Red Pears

These pears were too beautiful to leave in the grocery store in Ottawa last week when Phil and I went shopping.  It took me a few days to get to painting them but I enjoyed the time spent very much.  The shadow of the bowl on the plate was the most tricky part of the painting - getting the colour and the value as close as I could to what I was seeing.

Three Apples

Apples are quickly becoming my favorite subject.  I am attracted to the colour and the shiny skin.  I guess I am also enjoying the fact that they are large, bold objects and are much easier to produce a pleasing design, than smaller more intricate objects.

Salsa and Jalapenos

On Friday, my first day off I attempted the jars of Salsa that Connie gave me to paint.  It ended up being a wiper that day but I repeated the painting with a few minor changes to the design the next day and was pretty happy with the result.  I hope Connie likes the paintings I have done of her preserves.  I know my paintings will last longer than the preserves - Connie is legendary for making delicious dill pickles, hot crab apple jelly, salsa and jams.  Not to mention that she is a great cook and fabulous baker, a woman to know and love.

Connie's Pickles

I am continuing to have a good time painting jars of my friend Connie's pickles and preserves.  The photo of this one is not as true to the original colour as I would like, it seems a little washed out.

Connie's Crabapples

My friend Connie who made the crabapple jelly from my previous post brought me these little apples to paint.  They have a beautiful bloom on the skin which is a real challenge.  I have a few in the refrigerator and when I finish my evening shifts over the weekend I am going to try these little beauties again.

Connie's Hot Crabapple Jelly

This beautiful jar of red crabapple jelly was made by my friend Connie, a nurse I work with.  The biggest challenge in my setup was getting the light positioned so that it shone through the jelly revealing the gorgeous red colour.  It was fun to paint and Connie has supplied me with several jars of her home preserves which I am really looking forward to painting.

Five Red Delicious Apples

This is the second painting I have done of apples since the Toronto workshop.  The photograph unfortunately makes the light look a little harsh.  I am going to rephotograph it and repost it if I am able to get a better result.

Green Bottle and Cherries

I can't believe it has been a whole month since I have posted on my blog! I have a few excuses, I have another job and so will be working at two hospitals once my orientation at Deep River Hospital is complete.  I did not realize how hard it was to start a new job and how much work you have to do just to get started.  My other excuse is that I can now longer use internet explorer to post, when ever I try to upload from my laptop I get this crazy black screen and nothing happens.  Weird!  I'm now using Firefox which is new and I have to learn a whole lot of things to set up a tool/menu bar.  I am back from Carol Marine's painting course in Toronto which was the absolute best painting experience that I could ever imagine.  Thank you Carol.

Big Red Cup

I bought this cup quite a few months ago, but had a lot of difficulty using it in a composition.  It is so big and red that it always dominated the picture and I could never produce a happy composition.  After buying Carol Marine's Artbytes on composition and proportions I learned so much : I cropped the cup and the composition fell into place.  So thank you Carol.  I might add that I am one of the very fortunate people attending Carol's workshop in Toronto later this month and I am so looking forward to it.

City of Portland - Canna Lilies

It is hot, hot, hot in Ontario!  It's really too hot for me to paint outdoors these days but I couldn't resist trying to capture the beauty of the various shades and hues of the salmon pink of these Canna Lilies.  The name of this variety of lily is City of Portland which I think is such a cool name for a flower.

Near Traymore Bridge

It was a perfect July evening when Marina and I did a second painting looking up river from the one lane bridge on Traymore Road.  We plan to go back again and experience the pure bliss of being in such a beautiful place, doing something we both love.

Drowned Lane off Bucholtz Road

An 8"x10" oil sketch I did when Marina and I went out painting a few weeks ago.  It was a beautiful spring evening with pollywogs swimming at our feet.  I wanted to reproduce as closely as I could the warm colour of the sand on the lane.

Spring - Grand Lake

This past Saturday Marina, Sue and I spent a wonderful day at Grand Lake in Algonquin Park.  It was cool and windy when we left home, by noon we were having a picnic on the beach by the lake.  This was the last painting I did late in the afternoon, the day had warmed and the quality of the light was exquisite.

Exotica

Finally, after so many days I am posting the painting I did last Friday with my painting buddies, Marina and Sue.  Sue drove from Toronto and stayed a few days with Marina so we made the most of the opportunity and painted together Friday afternoon and Saturday.  It was cold and rainy Friday afternoon so we stayed indoors and painted a still life set up by Sue and Marina of this gorgeous exotic plant that Sue had brought from Toronto.  A wonderful day of painting followed by a great meal with delicious food and heavenly wine.

