Wine & Poppies

All-righty then, I have finished "American River Poppies" for now.

It's a very striking piece since it is a massive depiction of a very small plant.

I have also been getting ready for the Ironstone Winery show which happens this weekend.  I will have a 5x6' panel to hang my paintings on so I have decided already which 6 canvasses I will take based on my design done on graph paper.

My friend Connie will be participating in this show and posted her arrangement on her blog, so I am copying her example.  That green blob painting on the right, lower side is just a place holder for a painting I am taking of the Magic Circle Theatre in Roseville.  I won an award for that one so I thought it might be nice to have it with me.  I am also taking a small triptych of a dragon which I plan on placing on a small table I will have in my area.

"Poppies, poppies will make them sleep."

So here's "American River Poppies" now.  I enhanced the darks, the flowers and placed the buds on the stems.  I wish my critique group could help with this because I'm at a loss for what comes next.  Maybe I should just stop for a while and set it aside.

It'll hang at the Sun City Roseville art show on March 23rd and 24th, and then I plan on entering it in the American River Parkway show at the Sacramento Art Center in April.

Ok, so I am hanging this in the living room for a while to determine if I need to tweek it at all before the SCR art show.  That gives me some time to work on my portfolio and postcards for the Ironstone Show this upcoming weekend.  I love these busy times immersed in music and art with my door closed and incense burning.  I just wish I could smoke...not really, lol, breathing is better.

More Layers on Poppies

So I have been working layer by layer on American River Poppies and this is where I am now:

This is a large piece on a canvas that is 36x36" and so the poppies are humongous and I like, I like very much.  At this point, I am going in with some darker green for the middle of the plant where the sun does not hit, also going to make a few shorter stems with the spikey ends some dark and some lighter green.  I also think I need some specific green lines in the lighter background as in the photo there is something that color and pink growing which is lightening it up along with the sun hitting.  At that point I will be ready to go back over the poppies with a couple more layers for value.

Ok, so to work I go with a paint brush in my hand, one in my teeth and a song in my heart, a smile on my mouth...and in between I am breathing, breathing deeply, 1, 2, 3, breathing deeply, 1, 2, 3...

American River Parkway, Part 3

I am happy with and have signed "American River Parkway."  The image here doesn't do the actual original painting justice in my humble opinion.  It's a different size canvas and the colors are actually very vibrant so that if it is hung in kind of a high far away place, the trees will show as trees, sky as sky, ground as ground.  As the original photo was Oaks, the trees are on the whimsical side which I like here but gosh I hope not cartoonish.  It is kind of a feel good painting though and I'm good with that.

Breathing pretty easily today, the incense is refreshing and the air crisp.

Poppies, Steps 1 and 2

OH MY GOSH!  I was soooo under the weather for the past week, since Valentines' Day, and so haven't gotten much done in the studio.

Before the melt down I did begin a rather large 36x36" canvas of poppies, another one for the American River Parkway show.  The canvas is the painting entitled "Never Been to Me" that I obliterated one afternoon when I had a day of bravery.  So here's first drawing:

There's some heavy texture on this canvas already as it's one that I glued a big 30x22" piece of watercolor paper onto which was the painting of the princess-like girl that I wanted to incorporate onto a canvas.  The drawing at this point only consists of the darker greenery at the base of the poppy plant, the lighter greenery in the background and then of course the poppies coming from the one dark base.

Here is the outlining I have done to further define the drawing:

So next step is to fill in color on the flowers and stems with the darkest areas first, and then creating value changes from shadow areas up to lighter parts where the sun is hitting.

Okay so another beginning is beginning which is freeing my mind to organize a few areas in my art room.  Getting things in order always makes me breathe easier and deeper, looking forward to that.

American River Parkway, Part 2

So!  Here we go with the second phase of my current painting, American River Parkway.  This is being painted in acrylics on a 10x30" canvas.

At this point I like the composition and as I indicated in my prior post, the original photo is of oak trees but my brain took over and made these little dots of color in lieu of gray-green whisps of the tiny leaves that the oaks have.  I like the idea of the unrealistic shapes of color and values of the trees but right now there are too may small, circular shapes that are the same size.  Also the sky is too pink and/or kind of purplish.

Okay so did some more work on this painting and here it is now.

Oh, much better I think.  Changing the sky changed the whole complexion of the work, then I went back in and deleted some shapes in the trees, added bigger clumps and made some differences in the horizon line.  I haven't signed it because I'm not sure I'm done.

Would love comments.  Does that orange blob at the top, right of the big green shape bother anyone?  In the meantime, onto another canvas.

An American River Parkway View

So  I  began anew yesterday with this scene on The American River Parkway.  The photo was taken capturing the rainbow that had appeared, however my painting is focusing on the trees and the colors within myself since the original scene is oak trees and very gray green, not the blue greens that I have used.  I didn't even bother to include the rainbow-- too whimsical I think.  The blue under the trees is not water, it's the beginnings of the cast shadows of the trees.  There's a too much red in the blue sky so I will be going back and changing that though I do want to leave a thin pinkish line at the horizon.

An artist friend has invited me to enter a show that he's put together for the Sacramento Fine Arts Center entitled PAINTING WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.  It will be work depicting Artwork of the American River Parkway and its Wild Things, so I am busy creating.  I can enter up to 3 pieces to be juried into the exhibition which will be shown at the Sac Fine Arts Center, then transferred to the Effie Yeaw Nature Center for showing.

Busy, busy, busy and my muse is sooo happy, happy, happy which leads me to breathing deep, rich, full breaths of delicious air.

Stillness

So...been working on family issues lately and not really able to work BUT today have tucked myself behind a closed door in my happy place.  My music is playing and comfortably, in my $39.99 Ikea chair, am in my muse state just believing in the beautiful and the real, feeling the love that I receive from the process of art and hoping that I am able to share that emotion.

I have finished "Stillness," and signed it:

It's hanging in the kitchen so that I can take it in each morning to perhaps touch it up here and there as I see fit.  It's got a nice sheen in the last layers since I used a special glazing medium that really enhanced the pigment an kind of sealed the paint to the canvas.  I notice there's a lot of yellow in the upper half, left side however I think the paint caught the flash of the camera there and it is not so light, however that is something I will be resolving today.

So onto a new canvas which already has about 22 layers of paint onto which I just added another creating a neutral background, next step is sketching and then the magical creating brain takes over.  That's when I breathe, 1-2-3, breathe, 1-2-3, breathe...lol.

Here she is after adding a couple of brushstrokes this morning.