Ready to Bake

White is always a tricky subject. This is a quick sketch done on canvas paper in about 45 min, I think.  I wish the background had been a brighter color. Not a fan of browns for backgrounds. It was fun playing with the blue engravings. A strong highlight would have made them look more 'ceramic'. As of now they look like they are ready to be baked!

 

      

Warm & Cool

She was waiting to cross and I wondered if she was heading home or to another store. The light was warm and the shadows cool. I had it the other way around on the lady's jacket and it dint look right until I corrected it. I then realized how important it was to get the temperatures right! A bit more of shadow work would have made the painting more 'grounded'. I was surprised though that many people pointed this one out among others as their favorite painting! I find quite a bit of difference between using canvas panels & gesso boards. The canvas panels need more strokes to scrub in the colors while the gesso boards being more slick take lesser time. 

On Track

In SF, you get to see tracks on the road and it always makes me wonder if I am on the right lane! In the picture, I liked the steel tracks that were glinting in the shadows in a blue-y hue, it was simply beautiful. This was the last painting I did at the workshop and had an hour to work on it before we had to pack and leave. I do like the movement in this one. I am beginning to think that I have a thing for yellow cars. I want to reach for the camera every time I see one!

Some of the draw winners have already received their 'Golden' Magnets and I am more than happy to know that they enjoy having it on their fridge and ever better - that it reminds them of their doggies :) Cindy McDonough has posted a picture on her blog, here!

Post update: Adding the only progress shot that I have for the cab above - The outline drawn and the first dab of saturated color applied:

Magnets and More

As a follow up to the Give-Away challenge, I have sent out magnets of the 'Golden Rules' post to five artists (to those who commented on or signed up to follow my blog) at the end of last month. Here is the list and the links to their blog sites.

Patti Vincent

http://www.pattisvincent.blogspot.com/

Carol josefiask

http://caroljosefiak.blogspot.com/

Martha Kisling

http://marthakisling.blogspot.com/

Cindy McDonough

http://threelittlebirdsstudio.blogspot.com/

Penny StewArt

http://penny-stewart.blogspot.com/

Cast Drawing

The Wait

While strolling the streets in SF, I found this man - sitting on the steps of Union Square, reflecting on the sights of the bright sunny day; and waiting for all the things that would come his way.

Golden Rules and a Giveaway!

I clicked a picture of this happy little fellow, lazing on the lawns opposite the Ferry building in SF. The three things I kept in mind while doing this painting was 'Measure, Draw and Paint', which I have come to think of as the golden rules! One of Carol's recommendations was to have a grid as a reference for the initial drawing. That along with a value printout of the reference picture were quite helpful. Here are the demo pics. I had fun with all of the colors in his face and hair! 

     

As for the giveaway, its another of Leslie's 30 day challenges. I plan to giveaway a magnet of this happy fellow to three followers, drawn at random -> please sign up to follow by email for updates and/or leave a comment on any post. I'll also post the link to the winners blog/website at the end of month. This blog of mine is fairly young and a work in progress, and so is the artist in me! Any comments, views and suggestions are most appreciated and will encourage me to paint and post more often! Thank you!

Pretty in Pink

I missed them last year and vowed to make a trip this time. And so I headed off to the Lover point Park in Pacific Grove. I was right in time to catch the pretty pink ice plants that have taken over most of shoreline here. It was an overcast day; I first walked around and took a multitude of pictures; hoping that I could use some of them as reference photos later. I then settled down and worked on the above painting for about an hour, before I decided that it was a wiper! I am still glad that I got to go out there and absorb it all. Hopefully I'll put in my experience and not to forget the richness of the pink-purple flowers when I make another humble attempt at painting this stunning rarity of a view - The shoreline that was clad in pink. 

Kids & Coffee

This painting was done while at Carol Marine's Workshop at San Francisco (a brief description is at an earlier post - here). I shot the reference photo during our city wandering venture on the previous day. The small shoes next to the mug, cropped out of a bigger picture, was too cute to miss. I was happy with the way the shoes turned out. During the critique, Carol started by saying that she loved them (nothing much else could have made me that ecstatic!) before providing some helpful tips on how to tackle ellipses. I think the shoes by themselves make an interesting enough subject - and I might paint them again.
I enjoy seeing paintings in progress and started to take progress photos for later reference; and that turned out to be perfect for Leslie Saeta's Challenge. I plan on including demo photos in some of the future posts as well.

