the pears, all together!

The second batch - not a success story!

Well, here, in all their glory (and I use that term very loosely) are the latest batch of pears along with the first batch. I can't say there is one set in the second batch that's any good. But I'm going to try again tomorrow! I will not stop until I succeed at this.

I have pears coming out of my ears! Or rather, I have bowling pins and potatoes coming out of my ears because that's what the second batch looks like to me. LOL!

Thankfully, tomorrow's another day. (Another day, another pear.)

I think the biggest problem was that as I was attempting to follow Don's instructions, I had the set I'd done and liked so much right in front of me and was subconsciously trying to duplicate them.

Each one of these is on 5" x 7" w/c paper. (Most of Arches 140 cp, four are Bockingford cp. I had bought a sheet of Bockingford way back after reading how so many people on Wet Canvas liked it. It is truly horrible paper to work on. No where near the quality of Arches and I will never use it again. The paint does not flow smoothly like on Arches. Not at all. Horrible stuff.) Painted with a 3/4" cyrrus kolinsky. Paints used are WN winsor yellow, WN indanthrone blue and DS sap green.















Did everyone shut off their lights at 8 pm on Saturday night? We did. Makes you appreciate light when you put them back on.

In lieu ........

I've been pretty tired out this week at nights (exhausted is more like it!) so I still haven't got to the other loose painting but it is first on my agenda! Last night, I needed to help my son with a school project so that took most of the night.

In lieu of posting the latest loose paintings (which I'm hoping will get done tonight), I'm posting some shots of my painting room instead.

Here's the old 'rescued' table where I paint. Doesn't it look so neat?

(Actually, that was shot after moving into this house! LOL - hasn't looked that neat since!)

Here's what it usually looks like:

Here it is with the six pear paintings spread out:

Since this was originally a bedroom, the closet looks like this to store supplies and things:

That's a heck of a lot neater than it looks now, too! I really need to do some spring cleaning in this room!

Opposite the painting table is my computer desk and I can't find the pic I had stored of that. I'll keep looking and add it when I do.

Gotta get ready for work now but at least I can leave without feeling so guilty about not getting to those paintings and posting them!

Have a great day!

Loose isn't easy!

I did that experiment today! I had six small pears on the go. One is worth posting. It's not too shabby - loose like I wanted, though still not loose enough. But for me, this is loose. I need a lot of work on this. Maybe tomorrow night after work, I'll try something else like this!

The photograph is from Ivyleaf at Wet Canvas - taken from the Wet Canvas Reference Image Library.

Thanks very much to Don West for the suggestions!!!

What a Mess!

Well, I played around with the onions and peppers and messed it up. So I just kept going and really messed it up! What the heck, I'm posting it here.

Tomorrow, I'm going to work on the project that Don West suggested in his comments on the first onion and pepper posting. I'll post the best ones.

It's Good Friday here, a holiday and while I didn't paint the entire day, I did paint. And also read a lot about capturing light from Betty Carr's book, "Seeing the Light". (Though you can't really tell that I learned much from looking at the shadows here.)

So, here it is, in all it's embarrassment!













You know, if you keep it really small, it could look kind of good. If you squinted lots. lol Small like this:






Have a good holiday!

Saturday's note: the more I look at this, the more it grows on me. The background could look good if I'd used different colours, I think. I loaded the brush with two colours to do this. (A suggestion made for doing the 5 x 7 loosening up studies.) I should have done the background in browns rather than greens. In for a penny, in for a pound - maybe I'll just glaze over with some browns and play around some more........

Onions, Peppers and Shallots

This is the piece I started to loosen up.

I bought a beautiful ACEO from Don West, through ebay of three onions and some grapes. Beautiful and loose! To see it, click here for his site and click on the Onions and Grapes. It's beautiful!!!!

With that in mind, I started this but am failing dismally at the loosening up part. But I do like the colours in the onions. I'll work more at it tonight or maybe start another. I need to put in some shadows to ground it - that might be all I add, after finishing the shallots and pepper. I'm going to keep at it until I get it right, though! Maybe.

I'm also going to start working on a batik watercolour, using the real batik method. Sandy Maudlin, Rhonda's art teacher extraordinaire has some on her blog and also posted some instructions on Wet Canvas. I'll follow those instructions and probably ask Rhonda a million questions. LOL. I'm hoping that Ann paints along with me!!! (Hint, hint, Ann.)

PS - read the comments here for some excellent suggestions from Don to loosen up! Thanks Don!

Oh! forgot to mention this ribbon!!!

The window box painting received a Patron's Choice Award at EBSQ! Now to think of something I could paint for the current topic of Vices.....

I also want to mention the site of Dana Marie, another EBSQ member. You can click on the link over in the right sidebar. I bought a beautiful ACEO of a jellyfish from her through ebay. She does awesome work, so check out her painting by clicking on her blog site or her EBSQ pages.

My jellyfish is called Sea Me Dance. I love it!!!

Can we even take more snow???

If I thought it had really snowed last time, I was sadly mistaken. This past weekend, over a Saturday night/Sunday period, we received 50 cms of snow, plus another 15 cms of ice pellets. Also mixed in were strong winds, rain, freezing rain, and even thunder and lightning! It was one very powerful and menacing storm. The cleanup is still going on and will probably take about two weeks.

Rhonda, I think we've got you beat for snow! I'll take your foot any day! LOL

This shows the front entrance that had to literally be carved out of a huge snowdrift. It was still snowing when this was taken. Heightwise, that snow there goes to just below my neck. The worst part is constantly clearing out the mess that's dumped in the driveway when the plow goes by.



I did do more painting though. Started something for a fast warmup but it's not being done so fast. Just a small still life with onions, shallots and peppers. Maybe tonight, I'll post it.

Last night was the meeting night of the art group. (First Wednesday of every month but last Wednesday, it had to be cancelled because of ...... you guessed it! Another snow storm.) It was a great meeting and I enjoyed it! When I got home though, I just had to finish watching the movie, August Rush. What an excellent movie!!!