"Experimental Rose"

 

Title says it all. My inexpensive single roses were coming to the end of their service life. I decided to try a fast sketch on an old 6x6 board by building in deep color from back to front, painting directly without much of my usual pencil drawing on the board - sort of a compromise between direct painting (which doesn't work well for flowers in my experience) and careful build-up. I also went heavy and almost random on the color choices, not a lot of mixing, just picking stuff straight from the tubes.

 

"Experimental Rose" - 6" x 6" oil on Ampersand Gessbord

Available on Etsy Now - Click Here!

 

"Strawberry Pair"

 

 

Click Here to Purchase on Etsy!

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

I apologize for my lack of posts lately - I came down with some sort of sickness last week. It must be something going around the entire country, because I know of multiple people in different states who have been ill in the past two weeks. Thankfully I am now back underway, (relatively) healthy again and apparently free from January doldrums.

 

I've never painted strawberries before. I like them. They are of course pleasantly red, and good strawberries on home-made shortcake with real whipped cream is a pleasure fit for kings. Such was the post-painting fate I had planned for these, but the lady roommate decided to eat them plain while watching television. Next time, my pretties... Next time you will be shortcake...

"Stoplight Tomatoes"

 

 

Click Here to Bid!

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

I've never been stopped in my tracks by mere tomatoes before. They had a bin full of these things at the market store on Sunday - all sizes, shapes, and colors, all for one pound price, labelled "heirloom tomatoes". The first one I picked up looked like a small pumpkin. I picked out traffic light colors, hence the title.

"Waning Cookie"

 

 

Click Here to Bid!

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

Title, composition, and lighting setup inspired by the recent Venus-Mars-Moon conjunction. The cookie was good.

 

On a personal note, I sacrificed today's painting time in order to drive over to Ft. Worth Joint Reserve Base (formerly Carswell AFB) and take photos like these:

I had time to make a few sketches of the crowd at the overlook before I spotted some friends at the fence, and not long afterwards things started to happen down on the flightline, so I traded my sketchbook for a camera and binoculars. On the aesthetic front, Endeavour is a beautiful ship in the flesh. I've always seen the Shuttle as boxy and only vaguely airplane-esque - an extraordinary collection of compromises which, while an amazing accomplishment, is certainly nowhere near as attractive as its 1960's and 70's aerospace contemporaries, like the brutally beautiful Phantom, broad-shouldered Tomcat, or elegantly thuggish F-105. I was pleasantly surprised to see that in person, from the side, the Shuttle does show just a dash of the aggressive, hungry 1960s look.

I don't have much else to report without using superlatives like "spectacular" and "once in a lifetime". That is not an exaggeration, since this was my first, and - due to the Shuttle's impending retirement - last opportunity to see the Shuttle ferried through this neck of the woods. Some things are worth skipping work for.

"Green Apple Present" - SOLD

 

 

SOLD!

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

I once had a color theory teacher who harbored a silly hatred for chartreuse. We were actually told that we would be penalized for using it in any assignments, because "It had no use anywhere" (It's safe to say this woman knows nothing about the original 1970s Lamborghini Miura and has never seen any nightclub flyers). Since taking that class years ago, I like to keep an eye out for chartreuse-type greens in daily use. The latest appearance was on last Sunday's "Thanskgiving Showdown" episode of Iron Chef America. Besides a really wicked Indian Pudding dessert cooked by Bobby Flay, the show featured a chartreuse ICA "crossed knives" logo on the judge's table.

 

For my part, I picked up a delightfully retro green background cloth at a fabric store the other day, and I decided to put it to use with a yellow-green apple and a small gift box from the roommate's jewelry cabinet. Green is my all-around favorite color to begin with, so it was fun to throw together various blues with my two mainstay yellows. The downside is that it was hard to adjust the photograph of the painting, with all the subtle yellow-greens in play.

"Mango Lemon Buddha" - SOLD

 

 

SOLD!

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

I wanted to do something very yellow.

"Red Plum Pair" - SOLD

 

 

SOLD!

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

Commissioned to go along with two other plum paintings previously sold. I'm pretty sure I bought the last four red plums available on this side of Dallas!

"Fall On Blue" - SOLD

 

 

SOLD!

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

I had some reservations about posting this one, as it's a bit of an experiment. I was aiming to keep color as clean and pure as possible, and at the same time, use only a single 1/2" flat brush to do the entire painting. The "blue" is actually a beach towel, which is not very "fall", but there were some oranges and yellows in there that worked as a background pattern. I had to put everything on the floor down by my ankle to get this POV, which meant a bit of extra work keeping the cats out of the setup.

"Autumn Owl"

 

 

Click Here to Buy!

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

The last couple of dailies were somewhat experimental in nature, and I didn't find the results acceptable (hence the lack of updates). Here I've returned to my old favorite owl-shaped candle holder, and some "fall fruits".

