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.

Radishes

These little radishes come already with a great complementary contrast of red and green  - they were fun to paint!

Onion Power

Just the other day I found this sprouting onion in my refrigerator. It made a great subject...

Plum Quartet

Sommer is great for all the different fruits that are posing for my stills. Here are some purple plums on aluminum foil - I love the reflections, it almost looks like water...

Mangos and Palm

This will be the last mango painting for a while, it's a large one - 20" x 20" - I guess a "monument" to this amazing fruit ;o). It was totally fun to observe the bright orange and yellow tones cooled and complemented with the blue background...

Melon Slices

For this week's DailyPaintWorks Challenge: paint an upside down photograph. The idea is not to let the brain tell you how to paint something, instead only paint what you actually see without knowing what it really is - so to speak "Painting with the right side of your brain and turn the left temporarily off ;o)..." This was difficult because my brain constantly tried to figure out what it was that I was seeing and painting, I had to push it out of the way...a very good exercise!

Mango Duo

...still not being bored painting and eating them...

Mango Quintet

...and more mangos... one of my favorite fruits.. as I mentioned before they are creeping up everywhere....

Mango Tower

My contribution for the Daily Paintworks Weekly Challenge - Balance - To my surprise these mangos actually stayed up - right now it is absolute mango season and mangos are "piling" up everywhere...
Thank you Cathleen for this great challenge. I admire your work and take great inspiration from it.

Clementines

I did this painting a while ago when the fruit were in season. The colors captured my spirit when I came across this painting on my flashdrive this morning. I know I will not be able to paint today so I posted this painting to fill in.

Don't have to cook tonight!

Here is my contribution for this week's Challenge of DailyPaintworks. The challenge was to paint a wrapped gift...I liked the idea of a gift to myself. As I mentioned a while ago - I would like to be a daily painter, however, too many other responsibilities at this time prevent me from committing. Maybe it is also a lack of self-discipline and organizational skills? Anyway...this Chinese food box answers the question: "What's for dinner, Mom?" ...somebody else is cooking for my family and I have time to paint...