#80 4/11/19 The Second (and maybe last) Key West House

Ugggh.  These Key West Houses, which looked so interesting in person, aren't looking so interesting in my portrait renditions.  The experience of painting them feels identical to what I felt painting the first two (and maybe last two) fancy china tea cups: tortured.  It has left me feeling unworthy of holding a paint brush at all.  Though, when I look at my finished and varnished tea cup paintings, they look OK.  Perhaps I'll look at these two Key West Houses that I've done a few months from now and think, "they're not as bad as I remember thinking they were."  Nahhh, they're bad.

#79 April Abstract, Floral Stencil

This one took a while; it was going to be a March Abstract for left-over paint, but I never completed the in-between areas, as I was waiting for it to dry enough for that task....and as I was waiting for it to dry I would keep adding more paint here and there.  Last night I finally added the in-between "black" color.  I recently came across an on-line article about mixing paint, and it talked about mixing black: "mixing all 3 primaries will create black; it is liking making a very dark purple and then adding its opposite, yellow."  And then it went on to say: "ultramarine blue mixed with burnt umber is a cheap and fast way to create black."  Cheap?  That was explained in the "how to mix brown" section: "since earth pigments are cheap compared to the primary colors, it is advisable to buy brown oil paint and not mix it."  For me, Miss Economy, the advice was like finding treasure.

From the beginning I wanted black in the in-between areas of this painting.  To help that effort, I started with a black wrapped canvas, it is 12x12 inches.  I taped down the stencil, and tap-tapped red acrylic paint in the holes, ie the flowers.  Then I oil-painted over those red areas, but wasn't very neat about it, figuring the neatness issue would be solved when I put down the black paint.  It worked as planned.  Only one area sticks out, one where I used more safflower oil in the black paint, it looks very wet still.  Hopefully in a month it will look like the other areas.

Of course of all my paints on-hand, the one I don't have is burnt umber.  So my black was mixed with ultramarine blue and all 3 browns that I do own: burnt sienna, raw umber and raw sienna.....equal parts of all 4.  This same article said that if you paint something black-black (ie with purchased black paint), it can look strange in a painting, as if there are holes in the painting where you've put the black....and the solution is to mix your own black.  Now I know how to do that....and if I need just a tiny bit of black I'll maybe still use my purchased black, but cut with a bit of raw umber.

Still using my broken paintbrush, btw.

Link to that awesome article: http://ranartblog.com/blogarticle04.html

#75-#78 4/8/19 Tiny Easel Paintings

I was off work today, so I made a list of everything I wanted to get done.....one of those things was the 4 tiny easel paintings.  I'd had my fill of food paintings, via the magnet paintings.  I'd seen tiny easel paintings before, and they were tiny reproductions of famous artwork.  Well, I didn't want to do that, but I realized that if it's going to be placed in a spot of significance like an easel (even a tiny easel), it should be something a bit more "special" than a red pepper.  I felt a bit bad about my school of fish being drawn from a picture I found via google, like I had stolen something.  So I looked for free photos and somehow ended up on a website called "pexels".....looked for another school of fish, and found 8 more photos that I thought looked "paintable".  I used two today, the sunset boat and the clown fish.  The seagull is cropped from a photo I took in Key West.  The French Bulldog is a photo I took a few weeks ago from when I clicked on one of those articles on a default internet news page, something about good dog breeds.  The cute breeds that looked paintable, I downloaded their pic....stolen?  I don't know the rules on that if you're just painting them...

