Giving Thanks

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. I will be taking a break until 2013--wow, that sounds like a long time! But when I get back maybe I will be an even better painter so I will have some new paintings to show. In my upcoming workshop with Alice Williams she says to bring BIG canvases like 24 x 36 or 36 x36. EEEEK!  It will be a challenge for sure but hopefully really fun too. We are doing still life as well as a clothed figure---EEEK again!

Also I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year too!
ox

Daily Painting number 80ish

Sometimes when I think something will be easy to paint it's not. But I am working on my 120 paintings. I have about 80 so far. And remember the thing was that you have to paint 120 bad paintings before you are a really good painter.  So that actually takes a lot longer than just 120 paintings because not all of them turn out bad. But believe me I have my share of bad ones. On this one the table legs gave me a fit with shadows going everywhere and lights and darks on the skinny legs and only a very thin line to paint them.  This is only an 8x8 so if it had been larger then I could have maybe had more room the shape up the legs. Good excuse anyway!  I believe that a cup of coffee is put on the table it might just topple over.

Sometimes my bad paintings are bad because the composition or photo I started with was not that good of a composition (not a good notan to begin with)--- so that will never make a good painting and you are pretty much dead in the water from the get-go.  Sometimes it a drawing issue and sometimes it's a value and color issue. If I can get all these right in the same painting it will be a good painting!

But with each painting I am learning. I have another workshop coming up December 1-3 with Alice Williams.  Her style is really loose!  I am looking forward to that.

The Buckster

One thing that has been on my painting bucket list is to paint Bucky. This was a very cute picture of him so I decided to try it. I was holding my breath the whole time because just like people, if you don't get the eyes right you are dead in the water. The wicker chairs were a booger but I think I got his eyes. He is sitting here in the porch of the Red Door Art studio looking out over the land with a big smile on his face. He thinks he is the protector of the land. I'll never tell him any different.

Here is the pic.

Be strong...

I enjoy putting together these letter collages---and I love using my new face stamps from Pam Carriker. I love face stamps. I have several of them but I am always looking for other ones. I like the ones with the interesting faces that seems to be thinking hard about something. It's always relaxing to sit down at my desk here at home and create these.

The Cummer Gardens

This is a painting of the Cummer Gardens here in Jacksonville that I started in the Connie Winters workshop. The gardens are just beautiful and I have some beautiful pictures so I wanted to attempt to paint one.   I thought this one was very difficult to paint because there is so much going on but I am happy that I painted a big one (16x20) from a photo that I took myself.

Another Crop

It started like this...just rather uninteresting and not a very good layout although

 the colors are pretty good.

Cropping with the mat board corners---always use black.

After I found a good layout I brought out some stamps to enhance.

I wanted it to be very subtle so I used the Distress ink pads.

All done.

Letter Collage 2

Yep, that means never...

oops, I left out a word.."know"..

I do that a lot when I am writing in calligraphy.

But you get the gist of it.

PS That's a Pam Carriker stamp.

Letter Collage

I enjoy sitting down and constructing these letter collages. Of course there are

more elements than just lettering but that's where it begins and it's the backbone of the

design. I use graft paper in a pad and start with a CalligraFun word or two

then start building from there. I love to use my stamps that seem

to be so neglected these days.  This is very similar in construction to my

big grid journals. It's all fun and very stress relieving for me. 

So, right now, I am very stress free!

On the easel...

I have been working on this one all day. I started this one in Connie Winter's workshop here in Jacksonville. I love the way she paints but it is so different from the way Dreama paints. I now have to decide what way I like better. Actually I like both of them so hopefully I can take aspects from each and merge them into my style. I actually thought this one was pretty hard getting the angles right--and I see in the picture that they are not right. That's hard for me but that come with drawing practice. This is a church in Charleston, SC. It is on an 18x18 panel.

Bright Flowers in Pots

Just still painting along every day that I can. At times I feel like I am on a roller coaster...at times flying by the seat of my pants and other times chugging up a giant hill. But I love oil paint, what it does and how it moves now that I am becoming acquainted with it. My color charts have been extremely helpful. I check them all the time to see if I can find a color. If you can do some color charts then your painting will go much easier. Richard Schmid says that he still uses his (at least when he did his videos he did.

If you are interested on how I did these color charts then leave me a message and let me know. I could do a free video tutorial. They are good for acrylic and watercolor but of course I would be using oil paint. If there is enough interest then I will do it.  I am not sure how many of my blog friends and visitors are oil painters. But I bet most all of you use some sort of paint in some kind a way!

Giveaway Winner!

And the winner of the "Credit Card Flowers"

          online class giveaway is...

                         Kandilin !

   Please contact me so you can start your class!!!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Giveaway-Credit Card Flowers Online Class!

Hey guys,

You know what to do.  Leave me comment that you would like to win a free class and I will 

let Mr. Random.org pick a name for me tomorrow night. (Monday, Nov 5th)

Diane's Patio

I painted this one of my painting teacher, Diane's, patio when she lived in California. I painted it from her painting just for practice so I can't sell this one but I really enjoyed painting it. I know that I can more easily paint from looking at other's paintings because they have already done the editing work on it whether it was a photo or plein air. I am learning to simplify and edit my own photos but this is hard for me because I have a tendency to add way too much detail. Diane is a realist painter so I painted this in a chunkier style.

I do have to brag on my teacher here in Jacksonville. Oprah has a collection of her paintings. She's that good.

It is My Faith...

Purchase info HERE

Sometimes when a watercolor painting just doesn't work (as this one didn't) I look at it through two mat board corners and see if there might be a salvage area on the painting where I can crop. Usually I can find one. This was one such piece. So I decided to get out my Noodlers Ink and just noodle on some lettering. This lettering is my pointed pen Roman curls variation. Most of the time I use black gouache for lettering but I am getting lazy in my old age and would prefer to dip. I guess I could dip into gouache too but ---I digress...

Here are two cuties, Macaulay and Morgan...

and one more cutie: