl

oil on paper

Yesterday was super busy but I was anxious to work these skin tones up in oil. Practice. Practice. Practice.

Letterman Sketch, Aux Trois Crayon

conte crayon on paper

Back to the beach, this time aux trois crayon. I have alot of fun with this technique; click here for some details. Her facial features are so-so and I'm going to blame that on my inadequate-but-beautiful bedside table lamp -- okay for reading, but lacks a bit for drawing. No matter as these sketches are pure pleasure. Last night I crawled into bed, grabbed my sketchbook and little tin of conte crayons, started drawing, and the next time I looked up, Letterman was over. My right brain had fast-forwarded completely through the monologue, top ten, and all guests. Craig Ferguson indeed.

Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz

Hot Property

8x8 oil on panel

$85 - click here for info

This is as close to an abstract as I have ever attempted. My hero in this painting is the mood -- look for just a moment and see if you can't imagine yourself there. And the spot I'm in love with is definitely the orange and white umbrella. It reminds me of the beaches in Italy. I painted during the eye of a storm around here; Sharkboy celebrated his 16th birthday this weekend with a great pool party and today he got his driver's license. Whew! I'm taking a deep breath and imagining my happy place.

My New Water Conservation Plan

Wave Runners

12x12 oil on panel

Another day at the beach for me. I love remembering when Lavagirl was small but fearless and Mr. Right would hold on tight. Maybe it's the greens and turquoises in these paintings or maybe it's just my imagination but I'm somehow cooler when working the sand and surf. We're talking alot around our house right now about water -- how much we use, the viability of our garden, and how much (more or less) we really can use, in good conscious. I plan to do my part by washing clothes, dishes and brushes less frequently and, instead, just painting more.

Update on the Tile Fever Epidemic: Mosaic Art

As I reported a few posts ago, one of my twisted sisters appears to be coming down with tile fever. Read about symptoms here. This disease can be consuming... but it sure is fun. And the results? This slideshow shows the many side effects that still live in our garden and a crazy paper mosaic project I tried one time (tidier than tile and cool in the summer!). Plus, towards the end, a few garden balls and one crook-nosed lady my MIL made. I encourage everyone to catch the fever!

Everything's Cooler in Trouville

Pink Polka Dots

8x8 oil on panel

sold

Don't you love this little girl with her jaunty step and too-big hat? I enjoyed working up the study on paper as much as the little painting. In fact, the lighter values of the study make her look younger to me and I think I prefer it.

I also spent time looking at Eugene Boudin, the French Impressionist painter who was Monet's teacher and who painted charming beach scenes. Check out his Beach at Trouville here. I'm sure Boudin actually painted on the beach rather than from photographs and memories but I'm also thinking it wasn't 106 degrees at Trouville as it is in Texas today.

Taking My Cues from da Vinci

The Builder

12x12 oil on panel

Good news and bad news. Good news: painting kids at the beach is so much fun! Bad news: painting kids at the beach is so frustrating! After a great Fourth of July with family, I was excited to get back to painting from the photos I looked through last week. It was Leonardo who said, "Art is never finished, only abandoned." I've wiped and restarted this one twice and enough is enough. Humbly submitted.

They Sure Do Grow Up Fast

Beach Boy

12x12 oil on canvas

Found this old photo while flipping through some files yesterday and couldn't resist painting it straight away. (A much younger) Sharkboy playing in the Cozumel surf. Painting a sunny day at the beach while enjoying the AC indoors is a great combination. Hard to believe he turns 16 next week.

Changing Perspective & an Outbreak of Tile Fever

Lemonade Stand II

8x8 oil on panel

sold

More Mimosa (see Tuesday's post) and more purple. These two Lemonade Stand paintings look good together, sitting on the window sill side by side. And here I am... back to painting produce. Determined to branch out yet finding myself ooohing and ahhhing over the beautiful summer fruits yesterday at the store. Reminds me of Blue Bell: we paint all we can and eat the rest.

On another note, one of the Twisted Sisters has contracted Tile Fever. You've never heard of it? Well, it starts when you first think you might want to do a little tile mosaic. Just a small project... nothing major. Riiiiight. It's the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I myself had Tile Fever a few years ago and so did my mother-in-law. It's highly contagious. And now my dear Twisted Sister is showing all the symptoms. Pow! Right in the kisser.

Learning to Love Purple

Lemonade Stand

8x8 oil on panel
SOLD

Inspiration No. 1 was an artistic pearl I've been thinking about: as colors get farther away, they acquire their complements. Inspiration No. 2 was Pantone's 2009 Color of the Year: Mimosa (#14-0848).

