Three Huddled Pears

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 31!

The last in this series of pears. I used another of the boards I had pre-prepared with a magenta ground.
I tried to keep things loose - put down a brush stroke and leave it.
And I got used to painting on magenta. This forced me to used slightly thicker paint than I would normally.


...AND today is January 31st! I have painted every day for 31 consecutive days. And that's not counting the paintings that were too bad to post!

This challenge has just been great to get into a routine and make time to paint.

Things actually got easier, not harder as time went on, which I was surprised by.
I will still be painting everyday, but not posting every day.

New goals, things to work on  and new things to try in February:
Experiment more with palette knife
Try introducing some abstract elements
Work larger
Experiment with other surfaces (canvas / linen / cradled boards)
Experiment with other sizes (widths / landscape / portrait)

Two Pears in Perspective

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 30

I'm not one for starting a painting with a colored ground, but since I'm experimenting, I thought I'd give it another go... and found it a slightly disconcerting experience!

The reason I don't usually use a ground is because I don't like the wet ground color interfering with the paint I'm laying down.
So I tried a pre-prepared ground that I let dry first and used a fast drying galkyd medium to get it to dry faster.
I went all-in with a bright magenta ground!

Here's the preparation stage.

Next the paint. And here's where it got weird. After laying down a couple of strokes of green paint, when I went back to my palette, everything looked luminous! I found it hard for my eyes to adjust to the bright magenta.

Eventually, my eyes adjusted and it worked okay.

This process forced me to lay down the paint a bit thicker than I usually would, and I think that's a good thing.

If you look at the three pear paintings together. there isn't a great difference except the one with the magenta ground has more of a 'glow' to it, slightly more abstract perhaps and slightly less naturalistic - I don't know.

Maybe that's a good thing though?

What do you think?

Three Standing Pears

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 29

I was so pleased with yesterdays pear painting I continued on today with another.
Pears are such a beautiful shape to start with, they are a winner for composition.


(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord 

Leaning Pears

 Daily Painting Challenge - Day 28


I didn't have a lot of time today - I didn't get started until the afternoon, so I needed a simple shape to paint - these pears seemed ideal.

It was also a great opportunity to paint in a looser style.
Throughout January I have really primarily been trying to get to grips with color:
 - how color is impacted by the structure of the object you are painting, its values and shadows.
For me personally, I sometimes feel the need to paint in a tighter style to really understand how those elements work together.

I have learned a lot about my color palette - I have adopted some new favourites and almost eliminated colors I used to use regularly (Cadmium yellow lemon and Phthalo blue).

With these pears since they already have a simple structure, I felt freer to paint more loosely. I'm very happy with the result.

Unfortunately by the time I got to photograph this, the light had gone so I'll try to get a better quality photograph tomorrow.

Image now updated to a better quality version. 

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord 

Split Garlic Bulb

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 27



My second garlic set-up, this time splitting the garlic open


There are a million variations and tints of white in this garlic bulb - mixes of white with various yellows, browns and blues.
Painting the laminated wood is kind of cool too. This is a very small chopping board I have. Some of the wood grain effects are achieved just by dragging a brush through the paint.


(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord 

Garlic on a wooden board

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 26

Let it be said that I completed TWO paintings today, but the first one (a white cup) I absolutely hated.
I spent a couple of hours on it - overworked it and decided I basically just didn't like it from the beginning.

Not to be defeated (actually motivated by not wanting to post something I was unhappy with) I went for a hunt for something else quick to paint, raided my vegetable box and found this garlic.
Much happier with the result.

(Day 26! Only 5 paintings to go!)


(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord   

Black Tea and a Silver Spoon

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 25

Today was a different challenge - I tried to capture the translucency of the paper and wet tea leaves through the bag, as opposed to yesterday which had an un-dipped dry teabag.

I had difficulty photographing this one - the liquid tea on the actual painting (in the spoon and on the plate) is not quite that 'orange', but my camera couldn't seem to color adjust for it, no matter what light conditions I tried, so you'll have to just have to believe me.

Painting metal is interesting as it reflects everything, like a mirror, so a lot of what you are painting as actually the color of the objects surroundings.

