Poniesdevon Rufty Tufty

Sketched in on the canvas

 Buoyed by the awesome experience I had this morning with dropping off the painting for Georgie's mom, I headed back to the studio today to start painting another beloved critter... this is Poniesdevon Rufty Tufty ("Tufty"), whose owner Philippa has spent bunches of time working with.  He's awesome!

Background roughed in

And, he's on Facebook and Youtube if you'd like to follow the antics of him, his cohort pony Blue, Arab friend Satin (whom I'd love to paint, too!), and his mom Philippa.  Check him out... naughty ponies make me laugh so much!  :) 

The Rainbow Bridge

Georgie - A commission.  For a custom portrait of your pet/horse, click the photo

Yay, I got Ms. Georgie done in time for the anniversary of her crossing.  I really enjoyed painting her, when I finally got my butt in gear and made myself do get into the studio and paint.  Hopefully I can keep the momentum going this week (and forever, but I know that's not realistic.

  Honestly, it's really too gorgeous a day to be inside.  It's 50 something degrees and look at that sky... after the cold spell we've had, what I'd really like to do is go play with my horses, but I really don't have time today.  Figures, the same thing happened the last warm day we had, and the weather man says cold again tomorrow.  Ah well, spring soon.  Maybe some plein air painting in my future.

 

So instead, I got out my pencils and did a rough sketch  (very rough... sketching is not my thing, something I'd like to change...) of superpony Poniesdevon Rufty Tufty ("Tufty") and his rider/trainer Philippa Davies, whose adventures you can follow on Facebook (click his name).  Not only does he rear on command, but he's learning capriole and other cool stuff.  I'll share  more as I work on his painting.  Here's the sketch:

I'm hoping to make this as magical as I think it has the potential to be.. we'll see how it goes!  The background in the photo is a beach.  Really a gorgeous photo, I'm so lucky that my Kate's Horse Edits contest winners had such awesome stuff to work with!

The BEST news is that maybe I have my mojo back, or at least my work ethic.  I'm hoping that I can get into the studio at least =almost= every day this week, even if I do nothing more than a henna design or a few scribbly sketches for practice.  Or a little altar painting. 

Flamenco, Background

I did the impasto background for my flamenco dancer. When it dries I'll work on her. Also changed some anatomy a little.

Squire's Castle's Tree

Squire's Castle, 11 x 14 oil impasto on stretched canvas.

This one's done too :) I like finishing things if they feel finished when I'm done. Every painter faces the question: How do you know when to stop?  Yesterday, with the Weimaraner, when I stopped I wasn't sure I was done (I had to ask everyone in my household what they thought).  Today, I knew when to stop.

This photo isn't the best... my impasto medium makes the finished painting shinier than it would be without it, which really brings out the texture nicely, but it also makes the finished painting more difficult to photograph.  I'll have to take this one outside on an overcast day and see if I can get a better image.

I'm really proud of this one.  I roughed the image in with a brush, but the coat over it (well, two if you count the foreground tree layer) is done 100% with a palette knife.

If you didn't read the previous posts about what this castle is and why I felt the need to paint it, you can check them out here and here. 

Blasted Weimaraner

I think I'm finally done with this thing.  Am I?  I dunno.  Something about his face is still irking me.  I decided it was time to step away from the canvas, back up and look it it, and then walk away for a little while.  Sometimes you have to do that, and then you come back and it doesn't look like half the critter's face is on upside down. 

But, I've been working on this thing for two years.  It was the painting I started when I wasn't really painting, and it sat on top of the entertainment center and stared at me for over a year.  I worked on him a couple of days in December. 

This morning when I was trying to decide what to paint, I thought about the unfinished stuff... I've got the flamenco dancer, the water droplet, Squire's castle, Chuck's waterfall, and this guy all in various stages of not done yet, so I decided it was time to sit down and clean up some WIPs.  Starting with the one that's been sitting around forever.

So, there you go.

I also varnished about a dozen finished paintings and right now I think I am getting high from fumes.  Whee!  No wonder the dog looks trippy.  But, for the most part, he's done.  Yay!  Bring on the next one.