(click on the pictures to view them bigger). 

 

 

 

 

 

The Blue Band

I learned that just a hint of blue can make a highlight pop when applied over warmer colors (of course the model here is under cool light); and that a palette knife can create interesting variation in paint texture and also a strong hard edge where you need it. I have used this reference picture (and some before) from the instructional video by Artist Jeffery Watts on gesture portraits. I enjoy watching painting demos and videos,  they give a good insight into the painting process. 

Red, Blue and Yellow

Last week I attended Carol Marine's 5 day workshop at San Francisco - Capturing People and Places, organized by the Sedona Art Center. It was more like a soothing vacation of sorts - filled with fun, food and of course a lot of painting and wandering in the streets of the quirky city! Not to mention all of the great fellow artists I got to meet at the workshop - the painterly energy around the room served as a tremendous boost to my own momentum. 

Through the course of the workshop, I realized that the confidence of 'being able to paint' and 'tackle any subject' exponentially explodes when you paint, paint and just paint. It was an intense week of talking, learning, making friends, eating and of course continuous painting, and a thoroughly enjoyable first workshop experience for me. I completed six small and simple paintings from photos that we got from our wanderings in the city. I will be posting them to the blog soon. Above is Carol doing her magic, the first demo of the week!

Abandon

 I closed my eyes. I surrendered to sleep.

- Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram.

A portrait study from last evening's painting session at Fongwei Liu's studio. I hope to get closer to bringing life and expression to a painting. After a few touches at home, I decided to to leave it at this stage though not complete. Its interesting what an artist said when asked about how long it takes for him to finish a painting - 'A Painting is never finished, its abandoned'. 

A rocky greeting

Inspired by artist Elizabeth Tolley's book - 

Oil Painter's Solution Book Landscapes: Over 100 Answers to Your Oil Painting Questions.

Docked

Misty Mornings

The reference picture for this painting was from my trip to the Taroko National Park, a magnificent marble gorge in Taiwan. It was a pleasant morning with a slight drizzle, and this man here added an interesting pop of color to the otherwise sober morning!

Quiet, please

At the Menlo Garden

One out of the two paintings that I managed to complete on a day out at the Allied Arts Garden at Menlo Park (while attending the workshop by Artist Kristen Olson).  Since the sun had gone down by the time I started the second painting, I taped my phone to the easel and painted from the photo that I had shot of the arch earlier. Now I wonder, if that is painting en plein air!

Tucked Away

Inspired by artist Elizabeth Tolley's book - 

Oil Painter's Solution Book Landscapes: Over 100 Answers to Your Oil Painting Questions.

River Walk

Ran

Ran Wu, a fellow artist I study with under the tutelage of artist Fongwei Liu. I am still in the dark on how and where to get apt reference photos for my portrait painting experiments.And hence for now, fellow artists serve as models! 

At the Beach

Inspired by the painting from the book by Frank Serrano - 'Plein Air Painting in Oil'. The small book is a crisp read; the simplistic approach makes painting seem easy. I guess its the complexity of the mindset that needs battling through more than the process of painting itself.

Purple Horizon

My attempt at reproducing a part of a painting from the book by Artist Bob Rohm; 

Emulating the style of an artist, gives a lot of insight into the approach & the process.

Through my experiments, I look to discover the style that is unique to me.

Value Study

I had used my Rosemary Brushes for the first time and was amazed at how they made the paint glide over the panel. And now, without the battle of the brushes, painting reached a whole new level !

"Sell your grandmother if necessary, but buy the most expensive brushes you can find" 
- Richard Schmid, Alla Prima: Everything I know about painting - 

Yellow Barn

Inspired by the reference picture and study from the book by artist Bob Rohm.
'The Painterly Approach: An Artist's Guide To Seeing, Painting And Expressing'

The Countryside

The rusty roof, the run down walls and the pale blue sky from the quiet, quaint
and beautiful countryside of Ireland was a hard scene to resist.