Day 726 – Almost two years.

June 26, 2016Leave a comment

My Van Gogh Sunflowers 20×24 Acrylic For Sale
Coming up on two years of daily posting on Day 730 or at least attempting to do that.

One of the things I learned this year – if you are taking a Viking cruise up the Seine River the wifi is definitely UNdependable. Have to think about a cure for that next time we go.
My friends and fellow artists say they have seen a lot of growth since I started this journey. I started out to do a month then 50 days then 90. It grew like topsy.

Auvers sur L’Oise – Prints available Watercolor 8 x 11″ approximately

I love Van Gogh. Ever since the Viking Cruise and a tour of Auvers where he died I have been thinking about painting sunflowers because I knew I could never afford a real Van Gogh. I had to paint my own another that mine is in his league!!
This week was the week. I bought a bunch of sunflowers at Krogers and Costco to paint in my blue Shishir pot from Tire City Potters in Augusta.

Colors used – Pthalo blue, cerulean, ultramarine blue, golden Green Gold and nickel Azo gold, hookers Green, cad yellow medium, cad yellow light, cad red light, burnt umber, titanium white.
I had a lot of trouble with the yellows. They tend to be transparent which did not work well over the turquoise background. I finally found a tune of Golden Primary Yellow that I drew petals on straight out of the tube. The impasto ( thick) paint finally did the trick.

Day 725 Saturday.

June 25, 2016Leave a comment

Marking her up as a WIP. Her profile definitely needs some work but I like the odd colors she’s painted especially the Thalo blue and the golden green gold. A bit of liquitex cad red light, liquitex flesh and titanium white. The background is golden nickel Azo gold and green gold over em white gesso.

Al Beyers oil

Ilanias

Cathe Dennis charcoal

Lee Ringler pigma micron pen

Ruth Oearls beautiful pastel

Tom Needhams watercolor

Fred Bakers fun acrylic

Day 723 -WIP – Three hours of work so far

June 23, 2016Leave a comment

This is HUGE 28×48 Acrylic. I have only worked on it about three hours this includes drawing the photo to paint it.

I have a few glaring problems which I need to fix before going on. I have made her face and body much too wide. The shadows are nonexistent on her body on the left.

She’s a friend and I intend to fix that. I would fix it even if she weren’t because I would rather make people thinner than they are.

I had intended to paint this but all my friends said paint the next photo because the light is better which is true. I really love her boots. If you know her she wears boots most of the time since she rides horses.

Only problem is that I had already drawn this to do a full sheet watercolor too. It took hours and hours to draw it and LOTS of erasing.

Even in this one the face appears a little wide. Possibly due to the lack of shadows?! 3/4 views are always a pain.

So I guess I will do two since this one took most of the day to draw.

I do think it’s interesting that it was so much easier to draw the second time out. Practice makes perfect right?!!

One last thing. A lot of times I will change the photo to black and white to paint from so if I want to I can give her a red shirt and a purple jacket. I do like the blues better but getting comments it’s TOO pretty.

Sigh! You just can’t make everyone happy can you?! 😋

Colors used so far Golden Quin Nickel Azo Gold, Thalo Blue and Ultramarine Blue ( great for denim), Liquitex Burnt Umber and Titanium white plus a tube of Winsor Purple.

Day 721 – Alexis

June 21, 2016Leave a comment

One of my Aiken painting friends blocking out her new painting.
Alexis always comes to paint dressed to the nines frequently with a scarf flung over her shoulder wearing ballet flats. She says she’s trying to wear out her old work clothes now that she’s retired.
I quipped at her it wouldnt take me long to do in my good clothes with acrylic paint smears.
This painting doesn’t do her justice because she’s also very tiny. I fattened her up a bit. 😁 Sorey Alexis. She works hard on staying slim. Always eating somethings healthy.
Speaking of which I think I will go eat a salad. Big wedding coming aka Mother of the Groom dress. Eeekkk.

Colors used – Ted Nuttalls transparent colors. And sodalite. Makes a great granulating grey.

Day 720 – a Watercolor Finally

June 20, 2016June 20, 2016Leave a comment

I drew this almost a month ago but have been busy painting other things so finally got around to it last nite.