Tea Bag on an Olive Wood Board

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 24

Today I needed something simple to paint because I'm busy with other things over the next few days. Funny how simple is often for the best.

The little swirl in the string on the teabag was purely accidental and I'm so happy that the teabag cooperated and posed so nicely for me.

Now here's a dilemma I've been having with my title ... is it 'Tea Bag' (two words) or 'Teabag' (one word)? Most dictionaries have it as two words, but when you look up Tea Cup, it's always one word 'teacup'. That's the English language for you.
If anybody has an explanation I'd be happy to hear it.



(6 x 6 inches)
15 x 15cm approx
Oil on Gessobord 

Earl Grey

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 23

Same cup as yesterday, different perspective!
This cup is a useful prop for this birds-eye view as it has a little flower painted at the bottom, which helps create an appearance of depth.


(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord   

Tea Bag and a Zazzy Teacup

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 22


One cup of tea leads to another cup of tea.

I wasn't exactly sure about the composition of this cup and with the teabag - and the square format but I painted it anyway.
I played around with the background with my palette knife, picking up on some of the colors in the cup and cloth.
I'm sticking with the square format for this challenge for simplicity sake.

The painting is quite tight in style on this one, but wasn't sure how else to attack that zazzy pattern!

And for those of you who are wondering what zazzy means:

Zazzy
Adjective:

(comparative zazzier, superlative zazziest)
(slang) shiny or flashy


(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord  

Pomegranate and Raspberry Tea

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 21

Yesterday I got into a groove painting the swirly white and blue tablecloth, so I got straight onto another painting with the same cloth.
This is one of my personal favorites.
You can't go wrong with a cup of tea. Definitely firmly back in my comfort zone.

I'm two-thirds of the way through this January challenge!
It's been tough but very rewarding.
There was an update from Strada Easel yesterday that said there were still 500 people participating in the challenge. 

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord  

Lemon Wedges on a Patterned Tablecloth

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 20

This painting was REALLY challenging.
I changed the lighting so that I had a strong light behind the bowl. I wanted to see how the light affected the lemon wedges, with some of them in shade, some of them in half shade and some of them in the light.
With this painting I really had to work all over the painting throughout.
When you get down to basics, representational painting is about isolating tiny areas of space and identifying and mixing the color that you see in that space.
The difficulty as we know is that our brains rarely just see an isolated space. The colour of the object we see in a space is also determined by what surrounds that space. (Think about the white gold / blue black dress as an extreme example.)
So to get the colors in the lemon wedges as I saw them here, I also had to paint the shade around the wedges at the same time.

The tablecloth is not the first tablecloth I've painted and I really enjoy doing them. I get much more impressionistic with tablecloths than with other things I paint, because if I tried to paint a realistic version, I'd be there for days. I varied the color very slightly and lightened the blue to towards the back to create the impression of distance. I really like it. The trick is to paint in all the shading first then paint the pattern on top. And actually it's a lot easier than it looks.

I was inspired to do the patterned table cloth after seeing this weeks Daily Paintworks challenge
The Patterned Challenge and thought I might as well continue the lemon theme from yesterday.

Also I left the lemons a bit looser because I really wanted to focus on the light in this scene.

Throughout the painting I took detailed notes about the colors I used for each part of the painting.


Torrit Grey
I have started using up my tubes of Torrit Grey.

Torrit grey is not a specific colour as such. It's made by Gamblin paints and they give away free tubes of it every year - and every year each batch they make is different. They make it out of all the leftover pigment collected when they clear out their air filtration system. It's a fantastic way of recycling.

I have a number of different tubes of it. I've been wondering what to use it for and discovered it's great for tinting yellow.

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord   

Lemons in a Decorated Bowl

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 19

One of the things that has been a 'challenge' about this challenge has been being able to photograph the paintings in the right light. Often by the time I have finished the painting, it is 3pm or later and the good light has gone or the light just is bad that day. Yellow is a particularly difficult colour when it come to getting the lighting right.

