Cup o'Tea 2

As mentioned earlier - I am returning to the little teapot! This time I focused on bringing more color into the white of the pot and cup. I think it shows more of the character of the forms... I say it is improved from the previous post. Agree?

Palm Window

 #1


#2

Here I have a BEFORE and AFTER of an en-plein-air painting. I was out in the park to paint this in spring. If you are familiar with painting on site, you know how much one has to ignore, simplify and pay attention to color perspective. The first painting appears busy. The middle and background did not go back due to the colors being too bright and light which makes everything pop. The second painting is the new version from last week-end. I went back to the spot and repainted mainly the background. Of course it is now a different time of the year so a lot of colors have changed too. What do you think? Is #2 a better rendition? Is there still something that could be improved? Thanks in advance for your feed back.

Cup o' Tea

This is an attempt to paint white with a dark background and peaches as color interest. I am not too happy how it came out. Besides the photo being somewhat overexposed, the tea pot is still too light and could have refected more colors.... another example of the difficulty to paint white.....

Moonlight Tree

Something totally different - a rather abstract landscape scene in watercolor. I painted this in response to the DPW "The color of music challenge", by Lesley Spanos. It made me think a little about how I would "illustrate" a piece of music. I wanted it to be different from the artist listening to music to get into a relaxed, creative and playful mood. I did not want to paint gestures of my movements to the music nor squiggles to illustrate rhythms and melodies. Maybe associations and emotions that the music evokes? Yes! I love piano music and so I picked Erik Satie's Nocturne Sequences - it is quiet, pensive and has repetitive variations... I closed my eyes and envisioned a moonlit night scene with a tree .... It also helped to break up the usual oil painting routine by using watercolors instead. Quite different in deed...what do you think?

Orange Reflection

I posted this on Daily Paintworks as my contribution for painting reflections. I kept it simple to focus on the reflection and colors. Recently, I have been working more on masonite boards (the rough back side). I have to say that I like the rough look of the finished painting - it also helps me being less fuzzy and use less strokes....Anybody else has experience with working on masonite (rough or smooth side)???

Red Beets

I never imagined there could be so much variation in colors in this ordinary root vegetable. It was fun observing the subtlety of it all. Also these beets tasted great after roasting in the oven for 1/2 hour.....

Red Taters

Painting this picture made me realize that I am looking at things differently now. I am more sensitive to subtleties in color, notice more reflections and values. At times waiting in the car at a red light, I find myself squinting at something and in my mind "seeing" myself observing the values and how I would paint it. Does that happen to you too??? I call it "MIND-PAINTING" - unfortunately limited in time because usually it is interrupted by beeping cars behind me....

Tubes of Paint

Happy 4th of July!!!
I painted this for the Weekly Challenge at DPW: Paint what your are painting with. These tubes must have felt special posing. Normally they get the squeeze and toss treatment.....

Peppers in a Row

Can you tell I love red peppers? We eat them fairly frequently as I offer them raw and cut up as an alternative at the dinner table for our picky eaters that do not like veggies cooked because they "look too mushy..".  Sounds familiar??? Maybe my little one has a point ....don't the vitamins get cooked out?  As a painting I am quite happy how this one turned out. The different shades of red are showing the shapes of the pepper nicely.....

Pepper Tomato Team

This is another study of red and green - however looking at the picture now I see that I could have added more reflected red into the shadow on the right of the tomato...another lesson learned for next time.