#233 & #234 Uncle Gene Geometrics Sept/Oct 2019

Have I mentioned my Uncle Gene?  He was like a second father to me, once removed (a joke for those who knew him, as he could tell you proper naming of genetic relations, and would jump at a chance to correct you and educate you if you referred to someone as a cousin who might actually be a second cousin).  He passed away over the summer...my cousins (more like sisters), Lori and Jenny (his daughters) have recently completed divvying up his household - no small task!  I am the lucky recipient of his roll-top desk, which is awesome, and a drop-leaf table - also awesome, but not as awesome as the desk (which has a bazillion drawers and nooks and crannies and locks and secret compartments....it's going to be my Artist Desk, full of drawing supplies).  I also got a bunch of his drafting tools...hence the name of these two paintings: "Uncle Gene Geometrics".  I traced a bunch of the triangles and circle tools and made two related paintings.  Related....hmmmm, maybe I should add "Once Removed" to the title of the paintings!  I've got one tiny spot left to paint....these were a "use what's left on the palette" and they've taken quite a bit of time since I really haven't had much paint left on the palette recently.  I might go over them again too, some of the paint looks too thin.  A tragic tale: they were sitting on the floor, under my easel, and a painting on the easel above them fell off it's cardboard backboard and hit one of the geometric paintings and actually punctured it!  So, they're unsellable....but I wasn't going to sell them anyway.  I'm going to try and salvage it by putting some linen tape on the back side where the hole is.  I think it should be fine, we'll see.  I've got to wait till it's dry enough before I try and fix it.

#230 #231 #232 A bunch of clown fish 10/20/19 thru 10/22/19

The clown fish make me happy, so I decided I would make a series.  I stopped by Howard's Art Supply, to check to see how my donation was doing bid-wise (it was still at $35, with one more day to go) and while I was there I decided to get a few more Ampersand boards.  After working again with these, I've decided I'm not a fan.  If I were more direct with my brushstrokes, I might be a fan, but uggggh, these painting took it out of me.  I put down the fish on all 3 the first night.  They looked adorable and I was feeling good about it.  The next two nights I added the backgrounds....uggggh, that's what took it out of me.  The paint smears so dang easily.  On a canvas surface the ridges must provide just enough of a barrier to prevent (most) smears.  So I ended up dinking with my previously perfectly adorable fish and now I don't find them nearly as adorable.  The photo of the paintings seems to highlight the horrible brushwork.  I spent HOURS and HOURS trying to get them acceptable, without success.  The only one I like is the one that I elected to keep the background water-only.  Uggggh.

#229 Sunflower 10/17/19

Another larger-than-most painting, 7x9 inches.  I got the most gorgeous sunflowers at the Farmer's Market over the summer, and took lots of photos of them.  I decided tonight to finally paint one of those photos.  All the ones that included the vase looked weird.  The flowers are over-sized, making the vase look undersized, causing the whole still-life portrait to just look off-kilter.  So I did a close up.  But the close-up had the flower facing down, sunflowers need to face the sun....so I rotated it.  The painting went easy, I only put a few colors on the palette and went to town.  I started with the center, easily deciding that painting the pattern of seeds would lead me to cry, so I didn't even go down that road.  I did try to put in some dramatic colors though: purples and reds.  The petals seemed very straightforward.  The background was minimal....greens as the bottom and a bit of blue sky at the top.  Boom, I was done.  My reaction every time I look at it?  Yuck.  The style I was going for is missing.  I don't think it's a bad painting, it's just not what I intended.  Maybe I should have painted the seed pattern after all.  Oh well....try, try again. 

#228 Red Converse Sneaks 10/16/19

The last of the shoe pics that were picked to paint.  More laced sneakers.  I've decided the easiest way to go about the laces is to paint everything else first, that way the laces are easier to track, what part is on top and what part is below and what part needs a shadow shade and what part needs a highlight.  The background on this one was just what kind of paint I had on the palette....you'd think I would be more calculating than that.  The pic is one taken from pexels, of course.  I like how this painting turned out.  I started with low expectations and moved along systematically, finishing in a reasonable amount of time, calm and serene through the whole thing.  The photo of my painting is causing some angst though - too much glare!

