"Fork and Shadow," 5x7, oil on gesso board

Sold.

I'm kind of pleased with this one. I love how the Munsell complementary colors really pop, and square plates are way fun to paint, and the shadow of the fork was a bit of a challenge, but it even looks like stainless.

I've been looking at the work of Caroline Jasper. She starts with a really hot red ground, and keeps it visible in her final work (although she'll attenuate it in the background for landscapes). It gives her paintings an intensity I like. So I started with a red ground for this one. I actually found that some of my paints were too transparent, and I had to add some white to get them to cover the red enough. But I like the overall effect. No many neutrals here! That might be too hot if this was a 30"x36", but at 5x7 it works.

Here's a Caroline Jasper demo.

"Kapiolani Beach 1," 8x10, oil on canvas board

Sold.

I'm still thinking about this one. It doesn't speak to me, but my husband thinks I underrate myself.

I noticed something that would be a good exercise if taken further. I was looking through some painting books that I've grazed and added sticky tags to in the past. The exercise is to notice what kind of art attracts you. Mostly, for me, I find it's the bold, bright art. I guess I really like the impressionists and colorists.

But... Then I turn and do something like my fig painting from a couple of months ago. Very dark. Very sedate. But it has those greens and purples coexisting against a really rich background. Or the Study in White Fuzz I did awhile ago. But I like it for the dandelion head and the rough edges.

I guess you can like lots of stuff. But the point is to figure it out so that when you paint, you're in synch with yourself. That's when painting feels best.

"Three Stones," 6x8", oil on hangable art board

Ah, time flies like an arrow (fruit flies like a banana!). Since the last entry, my husband and I visited Honolulu (where I grew up) and he finished the Honolulu Marathon. I am in awe. We saw old friends and visited old haunts. It Was Good.

Back to painting. I started this before I the trip and finished afterwards. It was initially meant to be a lovely realistic composition in tones of grey, both warm and cool. But, somehow, I didn't feel like doing that. I felt like building color. Thank you, Hawaii, and also, thank you Caroline Jasper. She often paints on a background that's toned hot red (behold a demonstration). I like the effect and applied it here, since this was too monochromatic. After slashing the red into the background, I went over it in shades of white. I think this is much more lively. It's kind of calm yet energetic. Sort of hot zen? Hey, maybe that would be a better title.

"Yellow Pitcher," 6x8, oil on hangable art board

This one was a challenge. It's a pitcher I got at an antique store; probably goes back to the 50s or 60s or so, and it's quite charming. I set it up in high contrast to emphasize its lines and shadow. Then I had a deuce of a time getting the ellipse of the top anywhere near right. Eventually, just for grins, I decided to turn it into a two-value painting, but get as much color into those values as I could. Not a bad exercise.

"Three Heirs," 8x8, oil on gallery-wrapped canvas

This was fun. It felt like some of the skills I've been working on finally applied themselves. Specifically, I've been trying to paint with more mixing the color on the canvas and less blending; to get that dark belt you see on spheres like tomatoes; to get reflections that looked organic; to go darker; and not to futz as much. All of these came out better than in the past. In places, it painted itself. I liked Tom Brown's comment about that: Sometimes you're just holding onto the paintbrush and it's going by itself.

I painted this from a photo I took at my father-in-law's house. These three gorgeous tomatoes were going to be part of dinner, and they contrasted beautifully with each other and with the square plate. I set them up in the afternoon sunlight, with the shadow from the curtain across the right side of the plate.

One thing new that I tried was to do the highlights in two steps. So today's lesson is this: When doing highlights, try first putting down a shape of white mixed with the surface color. Then place your purer white on top of that. It seems to make it sit on the surface better. Some people suggest that you lean the white toward the opposite temperature of the surface, but just a bit. I'd like to hear opinions on that.

"Vasquez Rocks," 6x8x3/8", oil on ready-to-hand canvas

As I understand the daily painting movement, its purpose was to keep painters practiced and loose by doing something small every day, as opposed to the ongoing work required for a larger piece. It's possible that the idea was that the painters would still compose their larger works, while the smaller ones helped them build skills and keep momentum going. Interestingly, the small paintings have taken on a life of their own, online. Well, at least with me. I love their intimacy and how they fit into a normal house. You can put them up anywhere to grace a nook or a cranny (or a crook or a nanny). They don't all have to be above the fireplace or couch.