Painting With a Cone

This past weekend I went to ConNooga, which is a "multi-fandom" convention for gamers, trekkers, Star Wars fans, steampunk, anime, etc.  I did henna while I was there and I was very pleased to discover that all the art I've been doing has really increased my confidence with henna, and I had the chance to do some really nice designs.  I thought I'd share a few.   A brief explanation of what mehndi, the art of henna, is.  It is an ancient, mainly women's art, done traditionally in the middle east, India and Africa.  The henna plant (Lawsonia inermis) is dried, ground to a very fine powder, sifted so that it is still more fine, made into a paste with an acidic something (I use lemon juice), then applied in various methods.  I, and a lot of henna artists, roll a cone out of mylar/cellophane, pipe the henna into the cone, and apply it in delicate, fine lines.   When the paste dries, it flakes off, leaving the design stained into the skin.  They last for several weeks.   About a month or so ago I had the idea to mix oil paint with Liquin impasto medium to thicken it, and then put it in a henna cone and pipe it onto a prepainted canvas.  Here is the result of my first go at this:   I played with a few more today.  The one below is prepainted with a typical brush technique and then the impasto "henna" piped onto it, the same as the one above that I did last week.  On the last one I used impasto medium in the base coat as well, giving the canvas a texture.  I think I like the smoothly painted style better.         These are little 3 x 3 mini canvases, and basically experiments, although I kind of like the way they turned out.  It occurs to me that this might work better with a still thicker medium, and acrylic paint rather than oils (plus, I won't worry quite as much if I get paint on my hands while doing it).  Since that would involve an investment in yet another set of paints, I probably won't try it in acrylic for a while.  I also need to see if the paint can be kept if I put the cone in a plastic baggie and freeze it.... that way I could do a cone-palette that I keep in the freezer rather than having to fill cones with all the colors - and color blends, can't wait to try that! - that I want to use.

Calla

I go through phases with my jewelry making... I want to do chainmaille for a while, then I want to play with wire, and sometimes I want to make things out of tiny seed beads.  I am certain that it'll be the same with painting, and I'm currently in a knife painting (impasto) phase.  In some ways it's great because it keeps me from getting too obsessed with details, which is pretty easy for me to do.

I wanted to do a flower with a knife, and decided that the smooth lines of a calla lilly would be fun to paint.  I was right.  You probably can't see the texture from these pictures but there are subtle leaf shapes in the background paint on this, which is why impasto is so much fun for me.  I did this in two phases; I did the background one day and finished it the next.  Have to love quick-drying paint (but not TOO quick...).

I had so much fun doing this... I want to try impasto on Gessoboard to see how this works without the texture of the canvas peeking through. 

Age of Aquarius

When the moon is in the seventh house
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius

Work in Progress:  11 x 14 oil on canvas

Something occurred to me today.  I'm fascinated with (among other things) water.  I went through my digital pictures and looked, and in almost every set, every vacation, every memorable event, there is a picture of some form of water.  In one batch of photos, a trip to visit my parents in Cleveland, there's a picture of a water in a Coke glass that I took while we were at a Steak 'N Shake.  Water.  Always.  A lot of times, abstract macro photos of water.  I think I need to paint more water (actually, there's a pretty high proportion of water in my paintings already... either horses or water or sky in almost every one).

I had a busy busy weekend, all my challenges are over (except the Draw 50 Hands & 50 Feet challenge, which I am dragging my feet, haha, on), and I didn't feel well at all, so I was not in the studio the entire weekend.  Which meant that it was calling me this morning.  But, I also have lots and lots of day job to do today and I need to get some jewelry made, so I only had about an hour in the studio.  I did some work on the left side and lower left corner of this one, but I'm not sure you'll see a lot of difference in it. 

Is it possible that my sudden attraction (or me noticing my long-term attraction, and acting on it) to water has to do with the Sun moving into Pisces, and conjoining with Neptune?  I take "horoscopes" with a grain of salt but I also find some value in paying attention to the phases of the moon and the movements of the Sun, stars and planets.

Whatever the reason for the attraction to the abstract shapes water makes, I intend to go with the flow.

See what I did there?  ;)

I'm full of puns today.

Squire's Castle

This is the first painting I laid out from a sketch, roughed in, and then painted entirely with a palette knife.  It isn't 100% finished; there are a few little touches I want to add when it's dry, and straighten up a few lines and add a few highlights here and there.  But all in all, I'm pretty happy with the way it came out :)

In case you missed yesterday's post, this is a structure called Squire's Castle that was built in the 1890s by an oil tycoon named Squire.  It was meant to be just the gatehouse for his estate (can you imagine what he had in mind for the main house?).  He abandoned the project, though, and Cleveland Metroparks acquired the property in the 1920s.  Today it's there for anyone to use.  It's just a shell of a building but there are picnic tables and fireplaces inside that you can use, and of course the imagination of a child runs wild in such a place.  It's also surrounded by wonderful hiking trails.

