The Stories They’d Tell – Daily Painting
“The Stories They’d Tell” – 5 1/8″ x 7″ – oil on canvas mounted on masonite.
Among the homeliest objects in our home are this old pair of scissors and a wooden “Clarks” spool. Both are probably from the 40s or 50s, judging from the look of them. Occasionally we’ll go to estate sales in our area, and inevitably there is a sewing basket with old scissors, spools and papers of pins. I like to think about their years of service and all the jobs they’ve done – a hem raised or lowered to suit the fashion of the time … a collar taken off and reversed to save buying a new shirt during the Great Depression … a Halloween costume made. Perhaps this thread and scissors patched up a hole in Santa’s jacket before it was packed away for another year.
What stories would your scissors tell, years from now?
Jug and Candle – Daily Painting
Jug and Candle – watercolor on paper
What a week – busy on all fronts, from doing an illustration project for a client (oil painting to be posted soon) to a sudden out of town business trip. The night before my Saturday watercolor class I had barely enough time to set up a quick still life to paint from. I am so used to painting in color that I am definitely out of my comfort zone working in black and white. No matter, I’m happy to do it. Next week some of us who are a bit more experienced are assigned to do another one of these studies and bring it in matted, along with several practice landscapes.
Two Sweets – Daily Painting
“Two sweets” 5 1/8″ x 7 1/8″
Oil on canvas mounted on hardboard. Available.
While I finish up my larger painting, here’s a little one for today – two chocolates from Trader Joes. They were presented as pralines, but they are actually milk chocolate. The red ones have an amaretto flavor, the silver ones are tiramisu and chocolate. Very very delicious.
Today, on the way back from lunch, I spent some time looking at liquidambar trees. We have an assignment in our watercolor class to study trees very carefully this week, no doubt in preparation for some tree painting on Saturday. I like drawing trees and painting them as well. I guess you just can’t study something too much, can you? I thought I might be bored by the tree drawing assignment because I paint trees so often, but I’m finding, as I expected, that nothing dealing with art is boring to me. At least not now. Well, washing brushes is sort of boring, and gessoing canvases, but the creating part is endlessly enjoyable.
Squeaky Clean – Daily Painting
“Squeaky Clean” – 5″ x 7″ – oil on canvasboard
Fresh off the easel … this is our upstairs bathroom soapdish, lathered up to give it a little more interest. I think it’s Irish Spring but I couldn’t be sure. The words had worn off.
I thought the bubbles were going to be the most difficult part to paint, but it didn’t turn out that way. The biggest challenge was the dish itself, which is probably a hand built and hand painted, with strange dips and turns and curves along the fluted edge.
But, you know, I like a challenge, so it was actually kind of fun.
Two Old Pomegranates – Daily Painting
“Two Old Poms” 5 x 7 oil painting on canvasboard – SOLD
When we were up in the Ojai area a week and a half ago, we drove by a cluster of bright yellow bushes, probably eight feet tall, that had bright red fruit on them. We overshot this sight, so we turned around and made a second pass, pulling over onto the rough shoulder of the road. I jumped out of the car with my camera to take a batch of paintings of ripe pomegranates, hanging on the tree. I wasn’t about to pinch any of the fruit off the bushes, but I did pick up two of the poms that had recently fallen into the ditch, and which had not broken open upon falling. No doubt they had recently come off the tree in the heavy winds.
So they’ve been sitting around the kitchen and today I decided to paint them by the light of my office window.
Shell game – Daily Painting
“Shell Game” – Approx 8.5 in. x 6 in. – Watercolor on 140 lb. paper
OK, I lied. I said yesterday that I was mainly working on loosening up with a big brush and soft flowing edges. So what’s the next thing I paint? This.
Actually this is a community project for those of us who are daily painters, suggested by the very talented Laura Wambsgans. I’d love to try one in oils but I stayed in my comfort zone, watercolor. I was planning to break an egg and paint the contents of the shell in a small pyrex cup, but I had no sooner cracked it and set the shell halves down on our quarter-sawn oak dining room table in a shaft of afternoon sunlight that I saw what I wanted to work with.
I found this setup very challenging, but very instructive as well. The dark background is composed of at least a dozen layers of glazes, but no black. I wanted to keep the edges of the shell crisp but I didn’t trust masking so all of those areas were painted around with a very small brush tip. After all the layers were finished I went in with a fine pointed brush to add the “tiger” stripes in the wood which is so characteristic of golden oak. This is one that I wish I had been scanning in stages, but I was trying to push to get it done on time!