#224 thru #227 More Birds 10/14/19

I worked on some hens tonight....thought I should round out the family, so there's a rooster, a chick and two hens now.  I'm thinking I should call the hen painting "the girls".  A few weeks ago at the Farmer's Market, one of the vendors was telling a story and mentioned that her girls poop all over the eggs when it's rainy....and another vendor had a look of horror on her face and said, "your girls do what??"  The other vendor said, "not my children, my girls are my hens!"

All of the birds went along fairly easy tonight....got all 4 down in one evening, however I did get to bed pretty late!  I selected a guinea hen to paint, only because a customer at the Farmer's Market was looking at the tiny easel paintings and remarked that if I had a guinea, she would buy it, as she just loves her guinea hens.  When I googled them, I was a bit taken aback as I didn't realize quite how odd their heads were.  I thought perhaps I had googled some sort of weird Amazon version of a Guinea, but all the images looked the same.  So, there's a Guinea Hen available, should that woman come back to the Market!

And two more robins, because everybody loves robins!!!

#222 and #223 Chick and Rooster 10/13/19

This duo is ripe for a joke, so here it is: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  (It had to happen.)  In this case the honest answer is: The egg.  More honesty, I didn't intend to bring these two together for the joke.  I intended to paint two birds.  I opened up my "bird" file and chose these two because I was weary of songbirds.  And it just occurred to me as I typed in the title of the post, "hmmm, I've got a chick and an chicken, weird, is that a chicken or rooster, umm technically a rooster is a chicken, but definitely a rooster, oh but wait, I've got an egg too, I could title it with the world's most eternal joke!"  Enough about that.

What's different about these two is that they are painted on Ampersand boards instead of canvases.  I sprung the big bucks for two 4 inch ampersand boards while at Howard's for the big "gallery opening".  (BTW, the silent auction on the painting donations will finish this weekend....I'll be checking to see where my Appalachian Trail entry is in the bidding on Friday after work.)  The ampersand: very, very smooth.  The paint just glided on.  Like black ice.  I thought oh no, the paint will glide off just as easily!  Once I felt that glide, I anticipated having a big mess of brown paint falling off the edges given how I put paint down.  I'm used to the canvas fighting me a bit.  I usually need to be forceful to get the paint to leave the brush and get into all the nooks and crannies.  I started therefore with a very delicate hand, fearful of the risk of slipping.  But the ampersand worked out ok.  The paint stayed put, and I'm content with the outcome of each.

#222 Hatchling

#223 Free Range Rooster

#221 Black Heels 10/10/19

Another pair of heels. Full disclosure, I cannot wear heels.  They just kill my feet.  And when I see "professional women" (full disclosure, yes I saw the double meaning there and elected to keep it) I marvel at their ability to walk and not wince or stumble or break an ankle.  They are almost like specialty athletes in my eyes, like one might view a pole vaulter.  Perhaps one day we'll view high heels like we do corsets now.....women willing to suffer silently for fashion.  Regardless, I like how my black heels turned out.  Yes, the photo I worked from were red heels, but I had already done red heels, so I changed them to black, my artistic license.  I elected to put purple down on the palette before I even started, knowing that I wanted the "realism" of the black color to happen with purple.  I used to make glass beads, and when you strung out black glass thinly over a white glass surface it would appear purple.  Black glass is actually really dark purple.  So that is likely why I started with the purple plan.  I ended up sticking with the purple plan too!  I'm not sure if I'm going to be the only eyes that see the shoes as black though....the rest of the world may just see these as purple shoes.

