December Update

I've gotten a little behind on my artwork and posting. I didn't get as much done this summer as I expected. I had a few setbacks. One being my other older cat got sick and died which I did not expect although she was 16 years old this summer. I also had two episodes of atrial fibrillation (spelling?). One at the end of June and another on November 1. It takes me about a month to get back to normal again. Fortunately I got out of the hospital in time to go to my older son's wedding that Saturday. I haven't even gotten around to doing a Christmas card this year. I hope to get back to painting again after Christmas providing everything stays "normal." It's a little disconcerting to realize that you can't always plan too far ahead when you get older.

As Far As I Got - Sketch

My sister had some beautiful maroon roses in her yard that looked like velvet and I thought one would be nice in a still life painting. But I was trying to get some spring cleaning done at the same time and this sketch is as far as I got on this "painting." It's a good thing I took a photo because the rose wilted before I could get to the painting part.

I've also been trying to get caught up on my outside work (weeding) since we had so much rain in May. All I seem to have gotten done when we had a brief dry spell was to get the grass cut. Then it got too hot for a few days to work outside--inside, too, until we got the air conditioners in the windows. (No central air here--yet.)

I would also like to enter the latest DailyPaintworks Challenge, which is to paint something that you see out of your window. Yesterday I tried to rearrange furniture on my porch and put some flowers in pots so I have something interesting to look at and paint. Still not done with the porch and it's already June. Too much to do during the summer.

Grandma's Vase with Tulip, Oil Pastel 7x9

I'm still playing around with oil pastel to see what I can get it to do. I'd really like to get it to look like regular oil paints. (I should probably give up and just use oils, but I don't like the smell.) It's painted on tinted watercolor paper with a coat of Art Spectrum Colourfix primer, clear. I think if I used a smoother paper it would look more like an oil painting, but I sort of like the effect of the texture of the paper that shows through in the background. I might enter this in the Color Challenge of Daily Paintworks if I can figure out if it qualifies for one of the color schemes. That was the original intent when I started, but where is brown on the color wheel?

Just for practice, "Path to the Beach"

Pastel - 8" x 11"

In the last couple of days I watched two pastel demonstration videos by Deborah Secor. One was on Artists Network TV and one was on Deborah Secor's blog. The one on her blog was a demonstration using PanPastels for a landscape which was mostly clouds. She made it look so easy that I thought, " I could do that!" Ha!  Not so easy. It probably would have been a little easier if I had used the PanPastels, but I just used what I had in the way of soft pastels. Also, I used a pastel paper which didn't have a lot of tooth. For my reference I used a photo I had taken when we were in Florida that included some beautiful clouds. I changed it a little; the ocean was actually the opposite direction. I used to do pastels a lot but I'm a little out of practice. Next time I think I'll use a pastel board or something with more tooth because I do too much layering.    

Older Painting

I wanted to post something more cheerful than the last post, so I dug around in some of my older paintings and found this watercolor from 2006. The flowers were from my yard at that time.This is painted on Bristol vellum. I really like working on this surface, but you can't get it too wet. It's good for watercolor pencils too. I'm not sure what I'm going to paint next or in what medium. I have so many photos that give me ideas that I don't know where to start. I might just view some of my Artist's Network videos for a while and then decide.

Abby

Abby didn't make it. She passed away yesterday. She was a good buddy and will be greatly missed.

Life's a Bowl of Cherries and a Cookie Jar

I started this a year ago and didn't get very far. Looking at it again I thought it might also qualify for "The Color of White Challenge."  So I decided to try to finish it.  I'm still at the "does it need anything else" stage. I will look at it for a while before I decide if it's finished. I spent a little more time on this one than the last one. It's done in watercolor pencil on watercolor paper. (8" x 8")

Daily Paintworks Challenge?

Oil Pastel - 6 x 6

Watercolor Pencil

I thought I would try to enter the most recent DailyPaintworks' Challenge, "The Color of White" with this watercolor pencil/oil pastel, but I'm not sure I am going to. I started out in watercolor pencils, but messed up my shadow. (I did'nt really have good lighting on this set up.) So I decided to try Belinda Del Pesco's advice and try to rescue it with another medium over it; I chose oil pastels. I had trouble with the perspective on the lip of the pitcher and the perspective on the place mat. I can usually tell if the perspective is off on other people's paintings, but darned if I can do it by looking at my own work. I even tried the mirror trick. The placemat had fruit on it with three dimensional shading, but if I copied that it looked like real fruit around the pitcher not under it. I'm not going to do that again. So thanks to Carol Flatt for mentioning the DailyPaintworks Challenge in her blog. It looks like it's going to be fun to enter and /or to follow.

Art Therapy

Flamingo and Friend--Oil Pastel, Art Card Size

I used an acrylic glaze with gloss medium and cobalt blue on watercolor paper. Then went over the drawing with oil pastel. It's not very detailed because I don't file my pastels down to points and the watercolor paper was kind of bumpy. I really like the feel of oil pastels, but I have trouble getting them to do what I want.

This was done just for therapy. One of my cats is not acting right--waiting for results from vet. My other son who lives near us just informed me he and his girlfriend are thinking of moving to Florida too. We can't move--we have 38 years of stuff to clean out of the house. If my husband would retire now, it would still take us two or three years to clean out the house and fix it up. My sister doesn't want us to move either--her children are all in other States.

Also, my internet and phone went out at about 6:00 yesterday and the discount service we have apparently doesn't work on weekends. They just got it fixed. Now my scanner is not letting me save to my picture file the way I usually do and the blog is not uploading my picture. (This kind of cancelled out the therapy value.) I guess blogspot also made some changes I have to figure out . The older I get the harder it is to make changes. It could be worse--I could be living in northern Japan. Those poor people. I should count my blessings. 

Update

I just spent two or three days trying to reorganize my art supplies so I could be more efficient at finding what I need to paint and to be able to see what supplies I actually have already. I also started a trial subscription to ArtistsNetworkTV and have been watching some of the art instruction videos, but I have only until May to watch as many as I can unless I extend my subscription. I'll decide after I watch some more. I was particularly impressed with John Lidzey's watercolor demonstration so much so that I ordered a book about mixing colors that he coauthored. Can't wait for it to get here. I got a late start on watching the videos because my husband and I went to Florida two weeks ago to see our new granddaughter who is about one month old. I should have waited to subscribe until we got back, but I thought the special trial offer through North Light might not last too long. Also, after the holidays, I spent some time cleaning out a space in the attic so I could move a chest of drawers from the back room (where I paint) up to attic and replace it with my husbands old desk that has been sitting in our dining room for a year or so since his mother sold her house. The plan is to set up the old computer which still has photos on it that I need to download and to use the old printer/scanner for artwork duties. It seems to take forever to actually realize the plans I visualize in my head. I need to work faster.

Our New Granddaughter

Christmas Card 2010

This is the painting I used for my Christmas cards this year. It's from a photo that I took in February of 2010 after we had about two feet of snow. This is across the street from where my sister lives. I also used this to enter a contest in Watercolor Artist magazine's "Try This at Home" workshop. I have'nt gotten any replies about my entry yet. It would be nice to win something, but I imagine the competition is pretty stiff.