Number 2 requires I use the color purple to comply with Number 1. No surprise to those who know me, I've never liked purple and have gone to great lengths to avoid it. I will not have it in my house, I will not have it on my spouse. Why? No clue.

However, I know I can't deny the critical role purple plays on the color wheel. So I'm trying. Begrudgingly, I think it did help give these lemons depth.

Is Pink My New Red?

In the Pink

11x14 oil on canvas

sold

This was loads of fun. Thoughts of arranging traditional furnishings in a conservative house and then painting the walls radish pink kept me giggling. I'm drawn to using pink in unexpected ways. Isn't the effect color can have on your mood amazing? Check out Sherwin Williams #6859: Feverish Pink.

Finger Painting

Untitled (Finger Painting)

12x12 oil on panel

SOLD

I learned somewhere that, if you want to paint loosely but accurately (I do), you should always finish a painting with your biggest brush. The opposite of my tendency. Mr. Right asks, "What do you think about when you're painting?" Just that, plus other pearls like it, written on post-it notes and stuck around the art room. Scribbled into the corners of sketchbooks. I'm trying to remember and practice. And so, after I tidied up but was still piddling around, everytime I passed by the easel -- the biggest brush now clean -- I couldn't resist finger painting.

Letterman Sketch & Comments about Commenting

Letterman sketchbook - pencil on paper

This sketch is pretty thin but honestly, I was laughing so hard I could hardly draw. Click here if you missed Dave's Top 10 re Gov. Sanford.

I’m getting some questions about how to leave comments on a blog post. First, YES, PLEASE! One of my twisted sisters frequently says, “The subplots are always the most interesting.” Well, comments are the subplots to a blog. I may have a brand new pair of roller skates but you’ve got the key!

So, click on the word Comment -- it’s at the bottom of each post. You’ll get a little pop-up window. The only thing that might be tricky is choosing an identity. If you have a Google account, use that. If not, click anonymous. If you use anonymous, sign your name in the box with your comment so we’ll know who you are. (For our purposes, anonymous just means non-Google.) Haven’t figured out the other two options yet.

The rest is pretty self-explanatory. Click publish. Your comment won’t show up until I give the okay. That’s how we’ll keep the scoundrels out.

Thanks to all who have written to ask if the paintings are for sale. Gulp. Blush. Yes, they will be. Please check back often; I’m trying to figure out how to use PayPal. And how to create spaces between paragraphs...argh...

Everybody is an Artist

Hah! Click here. What fun!

Just Time for a Sketch

magazine ad - oil on paper

"Every picture shows a spot with which the artist himself has fallen in love."

~Alfred Sisley

Couldn't seem to fit much painting into this lazy day and most of what I did ended up scraped away with the business end of a palette knife. I could fall in love with the spot of red drape just as it crosses her back. Painting fabric is at once a great challenge and great fun for me. There's always tomorrow.

And today? Well, both kids were around. We went to the store and cooked a great dinner together. That's sure not going to last forever.

Small Painting, Big Lessons

Quiet Corner

8x8 oil on panel

sold

I'm learning alot with these roomscapes. Being forced to work details on a small canvas is teaching me efficiency -- with shapes, values, and the number of brushstrokes. Good lessons. The hero of this painting, for me, is the monotone palette of walls, drapes, furniture, even the King Charles spaniel, which is then punctuated by the plant and its reflection in the mirror. I started with a lipstick-pink toned canvas (one of my favorites), counting on that to warm up all the yellows and browns and grays. Fun, fun, fun.

Lavagirl is home from camp and all our chicks are in the nest. This weekend was one of those times I really remember how blessed I am to be Bliss Following.

Happily Looking Through Old Magazines

Pablo's Palazzo

12x12 oil on panel

I was attracted to the table base - a pair of Italian gilt cupids - and the strong cast shadows of this photograph. Still using a limited palette and now wondering: are all my colors are starting to look alike? This subject matter tangent has led me on a delightful scouring (and dusting!) of old books and magazines, searching for inspirational interiors.

I tend to save stuff like books and magazines. It's true - they are yellowed and dog-eared and I've thumbed their pages a dozen times. But never twice in quite the same way. This week I'm looking for something entirely different: subject matter for a painting. So they feel like new. I am certain I have *never* before been inspired by Count Paolo Michelangelo Zappi-Manzoni's Central Park apartment. Known as Pablo, he was a fashionable make-up artist with Elizabeth Arden back in the day. The book is an old friend: Architectural Digest's Celebrity Homes (1977).

Comfort Zone? What Comfort Zone?

