Elaine O.—January 23, 2021

And the front door makes slow progress. I'm at the stage where I despair of it ever looking right. But I'll keep on and we'll see how it looks next week. Right now, I'm debating whether to leave the stairs as they are...

Front Door        10"x8"

... or add the unruly roses growing through the posts (sketch below). They have been given a serious pruning this year so they won't take over half the stairs again, but they were interesting... and they were there when we painted the door.

Other than that, I've not done much. I got a new pen and inks...

... the neighbors across the alley got new windows....

... and we all got a new President. So, a pretty good week, all told.

The last fish 2

Last week I think I remember somebody asking about the process for my last fish, so now I am going to explain it whether you want to hear or not.

The first step is ruling every inch and making a grid.

The second step is creating the image on graph paper.

The third step is putting in the lines.

And then all you have to do is color it in.  To avoid putting the deep blue sea into 200 little squares I am going to add some smaller fish.  That one on the left became way too complicated, so I am tending towards those two smaller fish on the right.

 

Sara on 1/23/21

 Not much going on this week; just a a few small sketches, trying to generate a sustaining interest. I think I’m going to do a larger version of —surprise, surprise —the window tree sketch.these are 5.5 x 8.5; 5x18, and 5x7.

elaine t. / Jan 23

 I finished the landscape, which is a big deal considering my inactivity these past 3 months. I think starting it during our Zoom meeting helped. Painting is a very social activity for me!

I think this one has a greeting card feel to it.

Sara spaces out...

 Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t realize we were zooming every week! I’m not used to talking to people that often...

The bulb painting is like 5x18... It’s one of those landscape sketchbooks that I forgot I had. The orchid is on hot press, around 12 x 16. Like these but not crazy about the shadow on the orchid painting; it’s a little too solid imo. Amaryllis and orchids — back to my roots so to speak. Elaine, remember when we used to exhibit at Steve’s orchid show in Oak Park? Long time ago....

And here’s my homage to my favorite tree. It was cut down this week-it’s like losing an old  friend...

Anvaya Cove Reunion Pre Pandemic

 Today's art work is my accounting sorority reunion at Anvaya Cove Resort, Ph, one month before the Corona hit all of us hard in March! We all joined our sorority when we were teenagers so the 60th reunion was extra special! All of us, golden ladies posed in our summer suit showing the joy of life of women who met changes & challenges with bravado & grit. I survived my husband numerous hospitalizations last year! One of my friends lost her husband to Covid, a month after photo was taken! Our oldest Sis in the center is in her mid 80'! The Sis in long sleeved suit joined the Carmelite sisters after her husband died. Life goes on! This beach photo shoot is a keeper. I hoped I conveyed the warm joyful wet morning of many moons ago! Someday, it will happen again! Happy painting fellow artists!

January 16, 2021—Elaine O.

While I'm looking for inspiration for my next masterpiece, I thought I'd paint my front door. I wanted to document the new paint job (other than a rough sketch) and it seems like a good follow up to the red door of last week. And I seem to recall that one of my first real paintings was of my front door. So, let's see if I got any better over the years.

Front Door        10x8"

 Other than that, I did some direct watercolor portraits (from magazines, before I recycled them)...

5" x 7" spread

...and sketched my new dryer. Sort of like a warranty card for when I try to remember when we bought it.

approx. 4.5" square

Then, I tried something I may want to do more of. I'm taking an "old master" painting I like and examining the composition, doing a value sketch and then a direct watercolor. This is a Sisley snow scene.

6" x 12" spread

 

One more fish

Put some more feathers (lines) in the raven to connect with the background and massaged him a bit so that he doesn't look so flat and blobby.  Calling it done./

25 years ago in a print class at Harold Washington I hit on the idea of carving a small lino block to make it like a stamp, in this case a diagonal, and by rotating it I could well make a lot of shapes.  Did a lot of these but they did not make me rich or famous so I stopped.

I did seven fish in that earlier series, but I do my series in multiples of 8 so I needed one more. I thought back to those lino fish, and thought why don't I try that, making a mosaic out of a print represented by a watercolor?  Thought that I would use the format of that earlier fish but it just didn't fit so I've spent the last couple days inventing a new one running a lot of graph paper/  I thought I would put a preliminary copy on newsprint but I kept messing up.  18 rows by 24 columns by 4 different positions of the block comes to a pretty large number and that isn't even using colors.  I expect I will be working on this for some time.

 

More portraits and cocktails from Alan

 Here’s a little progression. This is an edited picture of my grandson Emmet. 

I painted him on Yupo. Believe it or not you can damage Yupo by scrubbing too hard with a Q-tip and that is what I did. I was trying to fix his lips but when you ruin the paper, paint doesn’t stay where you want it to. 

I loved a lot of things about it especially the background and clothing. But I decided to do one in my good scrapbook. 

I liked his expression better but I missed the quirkyness of Yupo. 

Back to cocktails. This is a French 75 on Hot Press. 

We were having Moscow Mules in the garden on a warm fall day when I took a photo of them. I painted this picture in my good scrapbook. 

The copper mugs were challenging but I love painting bricks. 

Sara branches out

 Well in the first two studies,  I decided just to go for the branches to try to get them out of my system. The third sketch I was thinking more about color mixing and getting darks dark enough to emphasize that column of sunlight. I still have to go darker. These are 6x6 and 6x8.

This is a 10x10 color pencil drawing I’ve been working for a while. I like color pencil because you can see the colors you mix, but it’s very time consuming. And it’s hard to keep color pencils sharpened...The drawing is not the greatest, but again I’m using this to try out different techniques of color mixing. See you in a few!