Visiting Cuba

President Obama's historic trip to Cuba yesterday had me and my travel buddies thinking about our trip there last year and how much we enjoyed visiting the island.  We all hope to go back someday.  I hope things open up enough between the US and Cuba that we can just go there on vacation whenever we want to.  Cuba is a beautiful country.  Though much of it is crumbling, you can still see the beauty of the buildings and the landscape.  I've written a few posts about my painting trip, but I thought you might like to see some of the photos that I have not previously posted.

We spent our first few days in the older part of Havana.  The buildings were beautiful and the old square was a lovely place to paint.

The architecture reminds me of the French Quarter in New Orleans, but there is a strong European influence as well.

I love book stalls on the street.  We found them when we were searching for the art supply store.

After the first two days in Havana, I spent the rest of my time on the Paseo de Marti, a grand boulevard in the city.  Painting there was so much fun.  People stopped to talk to us all day long, and so many of them were artists.  I got the impression that the art scene was a bit on the DL, but they were still working and doing the best that they could with the limited supplies available.  Everyone that I spoke with was so happy that we were there and seemed particularly happy to have artists coming to visit.  We asked some people what they thought about relations opening up between the US and Cuba and everyone responded positively.  I don't think politics had much to do with it, it was more that they were hoping for money and visitors to be coming into the country.  As a person who lives in New York City and can have just about anything I want, any time I want it, I was shocked at the inability to buy even basic goods in Cuba.  I could see a clear difference in the residents who had relatives in Florida to bring them necessities and the people who did not.  I have no idea how they are surviving, but they do.

There were chess players out every day.  They made chess boards by drawing the squares on pieces of material.

This was my favorite building on the street.  I spent two days painting it.  Even though it is a bit dilapidated, you can still see the beauty in it.

This is getting to be a bit long.  I did not realize how many photos I had.  I will save the rest for another post, but I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into Cuba.  I'm having a great time going through my photos and remembering the trip.  If you would like to read my earlier posts, the links are here, here and here.

As always, thanks for reading!

Two New Paintings

Hi Everyone.  I have two new paintings to show you today.  Unfortunately, I seem to have had a photo meltdown and many of the photos of these paintings seem to be missing. However, I would like to show them to you so I will just do the best with what I still have.

First up, I have a new floral painting.  I began this painting when the cold weather finally hit New York, so it was nice to have something spring like to work on.

 This was the bouquet.  I don't often do multi colored bouquets so this was a fun change.

I did my usual block in, this time using a different background color.  It is still gray, but not as warm as I usually go.  This was a combination of french ultramarine, transparent red oxide and titanium white.  I really like the new color for this painting, but when I tried it on a second canvas I got very frustrated with it and reverted back to my usual black and yellow ochre :)

 

Next I blocked in the flowers, just trying to get the basic shapes and colors.  I was not sure how long they would last, so I wanted to get as much info on to the canvas as possible.

This was my third session on the painting.  The flowers were the most important thing, so other than building up the background color, I worked on them while leaving the rest of the painting for later.

After the flowers were done, it was time to get on with the rest of the painting.  I started by painting in the pattern on the vase as well as the leaves that were scattered about on the shelf.  This vase has a very intricate pattern and it took some time to get it right.

A close up of the pattern.  It takes some effort to keep track of where all the darks and lights are suppose to be, but it is worth it to get the pattern done correctly.

This is a hilarious photo that my friend took the day I finished the painting.  As you can see, this bouquet was done!  When I'm painting flowers, I give myself permission to break the rule about working on the entire painting at once.  They are only going to be around for a short time, so you have to get them done as soon as you can.

The second painting I have to show you is a still life with a cantaloupe and grapes.  I've been wanting to paint a melon forever, but I figured it would be difficult and kept putting it off.

Here is the set up.  The painting went on the canvas pretty easily.  Unfortunately, all my progress pics seem to have disappeared into the ether, including a hilarious shot that showed the cantaloupe looking like it had teeth!.  I was painting in the seeds, but I went a bit overboard and it looked like an open mouth ready to bite.  I started calling it the "cantaloupe monster".   I solved the problem by wiping out most of them and just leaving a few behind to show that the cantaloupe did have seeds, I just didn't need to show every one.

This is the finished painting.  It was fun to switch things up and paint something new.  As soon as these are dry and varnished, I will photograph them and add the images to the drop down menus.

