Category: Still Life

Categories
Oil Painting Painting Still Life

What color is a lemon?

Lemon on green glass plate (P1010468)

Oil on panel, 6×8″
Click here to see larger

Despite today being my last day of vacation, my cat barfing in response to fireworks, and my 3-year-old refrigerator dying yesterday, my muse has finally returned and I got started on some new painting projects. The first one is this small oil painting to try to understand what color the inside of a lemon is. It’s easy to say yellow, but as my friend Susie said, it’s transparent and reflective, like glass–and therefore not really any one particular color. I set it up on green glass so on the thin slice, the green shows through. The inside of the lemon is paler and less yellow in the original painting but I couldn’t get it quite right on the screen. Anyway, it’s not a masterpiece, but I’m pleased with getting the hang of the alla prima process (doing a whole painting at one time) with oils, and just love the feel of working with them.

Dry Ice: Interesting Stuff
Tuesday after lunch I realized my refrigerator wasn’t working and learned that the repairman couldn’t come until Thursday so I went off to buy dry ice. The guys in the shop were sympathetic and gave me 80 pounds of the stuff for free. I carefully carried in the steaming, icy bags, using potholders, 1 block at a time, loading it into the freezer and fridge. Later when I talked to my mom, she reminded me that I had another refrigerator in my studio kitchen (my house is a duplex, and the back unit is my studio). Duh!!! I rarely turn that fridge on since it’s a power hog, just using it to store extra beverages.

I turned it on and waited for it to get cold enough. Then I loaded all groceries I’d bought the day before into my laundry basket and carted them to the other kitchen. I was stunned to see that in that short time, all my wonderful lettuces and herbs and vegetables had frozen solid and were ruined. Then I left a few bottles of beer and some cans of soda in the broken fridge with the dry ice, thinking they’d be fine. I bet you can guess what happened next: The soda cans froze, expanded and exploded, covering the inside of the fridge with a layer of ice and icicles. In the freezer, frozen berries had turned to soup and they made their own lovely purple puddles of ice. But I just ignored the whole mess and spent the day in the studio.

Categories
Flower Art Life in general Painting People Plants Portrait Still Life Watercolor

Birthday flowers from my neighbors

Birthday Flowers

Watercolor painted quickly and directly on Arches hot press watercolor paper without preliminary drawing and then when dry, Pentel brush pen to draw/paint the lines. 7.5″ x 11″
Click here for enlarged view

My wonderful next-door neighbors brought this potted azalea for me as a birthday gift yesterday, along with a nice card and a hug from each child. I have the sweetest neighbors. Not long after I first moved in I fell in love with their kids and after photographing them at baby Alex’s baptism painted these portraits of Alex, Yessica and Erick which they have hanging in their living room. We help each other with all sorts of things and they often bring me delicious home cooked Mexican food (including delicious barbequed salmon with cactus relish).

Then my sons took me out to good Thai food last night. It was wonderful being with them and realizing more than ever what great young men they’ve become. It made my day, even though I looked like a gimpy old lady with my limping and had to sit on my fleece jacket because the sciatica makes it hurt to sit without extra padding. But the combination of their good company, the good wishes of people who’ve written or called to wish me speedy recovery and happy birthday, the yummy Thai food, some nice pain meds and a Singha beer made for a perfectly happy birthday! And I am getting a little better each day.

Categories
Gouache Life in general Painting Still Life

Papaya in Gouache

Papaya in Gouache

Gouache on Arches hot press watercolor paper, 10×7.5″
Click here to enlarge, then click again

I meant to paint in oils this afternoon and I meant to go to bed early tonight and I meant to get some good exercise in today. Oops.