When this January challenge is over, I'm determined to keep painting every day, but not posting every day. I'm looking forward to
1. Being able to spend more time and give more thought to what I'm doing.
2. Tackling larger works
3. Waiting for a day with good light to photograph things for posting.



 On another note, after I have photographed the painting, to crop it, I usually just upload for simplicity, to google photos. As soon as I hit the 'crop' icon, all these filters appear.
Usually they look awful, but this black and white version caught my eye.

I quite like this painting in black and white.

















(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord  

Lemon Love

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 18


The title for this one was easy, since the bowl has the word 'LOVE' painted on the bottom of it.

As promised yesterday - a lemon study.
Though I didn't make it all that easy on myself by choosing a bowl with lettering painted in it. Doh!


(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord   

Oil, Vinegar and Basil

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 17

Specifically olive oil, balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar and basil.

Today just got silly if I'm honest.
On a day when I had to get my son to both physio and orthodontist (different locations) and daughter to dance lessons (another location) and husband is in Japan I choose to fit basically a full size painting into a tiny 8 x 8" panel? These are supposed to be studies! What was I thinking? .... Tomorrow... simplify!!! I might just paint a lemon or something.


Something clicked while I was doing this painting: Some artists paint in the main subject matter first, then they paint in the background. For the longest time I couldn't understand this approach because if you paint the subject matter first, you then have to be very careful to paint around it.
I would usually paint the bulk of background first, then paint in the subject matter so that you don't have to be so careful, then go back and finish off the background.
The problem, is that you need to match the background to your subject matter - the subject matter should come first. The background is firmly secondary - you can adjust the values round your subject matter as needed to give the subject matter center stage.
As in this painting - the background gets very light in places to really make those bottles pop.
Okay I'm a convert. From now on I'll be leaving the background until later.

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord   

Oil and Rosemary

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 16

I'm really done with painting flowers for a while.
This olive oil bottle is an object I've been wanting to have a go at painting for a long time, because it 'glows' under my kitchen lights. I knew those fiddly bits in the glass would be a challenge but I was actually more daunted by the Rosemary. I wasn't sure how I was I was going to tackle it. Turns out it was a lot easier than I expected - you just need the right brush.
This is my favorite painting so far of this challenge.



(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord  

Monday Morning Tulips

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 15

I went out again to find tulips and found these. They are the tiniest tulips in the world. Fortunately I had a tiny blue and white pitcher that fit them nicely.
This is painted mainly with a brush but I also decided to have a play around my palette knife.

While painting I almost always listen to a spoken pod cast, usually something to do with art. For some reason I get too distracted listening to music.

Anyway today I was listening to this one about artist Kenny Harris.

The Savvy Painter: Kevin Harris

Afterwards I looked him up and I'm blown away by how good and inspiring his art is.
Love it. He might be my new favorite artist.

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord  

Cherry Huddle

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 14

I have used this challenge so far to try to crack how to paint flowers. But I had to forgo the flowers today. Little things like family got in the way. Husband to airport, one daughter to a dress fitting, another daughter to a food drive.
So I had to choose something that was quick - cherries!
I painted this in 1 hour 20 minutes, which is quick for me.

Calla Lilies

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 13

A few things about this daily painting challenge:

• It has sparked a ton of ideas for larger paintings, which I'd really like to be getting on with, but can't really start yet because I feel I have to get to the end of this challenge.
• It opens you up to having to show all your pieces whether you think they are any good or not. 

I actually went out today to buy some white tulips to practice for an idea I have brewing, but couldn't find any so bought these Calla Lilies instead. So this composition isn't really what I initially had in mind. However I'm on a mission to practice painting all varieties of flower, and this turned out well I think.








(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord   

Pale Yellow Aglow

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 12

Flowers are always tricker than you think they are going to be and take twice as long to paint.

Here's a progress shot. You can see at this stage I have started putting in the yellow and the basic shape is there. I used a fair bit of purple for the shadows on the right of the flower.
At this stage I realised that although the petals are pale, they were too white, so added just a touch of a creamy yellow and went in with a smaller brush to add some definition to the center of the flower.

