I Feel Another Painting Coming On...

This week I met with Samanda and visited her family home where I was introduced to Chica, their parrot. She is sweet and gentle and very social so it was a real treat. I have already planned my next painting with Samanda in it but now I think there will be another to follow that...one with Chica included. I am envisioning something but don't want to discuss it much since when I do that the project has a good chance of never happening. I need to learn how to keep my consul when planning my work...I can be such a blabbermouth though. When I did the pastel painting of Lisa with a Lyrebird I didn't talk much about it and the result was successful and sold almost right away! I had to research Lyrebirds and try to incorporate found photos with the images I had taken of Lisa when she posed for me. This time I can pose Chica with Samanda - always a better option for having light and angle work together. I think it will be later this Spring or Summer when Samanda is home from school again and it will need to be at her house. Chica is very sensitive and might not want to cooperate in an unfamiliar setting (like my studio). In the meantime a friend has given me about $300 worth of canvases that she is not going to be using so I am probably set for the whole of 2011. Happy New Year to all!

The 100 Hurdle!

Sketches for Stained Glass ceiling, Las Vegas Hilton Hotel, circa 1973

Today is a milestone...One Hundred followers! Wow. I really never expected to earn the interest of so many and I am very appreciative, believe me! I shall endeavor to keep you all from getting majorly (is that a word?) bored and find good stuff to talk about and intriguing images to post.

This is a serious motivator for me to keep a fire under myself to produce the best work I can.

Thank you everyone!

I decided to celebrate my 100th follower by showing some old sketches of mine from my Illustrator days. I had just moved back to LA in 1973 and found free lance work with a company that made stained glass windows and lamps for commercial use (restaurants, etc.). They had me design windows and lampshades for The Rusty Scupper restaurant chain first and then I was hired to design a ceiling that was to be 24ft. long for the newly built Las Vegas Hilton Hotel...one of the lobbies. It had to have an underwater mermaid theme I was told. I knew a bit about how stained glass is put together having taken a short course that same year and understood about the necessity of designing to make sure the connecting areas of glass would not cause stresses that could compromise the stability of the whole. I was enthusiastic and excited. I worked for a couple of weeks on a lot of ideas and finally came up with the one you see at the bottom. I also did a colour drawing but that has long since disappeared unfortunately. Even more unfortunate was my client's reaction. Instead of the happiness and thrill I hoped for, he was very concerned over the complexity of my vision. He also did not want to pay for the 80plus hours of work I had put into this project. He paid me about half of what I expected, took my design and had his inhouse designers rework and simplify it. The result, which I didn't see until a year or so later when my husband was passing through LasVegas and stopped to take a photo of the ceiling, was a mere token of my idea. It was cartoony and limpid and a major disappointment. All I could do was chalk it up to experience. A few short years later the hotel had a big fire and the ceiling was destroyed I am told. Karmic justice I thought secretly to myself...

It's That Time of the Year

"Cat Nap" oil 22"x28"

How can I think about the upcoming plans for new work right now? This happens to me every year about this time. I am not especially enmeshed in holiday rush stuff as it is basically just Bob and me and possibly Elissa and Tyler will come up after Christmas for a few days. Old thoughts press to the forefront and it is hard to find the impetus to start a new canvas. That will pass as it always does so I just go with it for a time until I am sick and tired of not producing anything:-) Meanwhile I post some old work, but most of you who follow me have not seen it so to you it can be new. This was my son, right around Christmas time, back in the early 80's. The material on the futon was from drapes my mother had made for the house in the 50's. I used that fabric for quite a few things around my own places. I still have some of it. Very trendy stuff now I understand. She also made the afghan draped over my sleeping child. That got ruined when I washed it and put it in the dryer...I don't think she ever quite got over my doing that...I thought it was dryable yarn, which all her other afghans happened to be! I had just gone back to school to work on my MFA when I did this painting. I was excited and inspired. It got me into a good gallery and sold to somebody in Philadelphia but I don't know who. I often wish I hadn't parted with it.

The cat had been with me since Toronto and moved to LA with me and back to east to Rochester after I got married and had Tristan. Poor, Puff...had to give him away finally as my allergies began to cause serious health concerns for me...he couldn't forgive that but he didn't understand the deadly alternative to finding a new home for him. No body promised him life would be easy

but I did my best, for both of these little guys. Tristan is 34 now...

Winter procrastination

Cyclamen & Lace colored pencil 24"x30"

It seems to be happening a bit early this year, the sense of procrastination that overcomes me every winter. I think I can manage to get through it soon as the guilt will become too much and force me back at the easel. I will once again wonder what the problem was since I am always

very happy after I become absorbed in the work. In the meantime I am putting together all the

pictures of our wedding in an album - from eight years ago! They have been sitting in a box all

this time; talk about procrastination...