Thibaut

12x12 oil on panel

One of the books on my bedside table right now is Dakota Mitchell's Finding Your Visual Voice. Check it out here. I've read through it once and now I'm skipping around. Last night I re-read the chapter on discovering your sources of inspiration and choosing subjects to paint. Mitchell encourages readers/painters to experiment freely with any and all subjects that stir passion or joy. Okay... just the push I needed. I inherited a love for all things "interior" through both nature and nurture. So today a "roomscape" inspired by an ad I'm seeing in lots of current mags for Thibaut Design fabrics.

You Know, the Blue Box with the White Ribbon?

Tiffany

11x15 watercolor on paper

Thumbing through an old magazine I ran across an ad - it's that trademark shade of blue that catches my eye - for Tiffany & Co. The ad has a wonderful photo of a girl that, at once, was so familiar to me. She sparkles more than the jewelry. Then I remembered. I painted that girl one time. Good thing I knew just where to look for her because, *jeepers*... what I painted yesterday...

Empty Nesters??

Homegrown 2

8x8 oil on panel

$85 - email for info

I have this fabulous table. It's a hand-me-down, having made the rounds through Mr. Right's side of the family and landing at our house some years ago. It's a nice piece of furniture and a great concept, ordered from some hoity-toity catalog. But it just never quite worked out. It's like a hospital table -- you know the type -- the top swings across the bed, it can be adjusted higher and lower and it's on wheels? One of the type A's in our family thought they would work at night on a laptop in bed or something... Anyway, it came to live in my art room and now I use it to set up still lifes.

That's the long way around explaining how, by doing something very simple (in this case lowering or raising the table) your objects (in this case a red gerber daisy stuck in a capers jar) look entirely different (in this case these two paintings). You get a whole new perspective on things. Hmmmm...

Speaking of new perspectives. Sharkboy (feeling suddenly better) is off with his first FWDL - Friend With Driver's License. Gulp. Lavagirl's still at camp. So that leaves Mr. Right and me in an empty nest. Hmmmm... One of my twisted sisters is fond of saying "change is always met with resistance." I think I'll like change better later.

Homegrown 3

8x10 oil on panel

$100 - email for info

Just Time for a Sketch

Pre-Columbian and Oranges

oil on paper

Practice, practice, practice.

Fried Green Tomatoes, Coming Up

Homegrown

12x12 oil on canvas

email for info

Getting to that "green tomato" green was definitely the challenge of the day. So much fun! Happy Birthday to Mr. Right -- you are one fine gentleman farmer.

The Letterman Sketchbook or How to Make a Multimedia Sketchbook

click on any photo for a bigger and clearer image

As promised, info on how to make the best sketchbook on the planet. I've had a go-zillion and truly cherished about half. Sometimes the paper is just wrong. Or the thing falls apart. For me, the cheaper the sketchbook, the better I like the work I do in it. More than about twenty bucks and I’m anxious; nervous when I want to use a page and nervous when I choose to skip one. I love all varieties of Moleskins and right now I’m on my second or third 8x10, natural white Strathmore. But the Letterman Sketchbook? Excellance.

Why? Hmmm... I got to pick the size (9.5x9.5), the cover, the cardboard on the back, each piece of paper - color, weight, texture, media (making sure to cram it full of all my favorites), the order the papers appear in the book, and the size of the spiral binding (biggish). It didn't take much time or money. And I wouldn't change a thing. Uh, does that make me a perfectionist? Maybe. Still. There are worse things than a perfect sketchbook. You should try it.

Working with a Limited Palette: Continuing on the Theme

Wishful Thinking

12x12 oil on panel

$165 - email for info

Raw umber, ultramarine, cobalt, alizarin crimson, cadmium red deep, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow light, and titanium. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. Limited palette, eight colors, very conservative. The green and gray acting as comic relief for an otherwise traditional, primary-color study. Oh yeah, all on a turquoise-tinted panel... hee, hee, hee. I love seeing the turq peek through the reds. After all - what is color if not a toy to be played with? So named because, in our draught prone region, we often dream of rainy days.

Aux Trois Crayon and a Limited Palette

Vacation Wish List - a magazine cruise ad

Conte crayon on paper

I've seen this ad running in several magazines lately and -- naturally -- I can't put my hands on it right now. I imagine it to be Italy, perhaps Ischia or Portofino - both lovely places for a holiday. We were so captivated by Letterman's monologue and guests that this drawing practically drew itself. I looked down and *poof* there it was. Working in only 4 values (3 colors + paper) is liberating. Reminds me of art teachers who advocate for a very limited palette - it immediately simplifies decision-making and unifies the canvas.