Untitled

I just finished this painting. It is a gift for my daughter Kim. She asked me to paint it for her about 9 months ago when she moved into her new home in La Quinta, CA. I really hope that she loves it.

This was a painting done with love. I really put my heart into the creation of it. It is not my usual style but it was so much fun painting.

It has been a long time since I have painted in oils. It reminds me of the things I like and dislike about oils. I love the creamyness of the medium. Mixing colors, blending colors, adding lights over darks and leaving texture in the paint add to the wonder of the experience. On the negative side is the time it takes to paint and then dry and the clean up. In the very back of my mind are the thoughts of toxicity.

Now I need to spend more time getting ready for the spring art shows. It is an exciting but stressful time. I need to paint a few new paintings, get prints and notecards made up, matt and frame paintings and prints, get my supplies together, and make a few purchases. This is on top of my busy teaching schedule. Sounds like fun doesn't it? Well it will be as long as I don't pull my hair out. In the meantime I'm taking a trip to sunny Californ i a. Which will relax and inspire me.

African Violets

This is my first oil painting. When I first started taking art classes as an adult, I started with a drawing class. Then I started taking watercolors. I figured acrylics should be the next step. I started taking a class that offered both oil and acrylics. I painted three acrylic paintings. I did not like that the paint dried before I was done blending it. So I tried oils and immediately fell in love with it. I had so much fun blending the colors in this painting especially on the teapot.

I'm planning on doing some oil painting as soon as I finish teaching this semester of classes. It should be alot of fun.

Good Enough to Eat

The East Beach Art Show was very nice on Saturday. The homes were beautiful and some of them are right on the beach.

I brought some of my oils including Good Enough to Eat. I created these apples about two years ago. They were so much fun to paint. Mixing the reds and greens without getting mud was somewhat of a challenge. The whole time I was working on it my husband kept saying they look good enough to eat. Hence the name.

I really miss oil painting. For the past year I have been concentrating on watercolors. They have been taking me to some very exciting places and I have certainly been enjoying the journey. I feel that my learning has been accelerated and I'm pretty satisfied with the work I've been producing. But they consume my time and along with the rest of my schedule (teaching, art groups, art shows etc.) I feel like there is very little time left to explore anything else. But oil is like an old friend that I really need to visit soon.

Red Berries

In my watercolor class I have been working on painting green leaves and have been glazing greens and reds. It is alot of fun and hopefully it will come out good enough to post.

It made me remember the story of my Red Berries painting. About twelve years ago I painted this painting. My next door neighbor at the time was also an artist. His wife fell in love with the Red Berries. So we traded paintings and I received a painting of a waterfall. For many years I missed my Red Berries.

Often it is so hard to let go of my art work. Especially recent paintings. Once I did a drawing in colored pencils of Autumn Leaves and I framed it and hung it in a show that weekend. A woman came by and fell in love with it and bought it. I felt like saying "No you cannot have it, it is too soon for me to let it go." But I did believe that she would take care of it so I let her purchase it.

So I repainted the Red Berries and here they are. They are a little more detailed than the original.

I love the use of complementary colors, especially red and green. When you use them next to each other they make the other one appear brighter, more intense. But if you mix them together they dull the other one down.
For example if you've painted a field of poppies and the ones in the background are just as bright and the ones in the foreground, the best thing to do is add a little green to those poppies that you need to tone down.

In watercolors you can mix the greatest neutral colors with your complementary colors. (These are the colors oppostie from each other on the color wheel.) The main compliments are red and green, blue and orange and yellow and purple. Play with them, you will enjoy it.

Oil Painting

I was in the Art Show at the Norfolk Pagoda last Sunday. It was a great day. The weather was nice and so were the people. I sold over 100 note cards with prints of my paintings on them!

I spent time talking with a few of my artist friends about art, and painting and sales and marketing and business and grants and galleries and all the other things that artists talk about.

Recently I have been thinking about doing some oil painting again. For the past 4 or 5 months I've been working primarily in watercolors. And I love it. But oils are calling my name.

The Dragonfly and Blue Dragonfly are two oil paintings of mine. I really enjoyed painting them. When I paint in oils they seem to come easy for me and if I don't like what's happening in the painting then I wipe it off and/or cover it up and correct my "errors". Sounds like a piece of cake. But there are challenges in my oil painting. In the two Dragonfly's the challenge was to make them transparent. So that you can see through the wings. I think I accomplished that.

In watercolors I have taken many classes and read books and articles and planned the teaching of classes. I have done exercises and painted many paintings, many of which I have filed in the trash. When I complete a painting that I am pleased with, I really feel a sense of satisfaction.

In oils I really have very little formal training. I took classes from Dorothy Raxter for many years. Her classes were open sessions that you worked on your paintings and if you needed assistance she was there to give it to you. But you developed your paintings and your way of painting on your own. Oils come more naturally to me but they do not provide me with the same satisfaction that watercolors do.

But I do have a couple of ideas in the back of my mind of things that I'd like to paint in oil. Maybe someday soon?

Tommorrow I will be at Virignia Beach Town Center. My tent is on the corner on the Ruth's Chris side of the fountain. Hope to see you there.