Now that I’ve come out the other side of the kitchen remodel I’m so grateful to be done and be able to enjoy it, to have the house to myself again, to not continually have noise and dust despite the careful screening, and to have completed making seeming hundreds of decisions and purchases big and small. Now I get to return to a “normal” routine of painting, drawing, hiking and spending time with my dog, friends and family.
I took a long break from posting to my blog and I have lots of good excuses. I created a bunch of draft posts of a series of iPad sketches I’d done at the breakfast table and then my kitchen remodel began. Four months later it’s finally finished! So here I am finally posting the drafts that I started months ago.
And we have more morning sketches. I was really trying to force myself to stick to 3 values for each object. My glass-topped table is so great with its frosted glass square design elements and reflections.
Another couple of days worth of stuff on my dining room table drawn before breakfast, with cantaloupe making a guest appearance.
And this begins a series of posts of the sketches I’ve been doing before breakfast at the dining room table where I start the day with a cup of coffee, my journal and my iPad. I read a bit of email, journal a bit and sketch what’s on the table in front of me, pretty much as I find it. I don’t always have time to finish a sketch but it’s always a great way to start the day.
I was thrilled when my irises bloomed again this year after failing to do so last spring. I love the warm light I was able to capture in this painting. It went through a lot of changes before I finally settled on this version. (Available on my DPW gallery here.)
This was just a little love letter to a pretty pear. (Available on my DPW Gallery here.)
I had so much fun painting this hanging lemon and grandma’s candy dish and the previous hanging lemon oil study below. Also scroll down for the fun Procreate color studies and sketches and WIP photos. I know the candy dish is wonky but I decided I like the wavy distortions. I’m not sure which I prefer more, the iPad color study or this painting (which is available at my DPW gallery here.)
I’d love to know which you prefer: iPad painting or oil painting? And here is the little hanging lemon painting I did earlier:
This little painting came first; a fun experiment in composition and hanging things from the wall to paint. The painting is available at my DPW gallery here.
In some ways I prefer this chunky quick study more than the oil painting. I am working towards finding a way to apply what I’ve been doing on the iPad to my oil paintings. Next up on the blog are a series of more of these iPad sketches.
I tried painting these several ways, with just the vase and flowers, with a whole lemon, and then a lemon wedge. It’s all about yellow. And springtime. And daffodils. (Available on my DPW gallery here.)
There was something regal about these two, hence the name, despite the queen sitting in a soap dish, not a throne. I started out thinking “values and planes” and then, as usual, got seduced by color and detail. I did manage to keep some of the planes I saw in this pomegranate (which was becoming more faceted as it became more elderly, having been painted a few times over the past couple weeks). However, I’m not sure the painting actually benefitted from leaving the planes (or so many of them) visible.
Below is a photo of the set up and below that the two previous pom/persimmon paintings that were a nice warmup and introduction to the subject, though perhaps not terribly successful in terms of paint application, composition and/or drawing.
My grandmother ironed everything including underwear and sheets! Doing laundry was a major project. My mother bought her a dryer but she refused to use it, preferring to hang everything out to dry on the backyard clothesline. She dragged her wheeled canvas laundry cart with a big pocket for wooden clothespins (see sketch below) down the stairs and then pinned everything up to dry in the sun.
Before she ironed she sprinkled the stiff, dry laundry with water, using her special sprinkler cork (in painting above) stuffed in a bottle. Steam irons made laundry sprinklers obsolete but I wanted to honor this artifact of my grandma’s life in a painting. A few years ago I also made this sketch of her hanging laundry (below). I always loved playing with the clothespins and hanging out with my sweet grandma on laundry day.
Here is a photo of the setup (which I painted from life, not from the photo).
Jana Bouc, Artist 