Above is a colored pencil piece I did quite some time ago when I still lived in Rochester, NY. This was a window in my tiny attic studio. I draped a lace tablecloth over the curtain rod and placed a small potted plant on the sill to brighten up a dreary, winter scene. I had used the same lace cloth as a curtain in previous abodes right from the mid seventies when there was no money to buy regular curtains. It always provided a sense of elegance to an otherwise somewhat impoverished environment, but then, I have read that artists know how to live well even when they have no money - my places never wanted for interesting decor:-) Now they call it "shabby chic."

I hear the pages of the wedding photo album calling...

Last Image of Samanda, I Promise!

"Juanita in her Hat" - graphite sketch from life

"Juanita" - vine charcoal sketch from life - 1/2 hour pose

"Chrysalis" - oil - 36"x24"

I reshot the painting of Samanda, titled it "BodyWrap" and submitted it to the online FineArtsView

competition for this month. Having been chosen for the top FAV 15% in September with the painting of "Lisa" I am hoping for another notice! We artists are consummate "egoists" - always about Me, Me, Me, I know...so let's talk about YOU for a change...tell me, what do YOU think about me? Old joke, I know. Anyway, this is the last post of this image for a while. I just wanted it to be a better shot than what I posted previously - colours are more accurate here - at least on MY monitor - what about yours? Someone wrote me that Samanda is like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis and I love that idea and it feels very right, so I have to retitle this piece and call it "Chrysalis". Much better! I am so lousy at naming my own work or finding the right metaphors for it...it is there in my head, all of it, but putting actual names to things is not my strong point. I wonder if I can go back and rename the piece in the competition?

The sketches are from yesterday's drawing group at Vicky Scott's studio near Courtenay. I haven't been for a while so it was good to get back. This model, Juanita, we have had many times and she is really wonderful to draw. Vicky and I discussed hiring Juanita to pose just for us and one or two others who are interested in a long carefully planned pose. Most of those who come are interested in poses no longer than an hour. I would like to do an oil painting of Juanita and I loved what she was wearing yesterday. Again, it just felt right. I can never describe to models what it is I want from them accurately enough. When it is there, it is is simply obvious. Juanita has a natural grace and sense of beautiful posing and features that are timeless. I have several quite beautiful drawings of her. A portrait is in order soon, I think.

Thank you for all the wonderful comments on the painting of Samanda! It is so great to have you guys around! It is ok to let me know when you don't like something I do, also, you know! (But be gentle:-).

I'm Saying I'm Done...

This painting has reached the point where I just can't work on it any more. Every new brushstroke would be fussing. A friend says the fabric is creating a mystery in that it is impossible to tell if she is wearing a sari like dress or just wrapped in fabric that is hooked to the sky somewhere out of the picture frame. Her face, she said, looks out with vulnerability but not

with fear. I don't have the answers.

What Colour is "Flesh"?

Continuing with the painting of Samanda I am once again made aware of the huge variety of colours in so-called "flesh" (of the human variety). Caucasians are not just "white" or "peach" or

"rose" toned. Darker skinned peoples are not "brown" or "black". We are all made up of the same

rainbow of colours, just different intensities and values of those colours. Our surroundings and the lighting we are in also influence the colours that stand out in our skin. Samanda is Asian. Her skin has beautiful golden tones. Here in her arm I noticed intense orange and soft yellow but also sienna, umber, viridian green, shades of lavendar, and deep reds. Cerulean Blue and Naples Yellow mixed to make some of the greenish tones, while Permanent Rose, Alizarin Crimson, and Burnt Sienna, and Cobalt Blue are in some of the shadow areas. The red/violet and blue colours in the fabric she holds in front of her reflect subtly on her arms and under her neck and chin. I am unable to locate a single tube of paint that would be the right "colour" for painting her or anyone else. I notice that many artists paint beautiful portraits of people using quite limited palattes, mostly umbers and subtle mixtures of red, yellow and white. There is nothing wrong with this in the least - I just find it more exciting to really look for all the variations that are actually there in the models skin. If you really look at your own hand, move it into varying light and shadow, and you start to notice that rainbow that is part of all of us.

An aside: I entered the Blossom Art Competition recently and received word yesterday that I was not juried in. They had 2300 entries and a very limited number that could be accepted. I look forward to seeing those who were chosen and congratulate them. This is a competitive business but not being accepted does not mean one is unworthy. A different jury would pick a different group of paintings. I am aiming fairly high lately so I have to accept with good grace that I still am a winner because deciding to aim high forces me to paint as well as I can and to reach for more than I might have. I had entered "Nicole in the Rose Trellis" and "Heather with Peonies" and both paintings achieved a benchmark level for me - now on to see if I can surpass myself!