Tuesday, March 30, 2010

chairs, chairs and more chairs




Very much done with the chairs. Not that I didn't appreciate them at the time but after 11 of them I'm ready to move on. It was kind of an interesting exercise though especially with color. It was fun to play with layering. And I'm getting a little antsy to paint large again, I can see some of these subjects working really well large scale.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Chairs. What?




Not many people know this about me but if I hadn't become an artist I probably would have become either an interior designer, travel agent, or a marine biologist (or a psychotherapist, but that's another story). Another thing that perhaps is a little weird about me is that I have always (since I was a little kid) seen objects as having their own human personality (hence eccentric artist). So when I was looking for a subject to paint that would allow me to do some color studies but still have tons of personality that could stand alone on a panel, I chose the chair. I love how many crazy chairs there are out there, I could literally find enough to get through the entire 100 paintings.

So here are the first 3 (of 10 not of 100) of the chair series.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

#19 and 20 the ugly



So here are the two landscapes that I really want to paint over but I won't quite yet, not until I really need the panels. I think what I don't like is that I thought I could whip them out and didn't pay enough attention to the drawing, good lesson, the drawing is everything.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Sad news

On a sad note, the artist Robert McCall died last week at 91. In an older post I talked about going to his studio last year with my mom's art league and seeing him again after almost 30 years. He was truly a talented, kind and generous man.

Last of the cacti, #18 leaning soldiers


Here is the last cacti painting, even though these 6 paintings of cacti took longer than I had hoped, I really enjoyed painting them, but decided that I needed to start something that isn't quite so detailed for a little break. So last week I painted 2 landscapes. I'd love not to ever show these anywhere and perhaps put them in a closet somewhere for eternity because they really are absolutely awful, but part of this process needs to be putting it all out there, the good bad and the ugly (and boy are these ugly) so I promise I'll post them next week. On a positive note though, having abject failures has done a couple of things, it's making me more aware of what I like about other people's art, and even though I have the urge to fix these paintings, I'm resisting, I'm leaving them to remind me what doesn't work and moving on without beating the poor painting to death.