I think that covers my crazy winter painting spree.  I started a new still life last week and there is no deadline! I'm taking my time with this one and will post it as soon as it is finished.

Travel And Destinations Show At The Art Guild Of Port Washington

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick note to let you know that my painting, Monet's Pond At Dusk, will be in the Travels And Destinations Show at The Art Guild Of Port Washington.

Landscape painting is not my usual forte, so I was thrilled to be accepted into this show.  The show will be up from March 5 to April 3, 2016.  The opening reception and awards ceremony will be this Sunday, March 6th, from 3-5pm.  If you are in the New York City/Long Island area, please stop in.  It is a fun show and we would love to see you!

The Art Guild Of Port Washington
200 Port Washington Blvd
Manhasset, NY  11030
516-304-5797

Blue And White Vase With Chinese Lanterns

I have another new still life to show you today.  I started this painting back in June.  This was the original set up, but I ended up tweaking it a bit at the end.

I blocked in the colors as I usually do, including the different colors of the cloth.  I usually just put in the primary color and then add the accents later, but because there was so much of the beige color, I put it in at the beginning.

The photo above was the third session on this painting.  It is hard to see in the original still life shot, but there are tiny gold flecks throughout this fabric.  I only put in a hint of them, but there are enough that you can clearly see that the fabric has a pattern to it.

Unfortunately, the photo I have of the pattern being painted in has disappeared into the ether, so I will show you a photo of the finished painting.  As I mentioned above, I did make one change to the set up.  After the painting was complete I let it sit around my studio for a few months.  It was a good painting, but I felt like it needed something more.  One day I happened upon some dried Chinese Lanterns and thought they would be the perfect finishing touch.

This is the finished painting.  I'm so much happier with the set up now that there is another element with the orange color in it as well as a piece balancing out the painting on the right hand side.  It is sometimes hard to see those things when you are setting up a still life, but there is nothing wrong with switching it up in the middle or at the end.

I'll be back soon with another new painting.  Have a great night and as always, thanks for reading!

A New Still Life - Black Vase With Lemons

As I mentioned yesterday, before the marathon painting session I completed a few still life paintings. This set up was simple, but very different from what I normally paint.

This black vase is huge, but very easy to paint as it is just the one color with some highlights.

This was my first day block in.  It looks a little strange as I was painting over an old canvas, but with a few coats of paint the old painting was eradicated forever :)

This was the third session.  The lights and darks are now more prominent and it is beginning to look like an actual painting.

I was very happy to get to this stage after a few sessions as I was worried that this painting was not going to make it.  That happens sometimes and there is no choice but to abandon it and move on, but luckily that was not the case here.

Here is the finished painting.  I let the painting sit for a few weeks, then decided it needed some light added to the area around the top of the vase as well as the front plane of the red cloth.  Soon I will be able to varnish and photograph it.

As I said, this was a simple set up, but sometimes it is fun to paint something quick and easy.

Travels And Destinations

I'm back with part two of my crazy painting spree.  As I said in my last post, I wanted to enter two shows that had specific themes.  This show was titled "Travels And Destinations".  I have plenty of small studies done on location, but I have never been successful at turning those into large studio paintings.  So, for this show, I decided to do something that I never do:  use photographs.  I normally would never paint from photos, but it was the only way to get these paintings done.  I did have some help from my field studies, so I was still able to capture the mood that I was after.

The first painting was of Monet's pond in Giverny.  Years ago I was lucky enough to spend some time in Giverny when artists were still allowed to paint in his gardens.  I have several posts coming up dedicated to my time there, but for this post, I'll just concentrate on the painting for the travel show.

One day last fall I was feeling particularly fed up with the orchids I was working on and I just needed to paint something that was not going to strain my brain and that would be some fun.  I had a canvas that had less than stellar paintings on both sides, so on a whim I pulled it out and began throwing paint on it for a landscape.  I had some of my Giverny photos in the studio, so I pulled one out and got to work.  I blocked in the canvas and did some work on the sky and the famous giant willows that surround the pond.  After a day of this I got back to work on the orchids and basically forgot about the landscape until the call for this show came up.

I'm sorry to say that I was in such a frenzy painting that I did not document my steps along the way, but here is the finished painting.

