Red Wine and Cherries WIP

Here's where I stopped today. I haven't worked on this painting for the past two weeks...it's an early spring in Texas and all my flowerbeds were calling my name. It's a real shame that we have to sleep at night when there are so many wonderful things to get done.

Anyway, I've stopped here after introducing some blue into the stopper facets because I really need to decided on my dark background there on either side of the bowl before going any further. I was laying in different reds in the bowl to start on the fan facet, but decided I'd better work the darkest darks first. It's been rather challenging coming up with reds and purple/burgundy colors that don't fight each other. Started to throw the crystal on the gray side, but opted for soft blues instead as I'm thinking of a Midnight Blue kind of background to get some really dramatic darks in. It'll also make the blues more pale as the contract will be greater. Haven't decided on the cloth yet, but there's plenty of time for that.

Red Wine and Cherries WIP

Earlier this week I decided I wanted to paint crystal again and had this drawing done. Painting glass and crystal is somehow very calming and soothing to me. I jokingly say it's really "paint by numbers", but when you see detail and love to paint detail...that's about true. I wanted this to be with analogous colors so I've changed the chardonnay to red wine and I'm having to explore some new reds. I've found that my bright transparent reds don't really work cohesively with the purples and magentas of the red wine. I also realize now that there will be lots of glazing going on to establish the wine level in the decantur realistically and I can't do that until I really settle on the right colors. Sure is nice to be able to make adjustments and live with it for a little bit...this one may take me a few more days than I had planned. And, I'm not all that good at glazes so we'll just see what happens here.

Fruit Plate

Here is a small painting completed yesterday for my continuing little monthly blurb on PaintingFriends forum. Since I am really crazy for detail and paint from photos, this was a little exercise in sharing what I'm looking for and see when I paint a setup. Of course, I had to come up with something with reds in it...and cherries are always my first choice...sure wish they were a bit less expensive in the grocery right now...they're almost too expensive to swallow and enjoy. We've been working on color palettes and this one is just red, yellow, and blue...primaries are always fun as you can go so many different ways or just stay with the basics.

"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.