 

This one was really tough to photograph. Rainy weather today means bad light for photographs in my apartment, and I put a lot of subtle darks into this painting, which are a bit difficult for the camera to pick up on a good day. I ended up photographing it under my work light, and doing more than the usual amount of digital adjustments.

"Loving Pear" - SOLD

 

 

SOLD!

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

Another one from the pear backlog.

"Coconut & Lime On Gold" - SOLD

 

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

This one's a bit of an experiment, pushing fast & loose again, over a black background a la the amazing Karen Jurick. I stuck almost entirely with earth tones - Raw and Burnt Umbers, Burnt Sienna, and Yellow Ochre, cut with black or white, and a bit of Cad Yellow and Cad Scarlet here and there. The setting is a shiny cloth thrown over a pillow.

 

I will be out of town for a weekend at an East Texas lake campground, and will hopefully have some good landscape work to post on Monday. It'll be great to get out of the beige box for a day or two and have some outdoor subjects to sketch and paint.

 

Travelling around Texas by car can be artistically frustrating. What North Texas lacks in expressive topography, it makes up for with lighting and atmospheric subtletly. Add in the random trees and cow herds, and on a drive out of the city I usually end up seeing so much I want to put on paper, that I could spend an entire drive with my head down in the sketchbook, finishing one quick sketch, looking up, seeing something new, and going right back into it, until I'm mentally and physically tired. Is there a medical term for this? "Sketchbook Whiplash", maybe?

"Blue Monday Teacup"

 

 

Available via My Direct Sale Page

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

Those who came before me
Lived through their vocations
From the past until completion
They will turn away no more

 

Yesterday was Monday, and I decided to make it blue. I've had this teacup for a while and didn't really know what to do with it painting-wise, so I picked "blue" as an idea and threw in some Voortman's shortbread cookies for accent. Getting the photo to look even vaguely accurate was tough; a lot of the more subtle purples and greens got lost between the camera and the JPG.

"The Lime Slice" - SOLD

 

 

6"x6" oil on gessoed panel

 

Not a very creative title for this one... I tried to keep a new attitude of "fast & loose" with this painting, to cut down on time and add a little bit of "painterly" quality back into the work.

"Fragile" - SOLD

 

 

6"x6" oil on gessoed panel

 

The local Hong Kong market had small teacups on sale for 99 cents. I picked up two, thinking I could work them into my painting somehow. The flower is a dried rose.

"The Lime In The Coconut" - SOLD

 

 

SOLD!

 

6"x6" oil on gesso board

 

I had some limes, and there were coconuts available at the store, and of course there is that song lyric... I had an idea for a circle-within-a-circle composition looking directly down on half a lime inside half a coconut, but I've never opened a coconut before, and I didn't do that neat of a job, so my plans went out the window.

 

This is the first painting to go up on eBay. I like Etsy's system better, to say the least, but eBay seems to have a wider audience, so we'll see how it goes.

"Two Hot"

 

 

Available via My Direct Sale Page!

 

6"x6" oil on gesso board

 

The local Kroger stores have been stocking whole Habanero peppers. I've never knowingly seen an Habanero before, and was surprised at their lovely, subtle vibrance and milky surface quality. I tried to capture that glow but I don't think I've succeeded here. I'll have to try a different approach to achieve the impression of transparency.

 

I figured a simple pairing of an Habanero with a garden-grown red Chili would be a fun way to start painting peppers. My desk light was warming up the peppers as the day wore on, and by the time I finished painting, my eyes had become irritated from their peppery vapors.

"The Love Cookie"

 

 

Available via the Direct Sale Page!

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

(Note: Title is best said in a Barry White voice.) These "angel cookies" are some of the most profoundly good cookies available. They get high marks from me in taste, texture, aesthetics, and price.

"Nectarine On Green"

 

 

Click here to purchase on Etsy

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

In the interest of economy, I endeavour to choose fruit for painting that will also be good for later eating. The large, soft fruits featured in the local stores are usually not very good, but this past week the nectarines were a fragrant, tasty exception. This being my first-ever painting study of a nectarine, I decided to keep it simple.

"Cosmic Combination"

 

 

Available via my Direct Sale Page!

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

This is what became of the 6x6 that I scrubbed out before doing the previous painting. I had been getting caught up in details and complications, so I aimed for "bold and simple". I attempted to paint chocolate and cherries together, but 70% cacao Scharffen Berger chocolate melts ridiculously fast if it gets anywhere near a 60-watt desk lamp, so the best alternative was to use something cake-like that wouldn't melt before I finished the under-sketching. This is the last remaining fresh cherry atop the last survivor from a batch of brownies.

"Hot and Sweet"

 

 

Available via my Direct Sale Page!

 

6" x 6" oil on gessoed panel

 

I was just getting started on cherry paintings when I was given a purple pepper from a local garden. I'm not sure if it's a hot variety, but it certainly was purple, and made for a fun combination.