#220 All-Stars 10/9/19

OK, my plan to paint laced shoes in under an hour was a colossal failure.  I got all BUT the laces painted in under an hour, but then spent over an hour JUST on the laces.  Finally giving up and giving in to the idea that they were "stylized" laces...some parts looked real which allowed the rest of the unreal parts to be forgiven, overlooked. My favorite part of the painting is the background, perhaps because we just started with some cooler temperatures and Fall is on the mind, and the orange and brown looks Fall-ish.  I used prussian blue for the shoe canvas, and all of my white parts ended up tinted with the blue, which I think works ok because if they were white-white they'd look out of place.  Not sure if I'll continue to mess with this one tomorrow, I may just need to move on from laced shoes. 

#219 High Heels with Bows 10/8/19

We've been binge watching a British baking show, a competition of sorts.  Dave turns it on each evening and I get sucked into the drama of their predicament of baking spotted dicks or some other strange name for a pastry (spotted dick is the only one of the myriad of unrecognizable British terminology for baked goods that I have committed to memory, since I thought it might come in handy to throw out in random conversation with friends, ie "What is that you're eating, some sort of spotted dick?")  As a result, I've been getting to my painting right about the time I should be getting to my PJ's.  I tell myself that without an unlimited evening, I will work to "get it done quick" and it will turn out better than my "belabored, over-blended" paintings.  So this one is "under an hour" and while not as cool looking as the toe shoes, or as wow-ish as the red heels, it turned out acceptable.  The bows were a bitch, though.  I've been using my color wheel to assist with color selection.  I wanted the purple background, so I chose analogous colors for the rest of the painting (orange, red and yellow).  The wheel has been helpful. Tomorrow, it will be sneakers with laces, laces in hopefully less than an hour!  So, I'll be having another crack at the trainers and will hopefully be chuffed about it!  (FYI, I had to use google to write that last sentence.)

#218 Beach Umbrellas 10/7/19

I found this picture in the newspaper, some article about local beaches....and thought it would be good fodder for a painting.  I sketched it myself (gasp!) and painted the whole thing a solid red to keep things "warm".  However it ended up not really red, but a softer version of red.  The ocean and sky went in just fine, but the sand quickly became pink sand.  The dune grasses, well I only put in the dark stuff at first and some shadows.  I moved to add a few umbrellas, but as I put in the first one I said "Stop right here, this one will have to wait a day!"  Everything was so wet that it was becoming too smeary to be recognized as anything in particular.  So I waited a day, and then added the lighter grasses, the umbrellas and a bunch of random mismatched spots which are supposed to be people.  I was also able to get the sand's pink tint toned down a bit.  It's OK, but in comparison to my Key West beach landscape, it's outstanding.  I'm still planning a make-over for the Key West painting.

#217 Toe Shoes 10/6/19

After the disappointing job I did yesterday, I left the landscape world and went back to a still life.  Same size canvas (7x9, rather large for me) though.  I turned off most of my brain and just tried to get down what I saw in the photo.  I love this one!  Isn't is strange how one day fails and the next day excels?  I don't quite understand the inconsistency, but perhaps one day I'll get there.  My intended background in this painting was just blurred gray....but now that I look at the finished painting I see it as tulle from a cast-off tutu, laying on the floor behind the toe shoes.  What is keeping the toe shoes from falling over?  It is a mystery!

#216 Key West 10/5/19

I've been wanting to do this scene for months and months.  I thought today would be the day I've waited for.  That my skills might be up to the task of how pretty this photo is.  Alas, I don't like it. I wanted to keep it loose, nothing too precise.  I put down the paint brush after the canvas was covered, and thought, "Something isn't working."  I haven't put my finger on it yet.  Perhaps the dried grass stalks on the right don't fit the model of the rest of the dune grasses.  It needs work.  I spent another hour today trying to re-work the tabby cat face, attempting to get his face to be less pointy.  Finally I flipped the photo upside down, and the painting upside-down, and worked the cat chin from that angle and it finally looked better.  Not 100%, but maybe 75%, and I thought it will have to pass with that.  So, I'll give myself a week to stare at this beach, then another hour to play with it.  But right now I am very disappointed with myself.

