At the show

Work has been quite hectic this week, so no painting for the week. Instead let me share a photo of me in front of my work at the Microsoft Employee Art Exhibit!

I am going on another workshop this weekend, this time for plein air painting.

At the show, originally uploaded by flyingroc.

One got away

When I took these out of my fridge, I noticed I was missing one tomato.

(click to bid)

If you've noticed, I updated the look of the blog. I was having a difficult time with the old hand-written template, and decided to just use one of the built-in ones. Of course that turned out to be a few hours of wrangling the html and css to customize it correctly anyway! Hopefully this new template will last for a bit.

Bottles and Vase

This is a little bit bigger for me at 12x16. I'm pretty happy about how the transparency of the glass shows up here.

 

 

I rarely paint bigger paintings because I really only have a couple of hours at night where I can paint. Larger paintings take more time, but when I start painting I really want to see them get done in one sitting, so I end up staying up too late!

Anyway, I'm entering this into a local art show. Wish me luck.

Bowl of Cherries

I've been a fan of Carol Marine for a while now. What I noticed about her paintings is that they contain a strong geometric element to them. I decided to try out a painting with more geometry and a more top down view, and this is what I came up with.

 (click to bid)

 

When I painted this, was just a tad too early for cherries around here, actually. These cherries are imported from California.

Plein Air weekend: Dosewallips State Park

A group of Plein Air Washinton folks went camping at Dosewallips State Park in the Olympic Peninsula. I'm not much of a camper so I just went there for a day trip. I got there so late that most people have packed up and left! Basically only Robin Weiss, and one other artist was painting when I got there.

The sun sets so late these days though, since we are approaching the solstice. So I actually managed to get a couple paintings done. Both are 8x10 acrylics on board.

I personally feel like my landscapes have something lacking in them. I don't know if it's accuracy of drawing, or values, or color, or composition. Probably all or them! Painting in the great outdoors, especially with other people is so much fun though, that I'm not about to give up plein air painting.

Oranges and cherries

Inspired by the Faye Castle painting that I bought, I thought I would make my own painting of oranges and cherries. Browsing through the daily paintworks site the other day, it seems that this subject is very popular among still life painters. And I can see why.

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Sliced

I've been painting a lot of apples lately. I think this will be the last, at least for a little bit. I have some other fruit I want to paint!

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I bought a Faye Castle painting

This painting is not mine,  I bought it. When I was at the workshop last week, it coincided with Langley's first Saturday art walk. I visited Studio 106, which is the working studio of 3 wonderful artists: Faye Castle, Phyllis Ray, and Barbara Barry. While in the studio, I was so attracted to this 6x6 painting by Faye Castle that I bought it!

The color and light in the painting is so good. 

Into the light

I feel like I have made much progress in my paintings in the last few months. Enough progress that I have decided to put them up for sale.

(click to bid)

I signed up to the daily paintworks website and my goal is to post at least painting a week and put it up for auction. I'm not really sure if people will buy my work or not, but I am hoping to run this experiment for a few months.

Illumination

When painting, we should paint the light, instead of objects. Easier said than done!

Illumination, originally uploaded by flyingroc.

Snack Time

I'm trying to apply what I learned from the workshop into my acrylic paintings. I added an orange, and naples yellow (hue) to my palette; and also started using pthalo blue again.

But I think what's most useful to me from the workshop was Qiang's lighting system. Switching to halogen lights makes a huge difference. Also, frankly, I thought Qiang's "north light filter" was a gimmick, but it actually works really well.

Snack Time, originally uploaded by flyingroc.

Workshop Day 3

Last day of the workshop. We painted in the morning, and in the afternoon Qiang talked about the business aspects of painting. I am not selling my paintings yet, but it was an interesting talk. As I said goodbye to him he said "I hope to see your work in galleries one day." I'm sure he was just being polite but I was so flattered I was nervously laughing like a moron.

Time for Coffee, originally uploaded by flyingroc.

Community Gathering

Its been a great second day of the painting workshop. I feel like I am getting a lot out of this class. Qiang is a very good teacher. He is honest and direct with his critique, something I appreciate very much.

I entitled this community gathering because I imagine all the objects clustering around to chitchat. In the same way as this community of artists gathered around in the workshop. I really feel like I've benefited so much from this, and there's still one day to go!