Monet's Pond At Dusk, 16x20, oil

My next painting was from the botanical gardens in San Miguel de Allende.  My field studies are too awful to show here, but they did capture the colors and the heat of the place.  Between them and some photos I was able to get what I was after.  I actually did this painting in two days.

I put in the sky and the great cloud shape.  Then I blocked in the greenery and the dirt. Even though El Charco del Ingenio is called the botanical gardens in San Miguel, it is really the desert so I tried hard to get the dry, earthy, hot feeling of the landscape there.

El Charco del Ingenio, 12x16, oil

This is the finished painting.  I am not a landscape painter by any means, but these were fun to paint and I'm happy to report that the painting of Monet's Pond was accepted into the show!

Now that all this crazy is over, I'm back to painting my still life and florals.  I have a few new paintings to show you and my studio is just about finished so I'll have that coming up as well.  

Every Rose Has It's Thorn

Hello everyone.  I'm happy to be back to blogging after a crazy four weeks in which I painted five paintings!  As everyone knows, I am a pretty slow painter, so this was quite a feat.

The reason behind this craziness is that I got two artist calls for shows that I wanted to enter.  Usually, shows are pretty generic.  It will be a landscape show or a still life show and I always have something to enter.  This time the calls were for a travel and destinations show and a roses show.  They both came at the same time so I had no choice but to lock myself in the studio for a month and get to work.

Today I will show you the roses.  I always like to enter at least two paintings into a show as I feel there is just too much pressure with a single entry.  If the juror does not like it, you are out.  With two there is a better chance.  At least that is what I tell myself :)

I knew I would be under a time crunch with the roses, so before I even went to the flower shop, I got out two canvases and prepped them the best that I could.  I put in the background, the still life shelf and the vases for both paintings.  Of course, this is not the proper way to do a painting.  You should be working on the entire painting at once, but in this circumstance, I felt this would be the most efficient way to do things.

The first painting was a bouquet of orange and yellow roses in a glass vase.  The canvas is small, 9x12, so this was an easy painting to complete.  The painting just flowed off of my brush and I was done in two days.

The still life set up

  At the end of day one.  When the first day goes well, things usually go well for the rest of the painting.

Orange And Yellow Roses In A Glass Vase, 9x12, oil

This is the finished painting at the end of the second painting day.  I was so relieved that this one went well.  I usually take a day in between paintings just to have a fresh start, but I turned right around and began painting number two the next day.

Luckily, it was the Friday before Valentine's Day and a box of two dozen pink roses showed up at my house (a gift from my husband).  I immediately took those over to my studio and got to work.  Unfortunately, this painting did not go quite as smoothly.

I had the shape of my vase and the background already done, so it should have been a straightforward process to paint in the flowers, but it was tough from the beginning.

I think I ran into problems because this was really crunch time.  I'm better off when I can spend some time thinking about what I'm painting and work things out as I need to.  There was no time for that with this painting so I just had to keep moving.  The second problem is that roses are very hard to paint.  Flowers are my favorite thing to paint, but roses are so difficult for me that I rarely do them.

This was the first day.  Not horrible, but looking back I can see where my problem started.  I did not paint the shadows in a uniform fashion.  That is something that is second nature to me at this point, but with roses it can be very hard to see and I went down the rabbit hole for a time.

This is a photo of day three.  Sorry it is so dark.  I was painting during that crazy snow storm we had on Monday and it was very dark in the studio.  As you can see, the shadows are done correctly here so that made dealing with the flowers easier, but then I decided that there were problems with the vase!

If you look at Chinese blue and white porcelain, the colors are not as dark and thick as I have them here.  It should be much more subtle.  So what did I do at the end of day four?  Painted it out, of course!  Everyone in my studio thought I was nuts, but I just could not leave it knowing it was not right.

Here is the vase with the original pattern wiped out.  Also, as you can see in the photo above, I decided to add some more roses to the rest of the painting.  My original vision for this painting was an "explosion" of roses.  This isn't quite that, but the new additions really turned the painting around.  At this point all that was left to do was put in the pattern again and add some pink into the still life shelf.

Valentine's Day Roses, 16x20, oil

This is the finished painting.  I finished up the pattern Wednesday evening, then photographed it Thursday, and submitted both paintings on Friday.  I was so happy to be done!  Whether I get into the show or not, I'm very happy with how both of these paintings turned out.  In my next post I'll show you the travel paintings.  Happy Sunday, everybody!