Saturday Cafe

"Saturday Cafe" 5x7 inches, watercolor and ink on 140# coldpress paper.
This is from the Daily Paintworks "Crowd Challenge." I wanted to see how much I could change things around from the photo, so I made some of the figures into cats and birds, and then added other figures from my imagination.

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Pig Headed!

#"Pig Headed"  Original Acrylic painting on 3x5 inches panel
Done for Daily Paintworks Pig Challenge
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I've done lots of "Pig Headed" artworks over the years, mainly in ceramics, at least one in watercolor. This is my first one in acrylics, and she's sporting a pearl necklace. It's a psychological self portrait but shhh! don't tell anyone. This also belongs to my "ladies in funny hats" series.

Backyard Fantasy Grisaille underpainting

"Back Yard Fantasy" 8x8 acrylics on wood.

This is another of Daily Paintworks challenges: the view out your window. There is a big, beautiful pecan tree in our back yard and plenty of squirrels & cats, so that part of the picture is accurate. The rest, well, who's to say what else someone might see in their yard besides ordinary reality?

This is an underpainting done in violet oxide and will be glazed over in various colors. Hooker's green for sure, maybe also magenta and transparent yellow oxide. We'll see.

Cat and Mouse DPW challenge

"Cat and Mouse" 6x6 on canvas, acrylics. Done for Daily Paintworks Challenge. I used 2 colors, magenta and transparent yellow oxide, plus black and white, and glazed over a black/white underpainting. Soft body or Flow acrylics glaze very well, and also take a little longer to dry.

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Frog ACEO bottle magic prince TBARTS original acrylic painting

"Princely Spirits" ACEO, 2.5 x 3.5 inches miniature, acrylics on illo board

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This Frog is eyeing the bottle, thinking maybe, just maybe...it might work some royal magic for him. Should he take a swig?

"Tears for Captain Onion" Lady Ship Sea TBARTS

"Tears for Captain Onion" 5x7 acrylics on Everlast panel

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Inspired by Carol Marine's onion paintings, I decided to try my hand at onions. So I slipped one into my Funny Hat series. Then I added the ship, then the tear, and lo! a story seemed to loom on the horizon.

Her dress is done like an onion, and the earring and the moon echo the onion theme. I did find the onion challenging to paint, but it sure was fun and I'm ready to go again. I'm planning one with a red onion.

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Persephone's Rose (oil painting version)

"Persephone's Rose" 5x7

I decided to try this one in oil, using the grisaille with glazes. Again, I got a little too alla prima with it, but I'm getting better at glazing every time I do it. Click to see the acrylic version, which I no longer have, being as how I entered it in the 5x7 show at ArtHouse.

The other one had a more generic looking flower and this time I wanted a specific kind of blossom, so I chose a rose. Her expression looks a lot more intense in this one, too.

As to re-doing one's own ideas, as long as it stays fresh, sure, why not? I'm having fun with this bird lady theme.

The myth of Persephone is that Hades, king of the underworld, wanted a wife, and so he put a flower in a meadow that Persephone frequented. When she went to pick the flower he kidnapped her and took her to the underworld, where she became his Queen after eating a pomegranate. If she hadn't eaten the fruit she would have been able to go home, but then we wouldn't have winter (so if global warming is any indication, we will have to ask Queen P to kindly return to the Hades to cool things off).

Finished Iris Still Life (Glazed Grisaille Oil Painting)

"Irises" oil on canvas, 8x10.

Got this one finished, glazes and all. Since this was my very first attempt at glazing, it got a bit alla prima towards the end. Some of my initial underpainting got too well covered.

In the past few weeks I've been reading "How To Paint Like the Old Masters" by Joseph Sheppard, and it has helped tremendously. Very informative book. If you want to glaze in oil paints, this is definitely one to read.

Even though I enjoyed painting this still life, and I know that the straight realism has tremendous appeal, I'm pretty much set on my course of doing the fantastical genre. However, I'm determined on conquering realism because the style/genre I want to paint in demands it, and if I ever get skilled enough in realism to match my imagination, that would be highly gratifying!

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Persephone's Flower

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"Persephone's Flower", acrylic on illustration board, 5x7. I'm putting this one into a show called 5x7 in Austin TX.  I'd like to do a bigger version on canvas. The theme of the bird headed lady is one I have done repeatedly.

Added another layer of glaze to the iris still life. The background looks fine with a coat of burnt sienna over the yellow, and I'm stopping on it and will continue with the still life itself. It's good these things dry so slowly, it helps prevent overdoing it.