 

(6 x 6 inches)
15 x 15cm approx
Oil on Gessobord 

Rosy-Row

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 11

Similar composition to yesterday but with three different varieties of rose of varying sizes.
Even though I was trying to keep things loose, the white rose took me at least three attempts. The white has just a hint of yellow. I tried three different pigments before I got a flower that still looked white, not yellow.
I'd like to try a bigger version of this composition at some point.

I guess this challenge really has become about painting flowers.
So difficult to do a composition like this on a tiny little panel.


(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord   

Three Odd Bottle Buddies

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 10... and Featured Artist Spotlight Interview with Daily Paintworks! 

Yesterday, I was thrilled to receive an email from Daily Paintworks - they have asked if I would like to be their next Featured Spotlight Artist! And of course I would love to!

Here's what this means:

• I get a featured interview that is published on DPW blog and in their daily emails for a week.
• They run a competition for a week to give away one of my paintings.
• Any artwork I post gets to be listed at the top of the daily 'What's New' page for a week.
• My giveaway painting will be featured on the Daily Paintworks facebook page.

Competitors will be eligible to win my painting if they've purchased a painting from Daily Paintworks within the last 30 days - or if they buy one during the week of the competition. 

Here is the interview:
Spotlight Interview


So happy to have been asked to do this. I'm actually going to use this painting I did today for the giveaway. I'm very happy with the composition. I like the tall gangly-looking roses sitting in their little bottles. I had to use a smaller brush than I usually use. As the painting is only 8 x 8 inches there's a lot to fit in! Those rose heads are really tiny!
 

About the three bottles:

• The green one I picked up for next to nothing at a tag sale. I'm assuming it's a very old bottle as its looks very vintage.
• The middle bottle is one of those frosted glass bottles that is popular at the moment. The 'frosting' was a bit of a challenge -the rose stem sort of fades away and the frosting kind of diffuses most of the reflected light.
• The final bottle was from a set of 3 identical bottles I got in the bargain bin at Target. A massive $1 for all 3 (I'm such a big spender). Always good to be on the lookout for this sort of thing (my husband wouldn't agree: "are these bottles multiplying?").

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord  

All Is Rosy

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 9

Another rose from the same bunch as yesterday, I got into observing all the variations of color I could see in the shadows in-between and under the rose petals.
I have found that when trying to capture roses, the painting goes through an 'ugly stage' where it doesn't look much like anything. You have to fight your way past this stage - eventually a likeness of a rose emerges.

(6 x 6 inches)
15 x 15cm approx
Oil on Gessobord 

January Rose

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 8

This rose study almost turned out a bit Georgia O'Keeffe abstract-ish. Not sure how that happened. Sometimes it just happens.
I'm 1/4 of the way into my 31 day challenge now and using the opportunity so far to tackle flowers which I find difficult to do.

(6 x 6 inches)
15 x 15cm approx
Oil on Gessobord

Refracted Light

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 7

Super happy with this painting. I'm drawn to slightly unusual compositions and I'm also happy with how the colours in the light turned out. This daisy was actually set up on a white cloth and a white background but I exaggerated the colours in the light bouncing off the surfaces. I'm also getting to be a fan of 'lost edges' which are easy to do with glass, because the edges do get lost at certain points.
I really made an effort with this one to simplify the gerbera daisy and instead spent a lot of time focussing on mixing the lights and darks.
I cracked open a new tube of paint that I haven't tried before - Napthol red. It has a peachy tone to it already, but I also added a touch of Cadmium orange. Totally love this colour.

I think this set up might work well for a larger painting which I might attempt at some point. 



(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord  

Printers Posy

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 6

Persevering with the Gerberas.
For this one I wanted to try an approach that a lot of artists use (but I don't use often) -which is 'blocking in'; ie you block in all the main colours and then you go back and add highlights and refinements later. The idea is that you start with an impression of the painting, getting the main colour themes right first. Not my comfort zone, but I'm trying to experiment with different techniques. I would not in general take this approach - I'm not generally a fan of working over the top of paint I have already laid down but I decided to give it ago here, just to see.