I moved to Tennessee in 2005 and I have to say that the thing I miss the most about Cleveland (besides family) is the "emerald necklace" of parks that surrounds it.  For me, this is the jewel of the lot, and worth a visit if you're in the area.

Getting Stuff Done

Candlemas, 4 x 4 original oil on canvas, $24

Stop and Smell the Daisies, 3 x 3 original oil on canvas, $22

Crucible, 9 x 12 original oil on canvas, $40

Today was so weird a day that I realized about 1 pm that I'd forgotten to have my coffee this morning.  That just doesn't happen.  I got up, did my journaling at the kitchen table (I usually journal in the studio), started thinking about gardening while I was writing, planned my garden, made sausage gravy and biscuits with scrambled eggs for the guys, and then sat around chatting with my hubby about painting workshops and life for something like an hour. 

Yesterday, I didn't draw or paint at all... I had the urge to get back to my wire wrapping, which I did big time, weaving tiny little wires till my fingers hurt.  It was good.  But it also meant that it was important to get back into the studio today.

When I finally got around to getting into the studio around noon, I decided I'd spend the day wrapping up some almost-finished projects, so I put the finishing touches on these three, and signed a bunch of others that were dry.

Yesterday I was SO HAPPY to discover that my big landscape I started on Friday was dry to the touch, which means, I could have painted on it if I wanted to.  Three cheers for Liquin!  Oil paints that dry overnight is going to change my life!  It means I can work on just a couple of things at a time instead of juggling seven canvases simultaneously :)

Tennessee Falls

My friend Chuck Sutherland is a naturalist here in Tennessee, and a brilliant photographer.  He has been gracious enough to tell me that I can use his photos as painting reference.  I was browsing his Flickr this morning and came across this one, and it just grabbed me... this part of Tennessee is full of waterfalls (and caves, both of which Chuck shoots lots of), and I love all of his waterfall photos, but the awesome gnarly tree in the foreground of this one made me choose it to paint.  Plus, I love the green of the pool and the red Tennessee soil.  All sorts of things could be hiding in those roots, too...

Chuck's notes on the photo say this is Greeter Falls in Grundy County, TN, and from another picture he shot this amazing tree is growing right out of the river, sprawled along the rocks in the pool. 

So, since this is paint from a sketch month I sketched it out first (VERY roughly), then transferred my sketch to the canvas, which is 20x24... I have only done one other painting bigger than this one, but since almost everything I did last month was really small, I wanted to do something big.

And below, two hours plus after the sketch... I still don't have much of it roughed in.  Man, where does the time go when you paint? 

This is as far as I got today.  Time for lunch and chainmaille.

Watercolor is definitely spoiling me as far as cleanup goes!  It takes me five times as long to clean up after using bigger brushes on an oil painting.  But, much as I am enjoying watercolor, at least for now I am definitely more comfortable with oils.  This felt kind of like coming home.  I went yesterday to the gallery where my jewelry is sold, and stared at my teacher Karen's paintings for some time, and decided I definitely needed to do some oil painting today. 

I can't decide if I like doing landscapes.  Check back with me after this one ;)

Also, if you've stayed with me this far in this post, do go and check out Chuck's photography.  Then you'll understand why I love Tennessee so much.

Mini Paintings

I got the awesome news yesterday that my friend from high school, Monica, is stopping by to visit on her way from an archaeological dig in Arkansas back home to Cleveland, and staying a few days.  I'm so excited to see her, it's been 20 years!

BUT... that means it's likely I won't get time to paint Tuesday or Wednesday next week, so I want to get a couple ahead.  As a result I worked on some small paintings in oil today.

I love minis and ACEOs because it's an affordable way for anyone to collect miniature original works of art.  If you'd like to purchase any of these, check out the ACEO/Mini Page.

Stop and Smell the Daisies, 3 x 3 mini canvas

I roughed Stop and Smell the Daisies in ages ago, and then misplaced it in all the confusion of my son moving out for college, back home, then away again, and then back home again.  I found it this past weekend and put some more details on it, but it's not done yet... close, but not quite.

