Show off

I'll admit it, I have been neglecting my blog lately.  Short little blurbs on Facebook are just too tempting, and I wasn't sure how many people were actually reading the blog.  But I have been reassured that indeed I have an audience, so I will try to do better.

There are a few new things on my plate this summer.  After building up my skills on the 16x20 canvas board I gave a 24x24 gallery wrap canvas a try.  My original intention was use the small Connected study and go bigger, but as often happens, the painting went its own way and I just followed along.  It got rather dark at first but with some effort I was able to get it a bit lighter.  I am finding that if I hang a painting on the wall and turn off the brightest lights to imitate typical lighting situations in a house, it helps me to make a few adjustments.

Evening Storms Likely 24x24 oil, copyright 2013

Next month will be a bit hectic as I will be showing in two places at once.  The first is the Cozy Kup Cafe on US 35 in New Lebanon.  It's a coffee shop (obviously) that my husband stops in occasionally - I'm not a coffee drinker, but he brings home excellent chocolate chips cookies - and the owner Sarah is an art lover.  A fellow artist, Phil Erbaugh, suggested I stop in and see if she would be interested in showing my work.  She said yes, so now I have my first venue on my own!  I'm pretty excited about it, so if you are local, be sure and stop in for a cuppa joe and a painting during the month of July.

In addition to that, thanks to a last minute change of plans I will be participating in an invitational show at the Preble County Art Center in Eaton during July.  And the Preble County Fair is coming up at the end of the month.  Now how am I supposed to decide which paintings are going where?  And if only I had this problem more often!

virtual Sistine Chapel

This past week I've been working away on an oil painting which is coming along quite well, though slowly.  I should invest in a bit of Liquin, a drying medium for oil paints.  Most are fine and I can layer the next day, but for some reason the black is a little slow, and the alizarin crimson is taking forever.  Hopefully it will be done by the end of the week.

Meanwhile, I've found a wonderful site to explore, the virtual Sistine Chapel.  In the mid nineties I did a bit of traveling in Italy, and of course this was on the list.  It was in the beginning of my archaeology career and to be honest, I spent quite a bit more time in the Vatican Museum than in here.  The chapel was surprisingly small and quite crowded, making it difficult to appreciate the artistry of the place at the time; I was too anxious to see other things.  I'd love to go back now and explore it more thoroughly.  While this site certainly isn't better than the real thing, it will do nicely until the Someday when I can get back.

One sunrise, but not the same

      Sunrise, First of December 6x6 oil, copyright 2011

December Sunrise 12x9 pastel, copyright 2011

A first for me, two different paintings from the same reference photograph.  The first was just a quick study, painted the same day I took the photo.  It came out a bit softer and more muted, in part because I was spent perhaps 15 more minutes on it than I should have, and was starting to make mud.  I stopped when I realized it, made a few corrections then quit.  The second one I finished just yesterday, and perhaps overcompensated a bit for the earlier painting's softness, though the colors look a bit too saturated on my monitor.

Looking at the two of them together, I can't decide if one is really better than the other as both capture some aspects of the mood of the moment.  I'm not sure if it's the media or light in the studio or my subconscious that made them so different.  It's an exercise worth trying again with another photo.

Edit:  The pastel image has been revised, and is now a bit closer to the real thing.

In the zone

Some days it's a struggle to get in the mood to paint, to focus and find the painting in the canvas.  And some days it just happens with little effort.  Yesterday was one of the days where everything fell into place despite the chaos of soccer practice, gathering sap for maple syrup and an art association meeting.

When I posted my Monument Valley painting on Facebook, I got such a hugely positive response I threatened to pull out a Death Valley picture and paint it.  When I followed through on that threat yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised by the results.  I'm not sure it's possible to fully capture the scale of Death Valley in a small painting, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

Turns out my biggest issue with the Monument Valley painting was the paint sticks.  I love them, they are great to work with on a large painting, but are rather awkward for a smaller one.  So I bought a set of basic   colors in tubes and some small brushes.  What a difference having the right tools for the job makes!  I'm now thinking of a series of small (8x10) oils of the southwest, fitting them in while waiting for larger ones to dry.  It's funny, some pastelboard I ordered arrived on Tuesday and I have really not thought about pastels.  Since the oils seem to be going so well, I think I'll stick with them for awhile longer, and hopefully will be able to get back in the "zone".