Tag: Art

Categories
Art theory Daily Paintworks Challenge Oil Painting Painting

The Color of White (Warm)

White Pitcher on Provence Pattern, oil on panel, 7x5"
White Pitcher on Provence Pattern, oil on panel, 7x5"

The Daily Paintworks folks are hosting weekly painting exercises that offer an opportunity to practice a particular painting challenge. Last week it was painting a white object sitting on a patterned fabric using only primary colors and white.

I’d found this funny, funky (chipped) pitcher at my local thrift shop and thought it would make a good subject for this exercise, along with a Provencal print tablecloth.

White pitcher preliminary sketch on panel
White pitcher preliminary sketch on panel

I sketched in the shapes with pastel pencil onto my Gessobord panel and then used some thinned Ultramarine Blue to block in the shadows on the pitcher. I like the way this looks so nice and sketchy.

This was another fun painting. I love how oil painting is getting to be more fun and less of a struggle (less of, but not without, that’s for sure!).

Since I tend to lose interest if something is too easy or there’s nothing more to learn, knowing that painting will always provide a challenge and there will always be more to learn, is a good thing.

If you’d like to buy this unframed 7×5″ painting for $60, just click here.

Categories
Daily Paintworks Challenge Oil Painting Painting Still Life

The Color of White (Cool)

White teapot on wrapping paper, oil on panel, 6x6"
White teapot on wrapping paper, oil on panel, 6x6"

The Daily Paintworks‘ challenge last week was to paint a white object sitting on patterned fabric using only primary colors and white. For this attempt I decided to use some turquoise, patterned wrapping paper instead. The wrapping paper had clever little snowmen all over it but after giving one snowman a try, I realized I didn’t have the patience or interest to try to paint all the details on them (top hat, scarf, etc.).

So I gave myself permission to abstract the snowmen into the circular, swirly shapes I saw reflected on the teapot. Since it was meant to be a painting exercise, I didn’t get too concerned with perfecting the painting. I just wanted to experiment with seeing reflections and building the form of a white object on a cool background.

Categories
Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Virtual Paint-Out

Capetown South Africa: Virtual Paintout

Table Mountain View, Cape Town. Oil on 5x7" panel.
Table Mountain View, Cape Town. Oil on 5x7" panel.

This month’s Virtual Paintout is in Cape Town, South Africa. What a beautiful country! I needed a project I could complete in an hour or two so I chose a simple scene and a small panel to paint on (5×7″).

But I think I spent as much time tooling around South Africa on Google Streetview than I did painting.  And tonight I had such a hard time getting the color right in the photo (the sky in the painting isn’t turquoise, it’s a warmer blue) that I’ve probably spent an equal amount of time trying to fix the photo and get this blog post finished!

So I will let it be. As my boss always says, “…good enough for jazz!” She knows I can be a perfectionist and has taught me that little mantra so that I don’t get stuck finessing one little thing while all the other work stacks up.

Here’s the original photo from Google Streetview:

Cape Town Milner Road, Southern Suburbs
Google Street View: Cape Town Southern Suburbs
Categories
Drawing Flower Art Gardening Ink and watercolor wash Outdoors/Landscape Painting Plants Sketchbook Pages

A Bit of Spring Before Thunder and Lightening

Calla Lillies, ink & watercolor
Calla Lillies, ink & watercolor

Tonight it is thundering and lightening and pouring down buckets of rain. But there was a warm sunny day last week when I was able get out in the garden and sketch a bit. Callas are so graceful and such lovely volunteers, popping up all on their own wherever they please.

 

My tiny fig tree, ink & watercolor
My tiny fig tree, ink & watercolor

 

Just after my friend Barbara finished writing her book about growing fruit trees and delivered the manuscript to the publisher, she also delivered to me a baby fig tree that she couldn’t find a space for her in garden.

I was so excited to see that my new baby tree made it through the worst of the winter and was no longer just a stick. It now has actual leaves sprouting from the tip. In case you can’t tell from my sketchy drawing, those are random rocks and bricks I placed around the baby tree as a warning to the gardeners so they wouldn’t mow over it.

Categories
Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Interiors Painting People Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers

St. Patrick’s Day Decor at Spengers

Spengers Bar, ink & watercolor
Spengers Bar, ink & watercolor

Spengers was decorated with green shamrocks when our Urban Sketchers group met there on a Tuesday before St. Patrick’s Day. Other than all the green, it was business as usual. I love the way cellphones keep people engaged and posing like this guy at the bar, even when drinking.