Joy and Friendship, 3 x 3 mini canvas. Click picture to purchase.

This one, however, I started and finished today.  I left the charcoal outlines in it a bit because I decided I like them.  This is a 3 x 3 on a mini canvas.

What Cheer? 2.5 x 3.5 oil on ACEO card, for sale here 

And I roughed in this little oil ACEO at the beginning of the month and got around to finishing it today.  I was trying to remember what the birdwatcher people say the cardinal says (they have words to match the calls of a lot of birds, which is why Chickadees are named chickadee-dee-dee), and I looked it up.  What cheer, cheer, cheer?  And then as I started to type this paragraph I realized I was hearing a cardinal outside my window.

I love these little guys... they sure brighten up a dreary winter.  I was washing dishes this morning and Mrs. Cardinal paid a visit to my garden, which is right outside my kitchen window. 

I have a fascination with painting birds lately... and I just got a book on painting wildlife, so expect to see more of them :)

Water

For some reason photographs of water droplets fascinate me, and I've wanted to paint one for a while. This one is not done, this is the rough layer, but I think for a rough it looks pretty good.  There will be a lot more detail on it when I'm done.

This is 9 x 12 oil on canvas, layer one... who knows when I'll be able to finish it, blue is notoriously slow to dry.

I decided to not worry about completing anything today; I really was in the mood to do some oil painting and I wondered if I could finish this in one sitting, but I really want to get all the detail in on it... I may head back to the studio and do something later, if I have time after I finish my regular work.

Surprise, Surprise

To my complete shock, I CAN do an oil painting in a day. This took me around an hour and a half. It's the other painting meant to be for the Creative Every Day theme for January, "Dark".

Painting in basically greyscale was interesting, too. It let me focus completely on value. I may experiment with more scenes in black and white to explore this further. I've also considered doing a full under painting in b&w with transparent colors layered over it.

(Wow, this is REALLY dark on my monitor.  I hope you can see the subtle dark tones on yours.)

Minis

The point of today's exercise is to create an abstract backdrop onto which I plan to create some traditional henna designs.

I think this one will stay as is, though. These are 3x3 canvases, oil.

Flamenco

So this is my flamenco dancer, roughed in. Although I think her face and arms need some work regardless, I am trying to divorce myself from the idea that every painting has to have photographic detail, and as I look at this I am wondering how it would have gone if I had done this with a knife. Not that I can't still do that. I am quite pleased with even the rough on her dress, though.

So, What do you think? Should I make this a typically (for me) detailed painting, paint in her features carefully (and fix her arms and hands), or should I let it be an impressionist kind of "gesture" painting with a palette knife when I get to layer two?  I think I'm leaning toward the latter.

Mornings In Space

I love mornings. The house is quiet with a stillness that doesnt feel the same at any other time of day. It's my time... I work best, and it seems like once noon happens I lose control of my time.

My intent is to journal, meditate, paint. I sometimes neglect the meditation. I could take a lesson from my cat-guru Magoo, who can't wait until I open the studio door so that he can commune with the space heater.

Today I put on some Vivaldi and returned to my nebula. I'm overworking it, I think. It's nearly done but I'll probably tinker with it one more time and add the big stars once this layer is dry. I'd really like feedback on this one.

What do you think? Would you hang it on your wall?

The theme for Creative Every Day for January is "Dark."  I have two paintings in mind for this theme and this is the first.

Abstract

More fun with impasto gel and palette knives, this time a little bigger (and I really think, this is probably the smallest that is going to work for this technique, for me).  The lighting in these photos isn't the best.

I love the texture . The first one is SUPER thick.  The other, not so much.  I learned a few things about how I want to go about applying paint to the canvas, though, which is cool.  The second one left a lot of the strokes of the thinned underpainting showing, which is what I wanted, and also the texture of the canvas showing in the impasto.

The coolest thing about all of this is, I am now 2 paintings ahead for daily paintings, which means I can work on in-progress stuff in my "normal" technique and not worry about having to finish something. 

Next month, my goal will probably be more like, paint every day, but not necessarily to finish something every day.  But having something to show for my labor every day is kind of nice too.

It's been a week and I've done at least SOME painting every day!  :D   And, about a whole month that I've been back at this.  Go me!