Here's a progress shot to show what I mean. At this stage I have really just put down three colours on the yellow flower: a bright yellow, a yellow ochre and a slightly darker ochre.
Then I went back in and added some definition. I think this worked really well with the yellow gerbera. It was much harder to do with the pink gerbera as the petals varied in colour from one to the next.

The little bud vase I picked up a couple of weeks ago in Crate and Barrel. I ummed and ahhed for ages as it was priced at $4 (big spend!). When I got to the checkout it was reduced to $2, so now I have 4 of these in different colours!

'Printers Posy' (the title), refers to the colour theme here turned out to be almost Yellow, Magenta and Cyan (process printers colours). I made this connection about half way through the painting.

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord

Fickle Gerbera

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 5

For today's painting I decided to focus on a small 6x6" study of a single gerbera. Flowers are tricky because the variation in value can be quite subtle. I decided to change the lightbulb from a daylight bulb to just a regular lightbulb which has a softer light, which is better to illuminate flowers.

Not sure if I can get away with another study of these fickle gerberas which have already started to droop since yesterday. This one is still standing.

Today's weather news: yesterdays snowmageddon storm has subsided, leaving a bright, sunny, snowy day, perfect for photographing paintings!

(6 x 6 inches)
15 x 15cm approx
Oil on Gessobord
 

Looking Up

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 4

I was listening to a podcast yesterday of an interview by one of my favourite artists; Julian Merrow Smith. He said artists spend a lot of their time learning what NOT to do. This painting is a classic example of that. I overworked it and got the values wrong.
But this is a challenge after all - if it was all easy it wouldn't be a challenge I guess. If it weren't for the 31 day challenge I wouldn't even be posting this one. I think I have to give gerberas another go though.
Next, rather than setting up a still life as such, I might just concentrate on painting some oil sketches of the flower heads on their own, just on paper to see if I can get to grips with how to tackle them.

In other news, here in New York state we have a freezing cold 'bomb cyclone' /blizzard going on. Glad to be inside.

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord

Pretty in pink

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 3

For this painting I decided to try lighting the vase from slightly behind and to the left, and to simplify things, to stick with one overall colour for the background. You can can't go wrong with aqua as a colour to accompany flowers I think.
In this painting I almost ended up with a few 'lost edges' (term for where the colour of the object and it's background are the same). I like the effect. The vase is almost like a water drop.


I've been taking a look on facebook at some of the work entered by other people so far, for the 'January 31 day #stradaeasel challenge' (same challenge I'm attempting). A lot of people have been painting outside... it's down to -15 degrees Celsius out there! Hat's off to those brave enough to take on the elements but I think I'll stick to painting inside!

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord

Rose Buddies

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 2

Two roses from the same bunch as yesterday. This bunch was picked up from Trader Joes - one of my favorite places to buy flowers as they have such a nice selection at a reasonable price and the flowers always look more natural than some you buy these days. I wish they would state the name of the variety of rose though. These are so pretty - a sort of variegated red, peachy colour.  The glass was a bit of a challenge - I tried not to fuss too much with it. I'm trying to put down a brush stroke, then leaving it alone.

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord

New Year's Rose

Daily Painting Challenge - Day 1

So it's January 1st 2018.

This year I had fully intended to give myself a challenge: starting February 1st, I was going to try to complete a painting-a-day every day for 30 days.
I tried this once before but only managed around 15 paintings.
THEN someone posted this on facebook - a company called Strada are having a competition to win one of their easels - to paint thirty paintings in JANUARY.
So here I am, starting in January instead.

This is my first painting.

My personal aim with this challenge is:
1. To speed up my painting time
2. To loosen my brushstrokes
3. To not worry so much about composition.
4. To get into a habit of painting every day.
5. To stop procrastinating.

I'm not aiming to complete a gallery quality piece with every painting but I'm hoping to learn something in the process and hopefully knock one or two paintings out of the park along the way.

There is always something to do everyday that stops me from painting, so I had a good studio clearout and have resolved to let the washing-up and housework wait (it's going to be a messy month).

(8 x 8 inches)
20 x 20cm approx
Oil on Gessobord


I added a little tour of my studio to this blog. Check out the tab above or click this link:
STUDIO TOUR