#69-#74 4/6/19 Magnetic Produce

This project right here represents a blatant attempt to inflict my artwork on the public, as well as get closer to my goal of 300 paintings in 2019, and practice (of course).  Yesterday, upon waking and getting my carcass into the shower before work, I bent down to pick up some sock link off the shower matt.  To my horror, the sock link scattered in a 360 degree pattern and even without my glasses I could see that the lint was indeed a pile of ants.  Spring is apparently open for business.  What was so dang interesting on the shower matt, I don't know.  But on my way home from work I stopped at WalMart to get some ant traps.  Got them on the food side of the store (I know, right?) and had to walk caddy-corner across the store to get to the pet food section for an SPCA drive at work.  So along my route I had to pass the crafty section....and I found these teeny tiny magnetic canvases.  The retail section of my brain said, "Ohhhhh, cute, tiny magnetic painting will sell easy-peasy!"  I bought 6 as an experiment, they're only 2.5 inches.  This Saturday is the first Farmer's Market in town, so they likely won't be dry yet, but a month from now will be the debut!  Jewelry, with a side of tiny oil paintings...hopefully Josh won't mind me stepping outside of my "box".  I also got 4 tiny easels with 4 tiny stretched canvases.  They're next on my line-up.

04/03/19 #68 Fish School

One of the amazing things we did in Key West was visit "The Dry Tortugas" - a Key island even further out than Key West, accessible only via ferry or sea plane....it is a national park and bird sanctuary now, but it used to be a naval fort back in the early 1800's, then it was used for a prison once it's usefulness as a fort wasn't working out.  The ferry was booked, so we spent the extra $$ and took a sea plane, which was fascinating!  I'm so glad we did that!  Part of the Dry Tortuga adventure was a snorkel mask and flippers that they hand out to everyone upon getting to the island.  Coral grows all around the brick sea walls that encase the fort, the water is that clear turquoise that vacation brochures always show.  Dave and I snorkeled around the island, swimming alongside schools of fish.  Amazing.  Then today at work, while on break sipping coffee and perusing Pinterest, I came across a painting of a school of fish and was inspired.  So that's what I started to paint when I returned home.

This one took three days to finish, it's bigger than my normal daily endeavors, a 12x12 wrapped black canvas.  I found an underwater picture of some fish on google images, and used that for my drawing, but painted the fish in Key West house colors.  It was fun to do this one!  With the exception of my favorite paintbrush breaking.  It is an angle brush that I bought maybe only a month ago.  I have used this brush almost exclusively since buying it.  The metal sheath just snapped near a crimped area and the wooden handle separated from the brush end.  It looked repairable, I could insert the handle into the brush end a bit.  So I glued it, and taped it, but it's still wiggly.  Yet, I'm still painting with it.

04/02/19 #67 First of Many Key West Houses

We got back from our Florida excursion late Sunday, wow!  It was a great trip!  We got to laze about in Key West, and then we went to Tampa to spend a few days with my son Matt, his wife Eva and their 9 month old baby, Luke.  He is the greatest baby ever born, always happy, always interested in what's going on.  Matt and Eva are wonderful parents!  So, I spent yesterday after work sorting through the myriad of fantastic pictures I took over the previous week.  Key West has the most interesting old, little houses throughout their town, many built by ship-builders, painted all kinds of bright colors.  So I took a walk one day snapping pictures of colorful or maybe just interesting, houses....intending to paint them when I get home.  I have about 100 different houses to paint now!  Today, I decided to paint the first (of many).  For unknow reasons I picked up a wrapped canvas that had been painted with a background color of tan.  It's only 4 inches square, so it's tiny.  I really had 5 inch boards in mind for the houses.  The next one will be on that....and no under-color, as I want it as bright as possible.

3/22/19 #65 Coffee Fiesta

I really-really wanted a pair of those Faith Shoes to photograph, but they had to be worn well.  So as I was heading into the Safeway a few days ago, I realized the Good Will was just a few doors down.  So I stopped there first, to scour the shoe section.  No Faith Shoes, except for a baby-sized pair (which I bought for Luke, he'll be the hippest baby on the block as soon as he grows into those little shoes!)  But I did find this orange Fiesta Ware coffee cup and saucer....a mere $2.  Heck, the tiny shoes cost $3.  I took tons of pictures of my new treasure, then realized it would look so much better if there was coffee in the cup, duh.  I had today off, I was supposed to be packing for a week in Florida; we were leaving for the airport at 4:30 PM.  I packed, cleaned a bit, and then started in on this fun project, finishing it at 4:29 PM.