Spring Flowers

I enjoyed the process of painting this panel very much.  I changed my usual view point from a side on view to one looking almost straight down on the subject.  Then I moved around the pieces of coloured paper until I was satisfied with the colour relationships and proportions.

6"x6"  Oil on hardboard  - $75

House on Whitewater Road

A red brick house positioned on the fresh spring grass with great shadows was irristible on a warmish Wednesday afternoon.   It was such a joy to be out doing some plien air after a few weeks of cold, windy, wet weather.

Spring - LaPasse

I started this painting in the field and finished it in the studio a few days later, after I had time to reflect on what it was that really captivated me. It was the stillness of the water and the quality of the light which was reflected from the water that really got me going. I also love the greyed yellows of the leafless trees against the true saturated blues of the water and the sky.

LaPasse - sketch

Last Wednesday when the temperature was an unbelivable 88 degrees Farenheit Marina and I drove to LaPasse looking for pools of melt water to paint. There was very little melt water this year which is very unusual. We ended up on the dock/boat launch at LaPasse. It was almost too hot to paint but at the end of the dock a cool breeze from the cold Ottawa River kept us comfortable enough to paint. This is my first sketch of the afternoon, done very quickly to get a sense of the design, colour, etc.

Blue Sky

The Bue Sky in the title refers to the name of the dishes pattern. I remember Phil and I bought these dishes in Ottawa before we moved to Parry Sound where I had my first full time position as a nurse many, many years ago. We were so happy to move to a beautiful town in the north on Georgian Bay where Phil could paint and I could have a beautiful, quiet enviroment to live. I spent quite a bit of time on the arranging and drawing of this piece and unfortunately very little on the actual painting. I was pleased with the colour harmony and the composition but the brushwork needs to have had a little less hurry.

Sugar Bowl with Clementines

Yesterday Marina and I painted again together after a pretty long hiatus,  we had a wonderful afternoon.  She is back from Costa Rica with wonderful stories of warm climate, monkeys and all kinds of wild critters visiting their digs.  I was really attracted to a still life set up she was working on and so joined in and painted her set up.

Green Bottle with Plums

I have spent the past few days working with these objects and have done several variations of this painting.  I love the colour of the bottle and have enjoyed so much moving the objects around experimenting with different viewpoints and different compositions.  I admit that this is a pretty traditional view and hope to post some more daring designs in the future.

Ginger Jar and Bamboo

I have been continuing to work on my drawing skills.  This painting was done with Burnt Umber and Titanium White on my palette.  The angles of the sides of the jar were tricky and I found it was a great piece to improve my ability to see properly what was there and not just aimlessly paint what I thought I should be seeing.

Cup and Bottle

Another Value study using Ultramarine Blue and Orange. 

Value Study - Cup and Bottle

I enjoyed painting this small study very much.  I was really trying to be as accurate with the values and the drawing as I could.  I have much to learn!

Arrangements of Ginger Jar and small vessels

Two studies of a favourite ginger jar that I have.  The top one uses a palatte of Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Orange and white, while the bottom one is painted with Ivory Black and Titianium White. 

Value Studies - White Cups

For the dark value in this and the previous study I used burnt umber, which is a nice warm dark.  It is fast drying so don't leave it on your palatte over night or you will be like me and scraping it off  the next day.

Value Studdies

I'm continuing with my work emphasising values and improving my drawing.

Value Studies

A couple of more views of the same white cup.  I am realizing how important is brushwork and accuracy.  I also realise now how the loose brushwork and casual look of many of the paintings of artists that I so admire look that way because the artists have great drawing skills and the ability to make their works look simple and easy.  Behind that loose, easy facade is a firm, hard body of knowledge and technical skill.  Kudos to all those who have spent hours, and hours on learning how to render simple, true objects.
Thank you to readers of my blog who  have returned and continued to follow me after my hiatus through my internet troubles and through the busy holiday season when I didn't post for a while.  I was so happy to see a comment, I can't tell you.

Value Study Series - 2

This small white cup is a favourite of mine.  Marina and I were in New York State at a workshop given by Carol Marine, when we found these sweet little cups plus some other things to paint in one of the stores in the local mall in Greenville.  I have been using the cup in quite a few of my value studies exercises in the past couple of weeks.  I felt that the cup handle came out pretty well in this painting. I find that the handles are tricky to paint, to get the orientation right and the thickness of the various sections of the handle correct.

White Cup

It is great to be back on my blog again!  Ever since my email got hacked I have been experiencing lots of techical problems, including not being able to post any pictures to my blog.  I have been continuing to paint though, and have spent the past few weeks working through some exercises suggested by Liz Wiltzen, specifically painting value studies. It has been really useful, I have learned a lot and have enjoyed the process.