Sunday, March 11, 2012

Springtime breeds creativity...and the birds are doin it to!!

Spring is FINALLY HERE!!!!! I'm so very excited!!!
I love this time of year because everything is fresh and new and it makes you look ahead in your mind and imagine the beauty that will soon be popping up all around you!
for me it mean FLOWERS!!! My flowers will be blooming and I'll have new photo opportunities.
I can't wait to expand and add more flowers to my garden, get my hot peppers planted and work outside. Always a lovely time to sit on the deck and take it all in....

Speaking of flowers.... have made a lot of progress on the yellow bearded iris I started a couple weeks back. It's going fast. I have probably 1 more sitting left on her and then she's done. I can't wait to put the final varnish on and watch the colors explode! I love that pop it gets when the colors go from being flat to alive in just seconds!
So far, I think this is one of my best flower paintings. Its so vibrant and striking...I am enjoying sitting and staring at it.
I have detailed it quite a bit further since this image was taken on Friday.
Yesterday I laid in some magenta and some blue violet and popped up some more details to the foreground and knocked others back. On Wednesday of this week I'll start doing the hand details, clean some things up, tweak the background a bit more and she's done!
It truly is a stunner!!!
I think when I am finished, I'll just list this up on Etsy  or Ebay and see what happens.
I am trying to get a little vacation cash scraped together so I'll see if I can't paint my way into some if I can.










I also started a still life of a bowl of pears this week. I collect a lot of vintage things and I have this particular old crock bowl with a blue salt glazed interior that I just love. I had some pears that were perfectly in blush so i thought this combination of colors on a dark background would be striking...
I am enjoying this quite a bit. I am trying out some new things so thought this would be the perfect test. I took a picture on Wednesday when I worked on it but didn't take an update yesterday.

I now have the interior of the bowl blocked in and will start detailing that this week. Yesterday I laid in the light blue midrange color on the left side of the bowl and the darker blue shadow. It's starting to pop up now. The small picture you can see clipped on my board has been my reference so far, It's about the size of a baseball card and for the midrange colors and basic layout and shapes, that's all I need for now.
I have the pears masked off currently but they will be unmasked on Wednesday and I'll start laying in my midrange colors. I am using opaques I have mixed up and I am tweaking and testing out the coverage strengths. So far so good!
I probably should have used a larger board but this is more of a test than anything and the focal portions of the painting are the worn rim of the bowl, the leftmost blue inside and the stems of the pears. I was 'taught' that for compositions sake that you want to keep the weight of the piece towards the bottom and I felt the lower rim of the bowl anchors that. I also tend to follow the rule of thirds in composition so that your focal point isn't dead center, but just off. My focal points are the left side of the bowl with the blue, the stems of the pears and the lower rim of the crock bowl with all it's chips and defects.
If you keep in mind the rule of thirds, it makes for a more interesting composition that makes you look at more than just the center. So when I paint this, my focus of tight details will be in these areas.
If you can not tell, I do enjoy photography quite a bit and this rule is used alot in taking/cropping a good photograph. This is why you see that grid on your viewfinder...hint hint. Now this is not to say you need to do whatever your taught but if something works..it just works.


   So since it IS spring, it was time for me to get a new mode of transportation to the studio and grocery store. In the summer when it isn't raining or when I don't have lots of stuff to carry, I ride my bike. With the cost of gas these days, I'll be pedaling my big butt alot more and hopefully the latter will get smaller in the process!! ;)
I have, which is soon to be HAD, a really nice Schwinn mountain bike that I have had for a few years but since my neck fusion, it is no longer comfortable or kind to my spine any more.
I was dead set on getting a cool cruiser bike but settled for a 'comfort bike' instead. Went to a little local bike shop, House of Bikes, and I immediately fell in love with their quirky independent store that is cram packed full of stuff and had a small very knowledgeable staff.
My husband was looking for a newer bike and I was as well but I didn't expect to find on that i fell in love with like I did. They had an aqua blue Raleigh women's Venture comfort bike that was exactly my size! I sat on it once and that was it...went back the next day and bought that baby and now she's mine...all mine...

So now I am designing a custom set of panniers to put on the rack I added to the back. I might make a few cool ones and perhaps list those on Etsy as well. They need to have some with some cool stylish designs and be roomy enough to haul things around like a jug of milk, beer, laptop... So that's been my fun little project when I am home.
I have my pattern already made and I think I have enough test canvas(cheap paint dropcloth) to make a set. I'll then be able to tweak and tes them as need be. If they work, I'll stitch and paint up a few and throw em on the Ebay/Etsy! (I need vacation funds remember)



Well, that's enough blathering for one day... time to go do some shopping, go get the husband new bike he ordered last week and sew up some panniers!!
Have a great day all!! :)


Kath