Sea Witch Ship Model, ink & watercolor
Sea Witch Ship Model, ink & watercolor

Spengers has a huge collection of ship models and other sea-themed objects on every wall, ceiling and in every corner. I drew this standing in front of the display case, trying to stay out of the waiters’ path. And as usual I incorrectly labeled the sketch “Brennan’s” — a nearby bar and restaurant that I always get mixed up with Spengers.

Categories
Ink and watercolor wash Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Indian Corn

Indian Corn, ink & watercolor
Indian Corn, ink & watercolor

I bought this decorative Indian corn around Thanksgiving, planning to sketch it but it took a cold, rainy night in February to get around to it. I was tired and grumpy and needed something fairly mindless to do: drawing hundreds of little corn kernels from life was just the meditation I needed.

Categories
Art theory Oil Painting Painting Still Life

Simplified Shadow Mass with Kwan Yin, Pepper Sauce and Camelia

Kwan Yin, Pepper Sauce, Camelia in Soap Dish, oil on 8x10" panel
Kwan Yin, Pepper Sauce, Camellia in Soap Dish, oil on 8x10" panel

In the Simplified Shadow Mass exercise you practice visualizing the darks and shadows grouped into as few shapes as possible and paint them in one dark color. Then you can vary the colors for the rest of the painting. I tried that in the two top studies.

In the bottom two I allowed myself to use two different colors for the shadows instead of just one. I like the last one best (bottom left) and the first one second best (top left). I hate the muddy second one (top right).

It was fun experimenting with massing shadows and playing with composition by sticking to two objects and changing only one at a time.

Categories
Art theory Oil Painting Painting Still Life

Finding My Painting Process; 10 Minute Orange Exercise

Orange structure times 4, oil on panel
Orange structure x 4, oil on 10x8" panel

I read about the Daily Painters’ 10 minute exercise (paint the same thing four times, 10 minutes each) and thought it sounded like fun. What I learned from my attempt (below) is that I need more than ten minutes to do a painting, even if it is small. So when I finished doing the exercise below, I gave myself more time, and painted the study above, exploring a way of painting that works better for me.

Orange four times @ 10 minutes each
Orange four times @ 10 minutes each, 0il on 10x8" panel

I think I’ve found a way to approach an oil painting that works for me, and it’s sort of* illustrated in the top study above.

  1. Sketch in the big shapes and indicate the lines of the planes using *thinned paint (see diagrams in previous post here).
  2. With the same thin paint (*not thick paint as I did here), fill in the shadows to indicate darks and leave the light areas white.
  3. Use both dark/light and warm/cool variations of colors to model the form.
  4. Lastly add light highlights, dark accents, details and make any other necessary adjustments.

*Sort of because originally in the top study each square illustrated those 4 steps, but I played around with the first two, adding white paint between the plane lines, and turning the thinly blocked in value sketch into a value study with black and white paint.

Categories
Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting People Places Sketchbook Pages

Sketchbook Ate My Sandwich

Two Good Pots, ink & watercolor
Two Good Pots, ink & watercolor

My favorite two sketches the night we met to sketch at Fat Apples Restaurant in El Cerrito were the two “pots” on the left hand page above. The guy was the first thing I drew, the coffee pot the last. I wasn’t in great shape, having had little sleep the night before.  I just couldn’t get into the drawing zone, turn off the inner critic or relax into seeing, drawing, and enjoying the adventure.

Underneath the watercolor apple above are lots of messed up lines and the word “Grrrr” written all over the things that frustrated me. The waitress on the right kept returning to her spot and standing in exactly the same position each time and the counter beside her was even more stationary but I just couldn’t draw it.

Fat Apples BLT, ink & watercolor
Fat Apples BLT, ink & watercolor

When I added m ore watercolor at home to the BLT (left page above) I must have closed the book too soon because the pages glued themselves together. When I tried to separate the pages, part of my sandwich stuck to the other side. Not only did that ruin the sandwich but also a small ink drawing I’d liked on the other page.

I’d repainted the sandwich because when we showed our sketches at the end of the evening and I said it was my dinner, one of the sketchers innocently asked “what was it?” And she was right — it was so loosely drawn and painted that it wasn’t recognizable as a sandwich.

Categories
Drawing Outdoors/Landscape Places Richmond Annex Sketchbook Pages

Huntington Park Playground

Huntington Park, ink & Pitt Artist brush pens
Huntington Park, ink & Pitt Artist brush pens

Another drawing opportunity while the girls play in the park. They got bored and ready to leave at just the moment I finished the sketch. I added a little color with Pitt Artist brush pens when I got home. That’s quite a fancy light fixture at this nice little park in Richmond Annex.

I have so many other pictures to post but all have stories that need writing, and after a day of unsuccessfully trying to re-paint a painting for the third time, any words I might share at the moment aren’t really fit for print!