A Moment in Venice

Late summer and September is when Key Westers head for Europe and other fun spots. The town gets quiet and everyone is sick of the heat and mosquitoes, so it's a good time to "get out of Dodge". I won't be headed to Europe any time soon but thanks to wetcanvas.com I can be a vicarious traveler. On wetcanvas.com there is a section where artists (very generously) share their photos and allow other artists to use them without any copyright infringement issues. I found a lovely little photo of Venice that was really fun to paint.

Note to artists; You might have to go through a lot of photos before you find one you like.

Recent firing.

Last Friday's firing had the recently discussed chip and dip pieces, some fish spoon rests for Margaritaville Key West's web site, some coasters and a special order plaque.

A customer came to me about a month ago with a special request. She wanted the above saying on a plaque that could be outside in the weather and she wanted it a certain size. Other than that I could do what I wanted. I came up with this little scene to go with her text. I hope she likes it. It leaves via UPS tomorrow for her house in Tallahassee.

Three chip and dips, one very tropical and two not so much.

Of the three chip and dip pieces I made recently I decided to do only one with a tropical theme and two that are packed with bright colors but no specific motifs. I do love the tropical flora and fauna but I can understand that not everyone does. So for those people, there are two color-packed contemporary style chip and dips.


Tropical chip and dip $124.00

Comtemporary chip and dips $94.00

In 7 Artists Key West gallery now.

604 Duval Street

Bliss

It is hot and humid here these days. A beach chair and an umbrella at the water's edge would be perfection. With a good book, of course.

Bliss
10 x 8"
oil
$325.00 framed

The one not choosen

A customer in the gallery a couple of weeks ago was interested in a re-creation of a painting that I did several years ago, but wanted it to be a palette knife painting. When I sent them a photo of the finished painting they were "No longer interested". Oh well I have a rustic 16 x 20" barn wood frame it will look good in.

Here is a better photo of yesterday's painting. This one is shot straight on and has no glare. The only thing I am going to do to it is to give it a few more shades of red in the flowers at the base of the palms.

No title yet

8" x 10 inches in a gold plein air frame (or black) $265.00

Sunday painter

I have been doing a lot of reading about oil painting and looking at many oil painting photo demonstrations and somewhere in my reading there was a suggestion to do your own demonstration to make yourself aware of where your problems begin. Since many of my paintings start our fine and end up a mess I decided that this was a good idea. Here's my demo. Using a photo and a canvas that had a middle value ground I start out by painting in the negative shapes. (The area around the palms and shadows).

I lay in the dark values in the palms and the grass.

I decide to take out the palm fronds on the left hand side, so I scraped them out, add some more paint to the sky and lay in the shadow and the lower palm fronds and the palm trunks.

I darken the shadows and added some paint to the ocean.

I start to add color and value changes to the palm fronds and I scrape away the right hand palm because I realize I need to adjust the color (make it blue-er) to establish distance. I start to lay in the ground shrubs at the base of the palms.

I decide the palms don't look right so I scrape parts of them away and add more sky.

And here I make the exact mistake again, to many fronds and the distant palm on the right is too heavy and too green.

Here I get more air back into the upper palms, get the distant palm to be okay, but not great and then I screw up the shadow.

By this time I am sick of blue and green, so I throw in some red, and some color variation to the sand, which doesn't show up here and start to rework the shadow and give the ocean a little wave action.

I have added a lot more paint to the sky and reworked the shadow shape. And that's as far as I got. I'll look at it tomorrow and see what to do next. And I think working it like a demo helped. By the way the photo was from wetcanvas.com, they have copy right free photos on their site.

Recent firing

This recent firing included some serving pieces with twin palms on them, some spoon rests and some Christmas ornaments. If I do a few ornaments during the summer months it might not seem so overwhelming when the season hits.

Here's and order of flip flops that I did for Two Friends in Lewes, Delaware. If you are in the area check out the store.

Back to fundamentals

Mangrove study, "Before the rain"
Mangrove study, "After the rain"




Mangrove study, Mangroves on a windy day"

Mangrove study, "Mangrove with distant sailboat"

This mangrove clump is not far from my house and I have painted it many times over the last 8 years. I feel my academic painting skills need reinforcement. Using oil paint I am going keep painting this scene stressing the fundamentals of the painting process. I am using a limited palette of colors and concentrating on light, value and composition. All of the above studies were done on location, en pein air,and they are all are 8" x 10". I'll try not to bore you with too many of them.

I'm on vacation

Last week I headed to North Carolina to visit my Mom for Mother's Day. While I am here I try to walk the beach on Topsail Island every day to collect seashells and hopefully walk off all the cookies I seem to be consuming. This charming cottage is perched on the dune and I think this is a good photo reference for a future painting. I would like to give a shout out and thank you to
Pam Hobbs for selling my "A and B Marina" (see April 11 post) painting for me and for working some of my shifts in the gallery while I am gone.