A Weeks Worth of Paintings

I thought I would post a few paintings I have painted this week. I actually did this one yesterday.
One of my favorite artists and teachers, Kevin Macphearson, says in his book, Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light and Color, to do 100 "starts" of paintings. He explains in his book that this is just a beginning of a painting. There is no detail just shapes with the base colors with the lightest lights and the darkest darks. At this point you don't finish the painting or lay in any details. This is what I did in this painting above. As you see in the reference photo there are many details and I have chosen to crop the photo to fit on my 6x6 canvas size.  I think this will be a good exercise for me because I tend to fiddle way to much on my paintings. I paint from the image on my iPad in Filterstorm app and blur the image and paint the shapes. Surprisingly it looks like something after the "start" is finished. Then if I have a good start then maybe I will have a better chance of getting a good painting. I have a really hard time stopping though. He wants you to stop and don't finish the paintings. It's just for the practice.

I posted this one of the "Itty Bitty Berry Picker" on FB so some of you might have seen her. I am going to try and paint little children but not their faces. I am not ready for that yet. This one was from an inspiration photo I found. It's just on canvas material because it's a practice painting.

This one was from a still life that my art buddies and I set up in my studio to paint. It is very blue-- Old Holland Caribbean Blue that is! And it looks nothing like the still life. The still life, as you see below, had material for the background and lots of folds and shadows. I decided I have a new policy--I DON'T PAINT FOLDS! Well...never say never I guess. It's just a shape so what the big woop.
 As you see I had quite a different interpretation.

Below is a interesting one and it also is just on canvas material (no panel) because it's just a practice start but I got way carried away and painted the house red.
It looked easy to paint but it wasn't easy. I fiddled way too much and it was only suppose to be a start.

And one last thing... I was very excited this week because Daily Paintworks picked this painting to be one of their picks of the day on their Facebook page. I felt like I had died and gone to oil paint heaven. Here it is.

One last thing...you know I just have to use my stamps and try to 

make these oil painting have a grungy mixed media look (it's so much easier with acrylics) so I stamped this pear that I had painted several weeks ago with my Harlequin stamp. The painting has to be dry to stamp on it with oil paint. That takes patience. I am learning patience as I learn to oil paint. 

If you would like to see more paintings please visit my Fine Art Website.

And also... Happy Birthday Lori!!

See y'all later---maybe next Friday I will post again and show you what I have done.