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   

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

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

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I still have a set of Christmas Tree ornaments in my attic from when I was a kid; still in their original box. My husband has been trying to persuade me to throw them out because I generally don't hang them on the tree. But this year I have been absolutely dying to pull them out and paint them.
(If I get time I may have some of my paintings made into greetings cards.)

I went to pull out the box a couple of weeks ago while tidying up up there and found that a few of them were broken. I had a look on ebay and discovered that it is pretty easy to still pick up some of these vintage ornaments, so I bought a few to make up for the broken ones. This is one of them.
I painted this one first because I bought some tubes of gold oil paint a couple of months ago and have been dying to try them out.

Here they are on my palette:

I used the Gamblin Rich gold more than the others.
I just used it for some of the highlights but also used a good amount of Asphaltum (a dark brown). 
Now I need to buy some silver paint!

I think I'm going to paint a series of these ornaments.

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