30 in 30: Day 13 - Sunny Days

Sunny Days

7.5" x 7" - acrylic on paper - $30

I am having so much fun painting closely cropped faces! This one is all about   a restricted palette, and allowing the darkest value areas (hair) to merge into the adjacent darkest value areas (background foliage) - yet when seen as a whole, the figure emerges. This is number 13 in the 30 paintings in 30 days.....almost half way there!

Spring Diversions

Coffee Break

14" x 19", mixed media on paper
This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

Where does the time go? Birthdays and Mother's Day have been celebrated, visits with family and social gatherings have taken place, the basement has been re-organized, closets have been cleaned and the cottage has been opened.  And yes, coffee and wine and good food, has been consumed, and life has been contemplated. In my spring cleaning I came across this mixed media work (watercolour, acrylic, pastel and collage papers )I did several years ago, which I always really liked. Perhaps it's the figure's pose that I am drawn to - one that reflects a contemplative state of mind.

So I have been busy - but not with painting - but that is about to change. On Friday I will be on a flight bound for Paris and then Marseille, and later that weekend will arrive at Les Bassacs, a hamlet in the Luberon Valley, in Provence. I attended a plein air painting course there at Arts in Provence in June of 2012, and this time I will be doing a one week program called 'Abstracting from the Landscape' in which "experimentation and innovation will be key".
Of course I still have a list of many things to do before Friday.....but I am hoping to prime the artistic pump a bit, before I leave, and play with my watercolours as they and gouache will be the main materials I will be using en Provence. So no excuses now for artistic inertia!

The Light in June

The Light in June
24" x 20"  -  acrylic on canvas
SOLD

I (finally) finished the painting I have been working on! 'June' posed for our painting group one morning and as I drew her she talked about when she was her twenties and first met and then married her husband (during WWII). She was a wonderful model and radiated positive energy and light as she reminisced.

No Room on the Plate

No Room on the Plate
10" x 10"
acrylic on canvas

I actually have been painting - just not posting - because works are still in progress. However, I did complete this small still life quite recently. Pears are my 'go-to' subject when looking around my kitchen for something to paint. I find apples more challenging, because of the reds.

Below is what I started yesterday. It is the first of two paintings based on a recent drawing session with my painters group here in Florida. I haven't painted figures in a long time, and I am quite excited about them, so far. Stay tuned!

Inspiration

Two visual ideas collided this week in the painting below.

New Hat   16" x16"

A few years ago I took a wonderful photograph of our daughter posing for me, wearing a new hat, and I always thought that the picture had some potential as a painting. Recently I came across a figurative painting by Terence Clarke - an English painter whose work I love and it (the painting below) provided the inspiration for mine.

The Straw Hat by Terence Clarke

In comparing the two, I definitely 'nailed' the pink background - sans interesting yellow-orange circles and paint dabs - which of course make that pink ground so interesting! There are also remnants of blackish outlines around Clarke's figure (shoulder area and hat) which I have not incorporated into my figure painting, and makes it less 'defined' on the pink, I think. Unfortunately the photo I used does not show any strong shadows on the face, so I couldn't really play with those beautiful turquoise shadows he uses, as much as I would have liked. I also changed the colouring in the hat - a pseudo leopard skin angora knit in greys - and then played with colour elsewhere in the clothing. I did not intend to paint a portrait of C, but I did try to draw her face accurately. My husband thinks it is close - but I need to go back and adjust the cheek line and chin (lose the point) to make it a little more like her. Perhaps while I am doing that I will just revisit the background, outlines, clothing, hair and face colouring too! Lots of work here.
Thanks for 'listening' - I just needed to express these thoughts to motivate myself to take some risks ( I might wreck what I have already done), but what the heck. Stay tuned to see what happens.