That said, I did a 4x5" sketch during my Tom Brown workshop a couple of weeks ago, and liked my initial painting enough that I wanted to do it bigger. Funny that 6x8 is bigger, but it's twice the size of the original. We had gone to Vasquez Rocks, which is amazing, and is also where lots of movies were filmed (do a web search). It's so photogenic, and I got that thrill of playing with colors.

This was the 4x5" sketch of the rock. It's more raw, and I often like that. It's paler, too, although that might not be visible in the web photo and it might depend on your monitor, yadda yadda.


This is my photo of the rock itself (slightly different angle). It's a pretty amazing piece of geology. In this photo it looks awfully gray. I recall it being much richer, but, again, that might be the photo.

So maybe I'll do the rocks again, even bigger, on a normal canvas. Could be fun.

"Red on White," 6x8, oil on canvas board

This is another painting I did in the hotel during the workshop a week or two ago. It took me some effort, partly to find what to paint (see prior post) and partly to set it up just so. I admire that the teacher, Tom Brown, is able to just stop somewhere and gather his impressions of a scene on canvas, and do it quickly. I still tweak and poke. But I do rather like the stem area of the front apple. And those little white dots.

Painting quickly seems to require a couple of pretty interesting abilities: 1.) A level of skill with draftsmanship and manipulating paint, and 2.) getting out of your own way (losing the fussing). Maybe 1 leads to 2 and both lead to trust. And trust eases fear. This is one reason the small sketches are often so charming: there's no pressure to perfect or sell, so they're freer.

"Enjoy Our Complementary Amenities," 6x8, oil on canvas board

Busy week, this. We had 24 people at the house for Thanksgiving, which affected how much painting and posting I could do.

I'm still digesting what I learned at the Tom Brown workshop and will write more on that later. But while I was at the workshop and in a painting frenzy, I did a couple of pieces at the hotel where I was staying. That was a bit of a challenge, since it's hard to find paintable things at a hotel. What, you should paint the shampoo bottle? So I used items from the snack bar.

I'm kind of pleased that the tea bag looks like a tea bag here. Of course, when you're painting from life, life keeps changing, and I believe I had to refresh the water in the tea when it got too dark.

"Vasquez Sunset," 6x8, oil on canvas board

Today was the first day of the workshop with Tom Brown (see my links). He's a skilled teacher, and understands what newbies need to know, and I was interested in how he manipulates color. He showed how you can take a base color and modify it in different ways for different parts of the same scene (this isn't quite clear, but I'm tired). At the end of the day, we had to be out of Vasquez Rocks park at 5:00, and it was 4:00 and the deadline also meant cleaning up. I wanted to paint the view I could see, which had the wonderfully layered hills, receding through the light (I love the Chinese paintings that do that!). With limited time, I worked the palette as Tom showed us. I started with the color of the furthest-away range, then modified it for the next closest, and the next, and so on. This is what I came up with, and it was a great way to end the day.

"Hot Garlic," 6x8, oil on hangable canvas board

This is my second piece using M. Graham oils. They certainly do feel more lush than the water soluble oils. And the colors are a more intense; they deposit pigment anywhere a lot more easily (hands, easel). Clean-up was a lot harder. On the whole I don't know that I want to adopt them as my default paints. But I believe you can mix water-soluble oils and traditional oils to some extent. You have to be a bit careful, and you do lose the water solubility at some point. But I'll look into it. It feels like there might be some use in these for some pictures.

All that aside, I was in a WTF mood when I painted this. I'd had a tough day and I just shook it off and cut loose. And, boy, was this fun. After recent paintings of bottles, where I had to be pretty tight and careful, it was fun to just put down whatever color and shape I felt like. No, the draughtsmanship wasn't that good (which made this a lot easier), but hey, it's garlic. And the colors are pretty impressionistic. But it has a looseness I like, probably because the background isn't filled in.

So this Friday I'm driving to LA for another painting workshop, this time with Tom Brown. His workshop is for plein air painters of all levels. I'm a rank amateur. But I live on the edge of several open space preserves in the Santa Cruz mountains. I can have a view of the San Francisco Bay on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, and it's stunning. I hike daily for my happiness and sanity, and I want to spend time out painting it. The dog would like that, but he's a ten-month-old Jack Russell Terrorist and would probably be a pain. Maybe when he's older.