Three Presents 11" x 14" oil

I decided to do a larger format so I could get all three presents and their bows in the painting, plus a good shadow shape.

Red Ribbon 6" x 8" oil

This is a shiny reflective ribbon with lots of ringlet like curls and a small gold ornament.

Turquoise Gift

I love this two sided satin ribbon. Not really Christmas colors but I really had fun trying to paint all these bright, hot, colors using a limited palette.

Warm Ups! 8" x 8" oil

I took and 8" x 8" canvas and divided it into 4" square so I could do 10 minute paintings as warm ups. I am finding that this helps me with color and composition because I don't have time to mess around. I have to make a decision and go with it.

Squash Buddies 6" x 8" oil

A couple of nice squash with great stems - my favorite part.

Pinecones 6" x 8" 0il

This was a quick study of a couple of pine cones found on a walk.

Season Finale

This was the last of the heirloom tomatoes for the season and some striped fabric I wanted to try using.. Oil 8" x 10".

Dishes

Another stack of Fiesta dishes. 6" x 8" oil

Tipsy 6" x 8" oil

Carol Marine does a lot with stacked cups and I really like some of her compositions, so I thought I'd give it a try. I also wanted to use my polka- dot fabric.

Plums 6"x 6" oil on canvas panel

Found some gorgeous plums and had to paint them with the cup from the Dollar Store.

leaves 6" x 8" oil

One of the days I was in Letchworth State Park I decided to paint inside the cabin after dinner. The lighting was not great but it was fun to paint with a fire in the fireplace at the kitchen table.

Empty

6" 8" 0il

I like all the bright , fun colors of the Fiesta pottery.

Hot Peppers

11" x14" oil

6" x 8" oil

6" x 8" oil

These are three paintings I did of the same still life. I did the small ones first and then decided it was a lot of information squeezed into a small area. Next I did a larger one, 16" x 20", but it had too much background so that's when I decided to try the 11" x 14" format which I like the best.

Candy Apples

I got the title for this before I painted it. I found some cool striped red and white fabric that reminded me of candy canes -

Back in the Studio

the falls

Summer camp finished up September 3rd and on the 6th my oldest daughter and I took off for Letchworth State Park - "The Grand Canyon of the East". I had rented a cabin and we just wanted peace and quiet. Time to rest, paint read , sleep and eat. And we also made lots of fires (there was no heat - you had to make your own) and took walks to check out the trails, the Genesee River and the falls. I did 5 small paintings which I'll post later and Carrie did two which came out great.

Now it's time to get back to painting more regularly and posting more often.

Carol Marine's workshop at the Hudson River Valley Art Center, Greenville, New York

Here is the shot of our group intently watching Carol demonstrate. We were from all over the east coast and two ladies came from Canada. The accommodations were great. We just had to walk from the studio to the dining room and bedrooms. Great way to do it. Lots of laughs. I was the only person who had never been to a workshop before.

Carol adding her ground.

Her view of the still life.

After drawing in the basic shapes and checking proportions she starts with the most saturated area - in this case the apples.

Now you can see how she's working from the inside out doing all the values in the shadows.

Here is the finished demo which one lucky participant got to take home for $100. It was a fabulous workshop and I highly recommend Carol as a teacher. She has great passion for painting and helping others.

Camping and Painting

Apples and Cherries. 8" x 8" oil.

Sculpey polymer clay butterfly magnet - by Sophia 4" x 4"

Murals done based on the four YMCA character values, honesty, respect, responsibility, and caring. Each mural was designed by a group and painted together. This took a lot of cooperation. 8' x 12' acrylic on paper.

Well I am in week four (of tens weeks) of teaching art at the local YMCA. Months of planning has gone into all the lessons I am teaching and the lessons my co-teacher, Amber, teaches. We decided this week we could have just let the kids play games and use Playdough and they wouldn't have cared. They are very social creatures but not super interested in making art. Well some of them are, but the majority are there cause that's where their parents put them. So, we are taking a deep breath and repeating to our selves - process not product.

In the mean time I am trying to squeeze in time to paint and summon the energy needed to make it happen. So I get up at 5:30 am and try to paint Tues. and Thursday for an hour before getting ready for work, and again on the weekends. I really don't know how people who work get anything else done. I am so tired I sure don't want to do dinner, or laundry or the garden or anything!. How do you do it? Is that what Rachel Ray means when she says "America runs on Duncan"? What about us non- coffee drinkers? What should we be running on????

Next week I am going to the Hudson River Valley Art Workshop in Greenville, New York to take a three day workshop with artist Carol Marine. She is a Daily Painter, doing mostly still life and I am super excited to paint with her- plus they have homemade chocolate for extra energy. I will definitely post some pics of that weekend. Here's a few pics from camp. (Sorry no kids pictures are allowed, just their work.)

Garbage Collage

This is one of the "Garbage Collages" my students did. We saved our packaging from our lunches and reused it in our collages. You would not believe how much trash twenty people can make in three days just saving lunch stuff! There are many artists who reuse materials to make their works of art. The artist we looked at for this lesson was Sandhi Schimmel-Gold. She is a contemporary artist and she does really wonderful portraits reusing magazines. I noticed when I got done this week that I am much more reluctant to throw something out that could maybe be made into something else. Waste not, want not!