Instead I spent the afternoon with the president of my neighborhood association touring the former private elementary school around the corner from my house that is on the verge of being leased to a new charter high school. I’m feeling very much the Nimby-ite (Not In My Back Yard) because the school will almost literally be in my backyard — on the next block. While the school’s focus is supposed to be all about community service and group hugs, my experience with the nicest of teenagers (including my own who weren’t always all that nice)  is that high school students are noisy, drive like fools, and have lots of trash that rarely ends up in the trash can.

By the time I got home I had to cook dinner and then clean up the huge mess from chopping tons of different veges for a stir fry. When I finished it was 9:00 and I was about to head to bed for a nice early night when I saw this lovely half papaya I bought today calling out to be painted.

“OK, you have one hour” I told myself and then to bed!” Two hours later and here I am uploading the picture. I still have to do my back stretches. But at least I’m happy I painted today because tomorrow it’s back to the office.

Categories
Illustration Friday Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Citrus (leathery old lemon)

Citrus (old lemon)

Watercolor on Arches paper, 10×8″. To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes

I hadn’t planned on doing Illustration Friday today but when I saw that the topic was Citrus I remembered the giant old lemon from a co-worker’s tree that’s been in my fridge for a week. I’ve been squeezing it on veges and into salad dressings and it was still going strong, though a bit squished. I’m not sure how this rendition ended up being so not-lemon colored. I should have stopped painting sooner though I like the way the little scalloped plate turned out. Too bad the topic isn’t little blue plates.

Last night a combination of back pain and a prank caller ringing my phone five times made for a bad night. This morning I called the number back (thanks to good old caller id) and told off the guy whose house it was. Apparently it was a 10 year old girl fooling around with the phone (but why was she up phoning me at 2:30, 3:30, 5:30, 6:30, and 7:30?). I’ve now blocked their number in case she tries again! Argh! I’m off to try for a better night’s sleep.

Categories
Every Day Matters Glass Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

EDM 117 – Draw Something Round (Marbles)

EDM-Something Round

Watercolor in Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook
To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes

All day at work (which has been insanely busy lately) I was thinking about coming home and painting some marbles for this week’s Everyday Matters challenge – Draw Something Round. But I worked until 7:30 pm and then by the time I’d cooked dinner and eaten it was 9:00 p.m. I decided to give it a go anyway. The best thing that came out of it was the fun my cats had chasing marbles around the studio. I should have drawn that!

My intention was to be loose and fresh but I guess I was just too tired. Also, I decided a month or so ago that any watercolor painting I do at home would be on watercolor paper instead of  sketchbook paper since it’s so much better and more pleasurable to paint on which I regretably ignored. But at least I got a drawing/painting done today, even if it’s not great. And tomorrow is another day to try again.

Categories
Art theory Painting Still Life

Acrylic glazing practice: Pear

Acrylic Glazing exercise

Acrylic on gessoed mat board, 8″ x 10″
To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes

Today I practiced acrylic painting techniques in my new book, “Acrylic Revolution.” This exercise started with a painting done in black, white and grey (known as a grisaille) to establish the form and shadows. I meant to photograph that stage but got too involved and forgot. When it dried I painted over it with transparent layers of paint thinned with glazing liquid). I had to do a bunch of layers to compensate for having made the initial grisaille too dark. Unlike watercolor which dries lighter, acrylic dries darker than it looks when you mix colors. This is because acrylic medium is white when wet and clear when dry. I haven’t gotten used to accomodating that change yet.

I also experimented with using acrylic like watercolor, trying various types of washes which all worked perfectly. I was less successful with oil-style blending techniques and will work on those some more tomorrow.

Categories
Acrylic Painting Flower Art Plants Still Life

Eggs and Cactus Flower in Acrylic

Eggs-acrylic

Acrylic on canvas board, 10 x 8″
Click image, select All Sizes to enlarge

This weekend I again tried working in acrylic and oils, doing this practice still life of brown eggs in a white bowl in each medium. I wasn’t happy with the way the acrylics weren’t letting me blend and the hard edges I ended up with. The oil painting is still drying, waiting for another layer.