#215 Rain Boots 10/1/19

I have a closet-full of shoes to paint.  Well, they're in somebody's closet, not mine, as most of the upcoming shoes are from pexels.  Today I did a quick rendition of some polka-dotted pink rain boots.  The whole thing went down fast and loose, but then I decided I didn't like the green edge of the woods in the background and I smushed and re-smushed it.  As I sit here and look again, I'll probably smush some more green on it later because it looks a bit too fast and loose, like it was scribbled on by a toddler.

#211 thru #214 Four more Cuties: 2 Dogs, a Cat and a Seal 9/30/19

End of the month, and I wanted to be a bit more "on track" for my goal of 300 paintings in the year.  I did a bit of catch up this month, but there is still more to go!  I should be at 225 so I'm still behind by 11 paintings.  Let's hope October goes well!  Tonight I started with the puppy and he came together very quick.  I started with the pink tongue, then did the pink background, the the rest of the dog.  So I figured the adult dog would move along similarly.  It did not.  I kept messing with his fur, trying to get the marbled colors right.  Maybe I should have also started him with his tongue!  For a while he looked flat, like you'd see in a coloring book, then finally out he popped.  I can't quite put my finger on what I did that changed his look so dramatically.  With the dogs behind me I moved on to the seal.  He seemed like he'd be easy, 50 shades of gray.  I think I ended up with 50 layers of gray.  If he looks 3-D it might be because he's puffed out with so much paint!  And the face just looked scary.  I played with the eyes, and the nose, and the mouth, and when a friendly face finally arrived I stopped painting.  Thought I should go to bed at this point, but I decided to put my nose to the grindstone and whip out the cat.  I've done plenty of cats, and this one should be easy enough.  Not.  It was his chin that kept me up too late.  I changed the edges on his chin and mouth 6 times before exhaustion finally set in and I had to go to bed.  I may play with it one more time tomorrow.  And now that I see it here, I'm going to play with his right eye too.

#209 and #210 A Horse and a Sea Turtle 9/29/19

Next animals up are the Riding Horse and a Swimming Sea Turtle, both found on Pexels.  The horse went down pretty smooth, no issues and I like that there are painterly bits to it.  The sea turtle was a bit more belabored. The spots seemed very important and I had trouble with his right "fin" (not sure they're actually fins), it kept just looking more like a blob than a useful appendage.  When I look at the painting, I like that it's a sea turtle, but I don't really care for the painting itself.  I may have to do some reworking on it.

#207 and #208 Hershey the Cat and a Hedgehog 9/28/19

I've got 8 more tiny easel sized paintings lined up - all animals.  I haven't sold any paintings to kids lately, and I think it's because the cute animals are all gone.  The Batman in front of the Flag, while cute, is weird.  So, I have 8 cute faces to put down: some cats, some dogs, some sea creatures, a horse and a hedge hog.  I started them tonight with the one animal I know personally: Hershey.  He's my cousin Lori's cat.  All black, slim and trim, much different than Batman who would look like a Sumo wrestler if you put him next to Hershey.  Hershey is being held by Audrey, who was visiting from Florida and just loves Hershey.  I thought briefly about including Audrey in the painting, but I'm still too nervous to paint people.....so I painted a simple background, to frame the simple black cat.  I like how it turned out.  I included some "chocolate" brown in his fur, as highlights to both his name and the sunlight hitting him.  The hedgehog I found on Pixels and he's super cute and looks like he's roaming around a fairy-filled section of the woods.  For some reason his 3-D roundness doesn't come through as much as I'd like.  I kept adding and subtracting lights and darks to see if I could get him to puff out some, and finally I just called it quits.  Likely, two months from now, I'll see the problem that I just can't spot right now.

Oops, now I see it - there is the hedgehogs right front paw just barely visible in the photo that I neglected to put in the painting.  I can fix that next and see if it helps.