I have rededicated myself to DRAWING because it's such a big important part of painting. The better I draw, the better I paint. It saves time & money too because I waste less paint when I am in practice for drawing. So I'm in a lifedrawing class for the next few weeks, and have resolved to keep showing up at local lifedrawing practice studios.

Jester with an Egg

Acrylic, 8 x 10 on canvas. Don't have a name for it yet (any suggestions?). It's a jester, walking through a cave, holding an egg. This one also has cutouts on it (like the previous one) and that's the LAST time I ever glue on a cutout piece of canvas. Too hard to finesse the edges!

This one is glazes over an underpainting. Love painting that way; the more I do it the easier it gets. Helps a lot with values (although I am a Libra I appreciate values and value them highly).

Trying like crazy to keep up with blogging after a schedule change. Also I don't paint fast enough (yet) to post more often, so I'll have to throw in a WIP or two from now on. Thanks for tuning in to this blog.

EFT and the Curse of the Mummy

Illustration Friday: Wrapped

"Mummy" acrylic on 9x12 canvas

When I was a kid I had a mummy phobia as a result of seeing some unwrapped mummies in a museum. Although it faded when I grew up, there has always been a little bit of it left, so I decided to use Emotional Freedom Techniques to see if I could completely resolve it. EFT is a combination of psychology and acupressure. Very thorough instructions are available as a free download from their website. Very interesting process; I've used it on several other issues and I'm very impressed with it.

Anyways I tapped through several rounds of EFT to work on dissolving this phobia. To test it, I googled Mummies and spent an hour or two finding out all about them from little baby mummies to bog people to unravelled pharaohs. Didn't feel a thing! And afterwards forgot about it. Didn't dream about it that night. Hey, this worked pretty good.

Then I started this painting. I purposely gave it a face more in line with mummy portraits than a real mummy because my genre is whimsy, not horror. Anyways I like the irony of a pretty face painted on the top of the whole bundle. Once I finished the painting, I started to scan it, and my face began breaking out with a bright red rash. So once more, I did several rounds of EFT tapping and took the rash down to where my face looked normal again. Couldn't help but wonder if this was some sort of coincidental body memory involved with the mummy phobia, so I factored that into my EFT tapping rounds. Turned out I remembered how embarrassed I was to be afraid of mummies. Mortified, if you'll pardon the pun. I guess the embarrassment must be gone because otherwise I wouldn't be telling the world all about this.

About the painting: it is on a very fine grained all media canvas. I glued some regular canvas on it; you can see where it's got some collage pieces glued on--the Mummy itself and the staff it is holding plus a few others. I've got one more painting underway where I glued a cutout piece canvas over it, and then no more of that. Too hard to paint it, because I tend to change my mind in the course of the painting.

I did an underpainting with violet oxide and glazed over it with pthalo turquoise, cadmium red light, and yellow ocher. When I wanted to add white I used zinc white, because it is translucent and makes a good glaze white. I'm pretty satisfied with the color harmony of this painting. And I might even do more Mummy themed paintings.

Reflections

"Reflections" 11x14 acrylic on canvas panel.
I'm in this painting group on Fridays--affectionately known as "Hell's Easels"-- and run by Austin artist Eve Larson. The group features a clothed model in a long pose. This time our model brought in her vanity table from home and posed with it. She even had some perfume bottles to complete the picture (I ended up not painting the bottles, but they were really nice bottles).
From where I was standing, I couldn't see our model's reflection in the mirror; it was blank. I wanted to include a reflection of her, but do something different, so I put it looking back from the wrong direction. To balance the composition, I added a landscape with a river, and the river also has the model's profile.

I was very pleased with the colors from this painting. It's a limited palette: cadmium red light, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow light, ultramarine blue, black, and white. I used a lot of dry brush and the painting has a similar look to a pastel painting.

To photograph this painting, I used a flat bed scanner. I scanned the painting in 2 halves, and put the 2 halves together in photoshop. I had to adjust the colors on the 2 halves, using levels, to match them perfectly. There was still a seam, so I blended it using the blur tool, and textured over it to match the canvas texture. Even though this may seem like a lot of work, scanning a painting gives great results, so I'm happy with it.

The Knot

Earlier this year I did a watercolor ACEO of this same composition. (see below) Here it is in acrylic, on a raymar panel, 8x10.
"The Knot". The idea came from people arguing. The cat, well, I have a couple cats and they make great studio models.

The head is from a clay figure I did; the hands/arms are from a photo of me holding a knotted rope --looks pretty silly as a photo, but makes a good painting subject!

Here's the watercolor ACEO version: