"Sunlit"

On my PaintingFriends forum, we have a monthly challenge we call YOP (Year of Painting) where Ann Buckner from Oklahoma puts up a challenge every month and we are to paint whatever we want from a couple of reference photos and post it on the 20th of each month. This has been such fun, and it's amazing how many different takes one bunch of artists can come up with for the challenge. This one was a cluster of grapes...and guess who's never painted grapes??? Right...me.

Of all our challenges, I think I've learned most from this one because I had to really install into my painting head that you can't mix purple and yellow without getting MUD. My first attempt did turn into deep ugly mud and is living in my waste basket in about a million pieces. But, after many attempts with colors, I did come up with quin magenta, cabozale purple, quin perm rose, cobalt blue, WN orange, and gamboge and came out with a variety of acceptable grape colors. The main trick seems to be to let whatever you put down completely dry before going back in with another color...regardless of the color. Good lesson learned. When I can get my act together, I'm going to do a little demo on the forum for anybody who might want to take a look...www.paintingfriends.com. Come visit us...we're always painting something...

Colors of Indian Rocks Beach

Last summer I had a really fun filled week in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida with a group of artists from the PaintingFriends forum. http://www.paintingfriends.com/. We painted and played on the beach and painted some more and got to know each other as most of us (other than the Florida gals) had never met. While there we found these darling little beach cottages...probably from the 40's and 50's...and couldn't resist the photo ops that abounded. They were sorbet colors...oranges, pinks, turquoise, yellow...you name it and they painted it that color...and each had all this "stuff" around...and best of all, they were just a short hop through the dunes and to the beach. We're going back again in August so I'm sure we'll find more of these cuties to paint. The bright sun and the bright colors were really fun to try to capture on paper.

"The Last Six'

Finally decided on a title, and I'm thinking that I'm done here. As usual, I'll live with the painting for a day or two as I see a few tweaks I could make...maybe yes, maybe no...but I always see stuff when I post that I didn't see earlier. The lids were lots of fun to paint...even more than smushing the reds around...can't believe I even said that. They do look pretty shiney so I may bring that shine down a bit...I'll just have to sleep on it. My friend who canned these beauties tells me that this batch is almost gone...sure wish I lived close enough to have furnished the chips...good salsa to a Texan is like sunshine...thanks, Judy.

Tomato Jars WIP

The background went in today so I could make some value judgments...that 6th jar was a question as to the shadow line so I decided to go ahead with a background. Now I'll have trouble with a title as this reminds me of the storm cellar that my grandmother used for all her canning veggies and pickles...the shelves were old and rather beaten up looking...guess I'll have to think about this some more. Hopefully, I'll get back to the shadows and making my tweaks on the reds tomorrow...it's evening in Texas now and I don't enjoy painting at night any more...my colors aren't true even with good painting lights.

Tomato Jars WIP

Here's where I am today...thought I'd get finished, but life always gets in the way it seems. It's good to post WIP's in that once it comes up on the monitor, it seems that I can see things that were right in front of me that I need to adjust. There will definitely be some glazing done to round the jars better, and some value shifts here and there. Still don't have my background settled in my head...maybe I need to give it another day...

Tomato Salsa WIP

Yesterday I started a new painting from a ref photo from one of my friends, Judy Buckingham, from PaintingFriends forum. Judy always cans in the summer and these jars of salsa were too pretty not to paint. Don't know what my background will be just yet, but it'll come. The jar lids are actually silver in the ref photo and I started to paint them that brassy color, but, Judy wouldn't use old looking lids so I'm sticking true to life. The reds are a combo of Poppy, Aliz orange, WN red, and AJ gamboge. When I've finished all six jars, I'll go back with deeper red here and there...hope to get this finished this afternoon. I'm thinking that this will work for my "red challenge" for Artcolony and I'm determined not to wait until the last day of the challenge like January.