But then tonight, although I thought I was too tired to do anything, I got inspired to start another painting –this cactus flower–in acrylics, with a plan to do the first loose wash to block in the painting in acylics (to avoid turpentine washes with oils) and then paint over it in oils for the final layer because I prefer the gooshy slipperiness of oils and the ability to blend and have soft edges. I started the painting with acrylics, squirting in a bunch of glazing medium and using gesso instead of white paint and lo and behold I had something very much like oils, blending beautifully. Here’s the painting in progress:

cactus-flower-in-progress

Acrylic on canvas, work in progress 12 x 15″

So now I think I’ll finish it in acrylic and see how it goes. The other thing I’ve figured out with these paintings is how differently I need to approach color mixing with watercolor vs oils or acrylics. With watercolor I tend to paint in layers, striving for getting the color right on the first try but inevitably doing many layers, building up the darks and saturated colors.

Working opaquely with oils (and to some extent acrylics), especially when trying to work alla prima (completing a painting in one session as one does painting outdoors without letting the paint dry), it’s pretty critical to mix and apply the right color the first time, not diddling around with a dab of this and a dab of that. It really forces me to accurately gauge the colors and values of the colors I see or want to use, getting the dark values right first.

One more thing I learned…I discovered I’d been saying to myself, “I’ll never learn how to mix colors in oils” so every time I caught myself thinking that I changed the thought to “I can learn this!” and now I think I’m getting there.

Categories
Flower Art Glass Still Life Watercolor

Quick Camelia

Camelia

Watercolor on Arches paper, 7.5″ x 10″
To enlarge click image, select All Sizes

Tonight was painting group and it was late by the time we got around to painting (after looking at each other’s paintings from the past week and random chatting). I snipped a camelia off my bush and had an idea of a loose flower with ink over it using some new colors I got from Daniel Smith. Except the colors were recommended at the workshop I attended in February for creating textured backgrounds, not for delicate flowers (oops…Strike One).

While I was painting I got really interested in the glass bowl and completely overworked the flower (StrikeTwo). The colors were muddy (they would have been fine for an old textured wall though) so I started adding white goauche mixed with pink to get back the lights and made a mess (Strike Three, you’re out!) (Please pardon the baseball metaphor.)

I decided to wash off the flower and try again. With a small sponge and clean water I wiped off all the pigment that would come off, used my hair dryer to dry it and quickly and more loosely repainted. It’s cheerier now. Since I scanned the sketch before I painted, I can easily print out the sketch on another piece of watercolor paper and paint it again even brighter without having to redraw it (although the drawing was actually a lot of fun) except for straightening out the bowl a bit since I was working fast and didn’t notice it was a little off.

Here’s the original before the flower got washed off:

Camelia

(Ick)

Categories
Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Salt Shaker

Salt-shaker

Ink & watercolor in small Moleskine watercolor notebook
To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes

This morning I found out that four of my flower paintings have been selected for a book on painting flowers that will be published later this year. The rest of the day was good too. It’s supposed to rain tonight. And that’s the news from Jana’s world today.

Categories
Drawing Still Life

Glide

Glide

Uniball Signo white gel pen on black Canford Card paper
(To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes)

This is a pack of Glide dental floss. It’s part of a series I’m drawing of things that support my life — items I could live without but would rather not have to. I’ve been considering items I own, asking myself, “Is this something that supports my life and do I want to draw it (or if not, toss it)?”

ART CITY: On another subject, I want to recommend “Art City,” a 3-DVD documentary about the life of current day artists in New York (available from Netflix). The artists are working in their studios and talking about their work, lives, motivations, creative issues and success (or lack of it) with humor, passion and honesty. Some of the artists in the series are Chuck Close, Elizabeth Murray, and Brice Marden (who draws with long sticks taped together and dipped in ink).

P.S. I changed my template again and on this one you can comment at top or bottom of each post. Is this one easier to read than the previous template?