Arts Camp

Well I am back teaching arts camp again and this is our first week. Today we went outside and did a lesson based on the environmental artist, Andy Goldsworthy. If you have never seen his work look him up. He is marvelous. We watched some excerpts from a video showing him constructing some of his work and talking about it. Then we broke the kids into groups and each group was given a element of design to base their design on. This was space. We had a beautiful blue sky, not to hot day. It was perfect. Only a few bug bites and we all survived!

This is showing value. Shade of white from light to dark.

This is a little hard to see, but it is showing form. There is one main branch stuck into the ground with things added that hang from the branches. Several times the wind blew this down.

OLd Forge

The Bridge

McCaulley Mountain

Bald Mountain, Second Lake, Old Forge, New York

I was invited to spend three days in Old Forge this week with a good friend. I got to paint twice, which was a real treat. Both days it was high 80's and blue sky, perfect for painting. The bugs were very interested in what I was doing, so I was glad to have good bug repellent from Bert's Bees. I am experimenting with using a colored ground on these paintings. You can see the pink coming through. I like it much better than the white of the canvas board. This time I learned a few things: don't forget your umbrella, find a good bug spray, and bring a drop cloth. The drop cloth was good for protecting surfaces I set up on, but it also covered the tall grass where I set up to paint "The Bridge". This kept the bugs from crawling up my legs, which is very distracting!

Green Lakes

This was the first plein air outing that wasn't in my backyard. A few weeks ago I met another artist interested in painting outside so our first outing was to Green Lakes State Park. What started out as a nice, crisp, spring morning turned into a freezing, blustery day very quickly. We both were determined to get at least one painting done, so I choose a very simple view and painted as fast as I could. It was so cold. I learned you need to paint what changes fastest, which in this case was the water. I had planned to put in these beautiful dark reflections in the foreground water - but the wind kicked up and they disappeared. I also learned that a paper palette can blow away!

TLC really works!

I just wanted to post today and say I have not fallen off the planet into the abyss of not painting. I have been taking some great drawing classes and trying to get back into figure drawing after 25 years. Nothing worth posting just yet. I have also been spending a lot of time getting my garden into shape before everything is over run and the ground turns to a solid rock. I hope to do a lot of painting studies as soon as I finish catching up. One more week I think. The weather is holding and we are getting enough rain to make it some what easy (it's all relative) to pull out the enormous weeds. I wish the flowers would grow big and the weeds would stay small. Anyway I love my garden and this time of years it needs it's TLC to get a good start. I also have three beautiful new raised 4' x 8' veggie beds filled with organic compost, vermiculite and peat moss. Now I just need to find some worms and add them to the mix. I hope to buy my plants this weekend and start hardening them off for planting in a week or two. I did start some heirloom seeds inside but they are looking pretty punk and may not survive. We'll see. I'll post pictures soon. PS 6/25 - here's the results of the TLC

Going in Circles

24" x 36" acrylic

Concentric circles are something I love to paint. It's so fun to just paint random shapes and colors and see how it all comes together in the end. This one I did late last night and it is 8" x 8" oil.

tree 3

Another view of the same tree. Brighter afternoon light, and yes, the house next door to us is really that yellow. No comment. There are just the smallest beginnings of leaves starting to open.

Three Chimneys

Another really beautiful- blue- sky- sunny- spring day. We just don't get this kind of weather very often. Everything is popping out and the grass is that yellow green color. I was looking for a vista to paint and came up with this.

Angelique

I was cleaning out the front flower bed yesterday and uprooted this tulip. It's an Angelique tulip, very soft pink. I just loved the way the bulb was so white and perfect and the bud has just the faintest hint of pink in some spots.

Green Lakes

This was done last week but I didn't get a chance to post it. I am still thinking about making the foreground brighter so the stone wall is more solid like the railing. It was too wet to work on but now it's dry so I want to give it another go. Trouble is I did a pencil sketch but didn't have my camera so I don't have much to go on but memory. Hmmm - wonder how that will work?

A Different Viewpoint

Here's the same tree from a different viewpoint and different lighting. I lost the light (and had to make dinner) so I'm not as pleased with the top portion of the tree. Hopefully I can resolve it tomorrow. Spring weather is fickle. I really like painting out all my neighbors' houses and stuff - it's not meant to be vindictive - just simplifying shapes!

Here's another view of the backyard. I tried to simplify all the background trees that are still leafless. The sky was such a beautiful blue color.

Tree

This is from the backyard. I had to make up the background because we live in a suburb and there were houses behind the tree. We planted this tree when we built the house 22 years ago. today was a beautiful 75 degrees with lots of sunshine.

Gus' Stuff

Gus's stuff is a collection of dog stuff. Gus' leash, the orange ball he loves to shred and the rope toy. The yellow leopard pj's belong to his cousin - Paco who is a Chihuahua who is always freezing and has to wear his pj's outside. He is hoping to relocate to a warmer climate.
Here is my buddy Gus. He is my faithful sidekick. He loves to hang out in the studio, go for walks and eat carrots. Today's painting is for Mr. Gus.

Money jar and veggies 8" x 8" oil

My daughter helped me organize my kitchen and now loose change goes into a nice ceramic pot instead of the junk drawer. This is another of my not so symmetrical pots from ceramic class. Oh well I love the black glaze.

Wait for me 8" x 8" oli

This fat little Macintosh apple is too slow to keep up with the others.

Turnips

Turnips - well I don't like to eat them and I don't think I like to paint them either. We lost all our snow last night so now we have this weird greenish grass outside.