Put away my materials for Christmas

 We cleaned up our house for Christmas and that included putting away our paints, paper, and other miscellaneous stuff that we have collected by the ton over the years.  

I did do a couple of light box paintings before Christmas however. The first is of a weird shriveled up leaf. 

The other is the paper white progression.  Greeta’s bulb is growing better than mine.  It’s sitting on a layer of pea gravel.

I began the golf hole painting again.

I got the first layer done and am now at the point where I messed it up before.  Now I can see the dogleg left and the sand traps.  I like it better and am ready to work on the next layer.  Just need to haul out my stuff again.

Recharging ….

 This is the only thing I’ve painted in the last few weeks & im having trouble getting back into the groove. Granted we’ve both been sick with colds for the last 2 weeks, so I haven’t done much besides keeping the couch occupied and scrolling the internet for signs of thoughtful human discourse on any topic…

So today, I decided to use the 5-minutes challenge to jumpstart my brain. I just chose a wolf Kahn painting at random and tried to recreate it in 5 minutes.

Not too bad so I decided to work on it a little after the five minutes.

So I spent maybe an hour on it. His paintings look like he just slapped the paint on any old way, but when you really study them, there’s a lot of deliberate variation in value and brushstrokes. And it’s big 52” x 52”. Mine’s  about 9”x9…anyways it was a good jumpstart, altho I’m back on the couch now…

Narcissus Bulb Inside The Box

 Given a bulb with the suggestion to paint it every day. Still using the little cardboard “stage” and book light, it surprised me to see how interesting one little bulb could be. 

I’d like to post in the order painted, but the blog does what it does. Eventually, the bulb will be moved from the water and pea gravel bed to a real pot and hopefully a paper white narcissus will emerge. Bet you can’t wait. 

As predicted, all out of order. The red background should be last. 

Elaine O. — December 27, 2022

Once again, Christmas is over and it's time to unveil a painting I've been working on as a gift. This one is of two cats. The final painting is on masonite board with a clay coating and it's been waxed so it can be displayed without glass. 

Barry and Ruth    6"x6"

What took so long, you wonder? It's such a small painting, but a lot went into getting it to be gift-worthy. First of all, they are black cats and they hang out together. Not a lot of definition; not to mention that I don't know cats that well. I spent some time trying to figure out "cats," their shapes and how they look and feel. I sketched a variety of poses in different media including charcoal, ink and rainbow pencils.

I started with gesture lines...

 

...and then tried for their soft fuzzy texture.

I tried different styles and backgrounds....

...before feeling confident enough to move to the final, masonite support. Here's the runner up, which I ultimately rejected in favor of the final (at the top of the blog post—remember back then?). I thought they felt a bit devious here.

So, that's probably more cats than you ever want to see. Have a happy new year and I can assure you that the new year will be bringing far fewer cat paintings from me!

Almost done.

 Almost done, a little more on the stem and maybe some more paint on the skin, and of course any suggestions by the peanut gallery will be carefully considered.  As usual with me the background rose up to challenge the foreground.  It was sort of kind of supposed to be that red and white tablecloth of the former punkin only kind of beat up and grass stained from the last time you saw it.  Not sure what it is now, but I like it well enough.  Well, I like almost everything I do.  My greatest strength and my greatest weakness.

another punkin

 Had a pretty good day with this fellow Saturday morning.  I had a hard time figuring out all the creases in the photo, but then I decided to ignore them and work on accentuating his eyes and mouth to give him a stronger expression and so far it seems to be working out.

Alan failing and getting back up.

 I took this picture when I was on the 4th hole at Marovitz on the lake. I’ve always had trouble painting golf holes but I thought that I was fairly successful painting the starter’s shed last month. So I decided to try a regular hole again. 

Everything was going along great until I started to paint the trees. It stopped looking like a golf hole. Those trees have a tremendous amount of bare branches and I tried to paint them using a stiff fan brush. That didn’t work. So I tried painting individual branches and ended up with a dark mess. I was using hot press so I had trouble scrubbing off some color. The paper just pilled and tore. I ended up using pastel to lighten up the branches. I like the composition as I saw it so I’ll try again on cold press and maybe Yupo. 

My week was saved by the little light box paintings. 

The first was a Shearwater porcelain piece that I like. 

Then there was a project with a paper white bulb to paint as time progressed. Yupo allowed me to paint without drawing and I thought it was perfect for the subject.

Newbies

It only took us 7 classes to muster enough courage for our first post :) Still life - objects courtesy of the cabinets of Truman. Both are gouache because we failed our first shopping trip!!!

Bryan's interpretation

Allison's interpretation

Thanks for a fun intro to watercolor, lots left to learn!

Elaine O.— December 17, 2022

I'm ending the year with another in the Relationship series, a look back at a brother and sister at his kindergarten graduation. This is just a study, mostly for color and composition, before I launch into the real thing. It just makes me smile, though...don't we all have old snapshots like this? 

9"x12"

 

Have a wonderful holiday season!

Farewell, 2022!

It's the last class of 2022 and, as is our habit, we're capping off a day of painting and snacks (Thanks, Ken and Susan) with a class photo.

Left to right, Bryan, Allison, Pat (seated), Elaine, Ken and Susan

See you next year!

5 Minute Warmups—December 17, 2022

It's the last warmup of the year! Some of us got easy reference photos, like Ken (who didn't even need the full 5 minutes!)....

...and Allison (all line and color!)...

while Susan's is all about pattern and color.

Bryan got a complex, detailed photo (but still got the foundation down in just 5 minutes)...

 

 

...while Elaine O.'s reference was just plain weird.

We're still having fun with these, so look for more in the next year.

Painting Studies Inside the Box and An Elderly Pumpkin on Elderly Paper.

 My pumpkin refused to look sad enough. The paper is 130 lb Strathmore very rough paper that is at least 35 years old. Goauche was used for the some of the grasses because I went too dark to get them.  9x12.

Half sheet watercolor paper folded so that each one of these is approximately 5x7.  2 more to go unless I paint on both sides.  If I were a disciplined person, I would focus on learning to draw and paint the flattened circle🙄.

The Punkin's Progress

 

Those stripes in the background were too damn stripey so I tried to make them a little more blended, and darkened the tablecloth since you saw it in class.  Afraid to touch the punkin because I put down that orangey red in the face in kind of a frenzy and I am afraid if I fiddled with it that it would lose the frenzy, if you know what I mean.  Not sure that I do, but anyway I took a photo of the same punkin three weeks later and now it is calling me.

Warm-up—December 10, 2022

Today's five minute warmups had us concentrating on different elements of art. Bryan chose to start with line, emphasizing the movement in his complex image.

Ken, too, reduced the complexity of his reference to the action-packed gesture lines.

 

Allison chose to create structure with shape.

And Elaine O. went for color.

Sorry for the glare on the magazine references! You get the idea, though, don't you?