This is an old theater on Broad Street in Augusta GA which still has shows and YES an Elvis show was and is coming up the end of June at Imperial.

Painted with Ted Nuttalls transparent colors with the addition of cerulean. I always have a hard time painting white without my beloved cerulean.

I also used Daniel Smiths primatek colors Serpentine Genuine and Sodalite after seeing samples of them at Jerrys Artarama. You can buy Daniel Smith at most art supply stores as well as online at Cheap Joes and Amazon.

While I am on the subject of Cheap Joes I know the owner and founder Joe Miller a lovely man who recently received a humanitarian award from AWS. He’s the first to step up and voluntarily help artists in need as well as his longtime home Boone NC.

During the devastation of Katrina Joe voluntarily went into the Cheap Joes database to find any artist in the seven states affected by Katrina. Each of them received a studio startup gift certificate from Cheap Joes. He has done this time and again. So BUY from Cheap Joes if you can!!

Oh before I forget the tree was done with a sea sponge. I also used Caran d’ache watercolor crayons to add color to the drawing – white yellow and orange.

I also used a few Winsor Newton watercolor markers – indigo, lamp black, and turquoise.

Thanks For Checking by.

Margaret xxx

Day 719 – Saturday

June 18, 2016Leave a comment

Already again.

Ilania 20×24 acrylic

This only took about an hour to paint. Somehow the thinned nickel Azo gold prepainted background really helped getting her done.

After the first forty minutes.

Of course after I started looking at her on my phoneI thought maybe I should have painted the drape she was sitting on. Her left arm looks chopped off. It’s really behind the chair she sat on. And her right arm though it looks great is suspended in space. So hmm. What do you think?!
She was painted with Winsor violet, liquitex burnt umber and titanium white, and golden fluid pyrrole red and nickel Azo gold.

Al Beyers lovely large oil. Anout 4 feet long. The hand is just amazing. Remember these were all painted in about an hour and a half.

Drew Murphys acrylic. Some lovely skin tones. Cezanne looking today. Great effect.

Cathe Dennis from Lansing, Michigan’s pastel. She even knows where Diamondale is. My daughter in laws family lives there. Love her scribbles. For some reason it reminds me of Toulouse Lautrec.

Ruth Pearls awesome large pastel.

Tom Needhams El Greco he always does beautiful skin tones.

Fred Baker with his always interesting sense of color.

Thanks for checking by.

Margaret xxx

Day 712 – It’s Saturday

June 11, 2016June 11, 2016Leave a comment

Been a while since I posted one of these. Been out of town I think for the last two months or sick so haven’t been going to life modeling.

And did I say rusty?! What happens when you don’t paint regularly. She looked good when I painted her. Not so sure now. Oh well there’s always gesso!!

Or maybe she needs a good crop?! That’s one good thing about painting on hardboard you can crop it with a table saw.

Thought I would share some of the other paintings done today. All but the watercolor are at least 24×30.

This is Drew Murphy’s acrylic, my favorite one today I think. Really like his colors. Drew recently won a blue ribbon for best Abstract at the Aiken Art Guild juried show.

Al Beyers’ oil hard to top Al but I think Drew did today. Al is a professor at USC Aiken and currently part of a faculty show at Aiken Center for the Arts.

Tom Needhams watercolor. Tom teaches watercolor at the Gertrude Herbeet Institute of Art in Augusta.

Fred’s acrylic. His Mondigliani. Love the orange background. He was just to my left 4 feet. And what a difference that made in the view.

Interesting how different Ilania looks from different angles.
Thanks for reading.
Margaret xxx

Day?! (640) It’s Saturday

April 4, 2016April 4, 2016Leave a comment

So once again I posted this on the wrong blog. I really have to delete the other one. Sigh. Hurrah!! It’s deleted. No more posting on it accidentally.

😃When I am home that means I have been sketching and painting at the life modeling session that Prof Al Beyer had at USC Aiken. Pleased with my sketch today.

Ilenia 20×30″. Acrylic
I will probably add some more purple to her left side. I had more but painted it out. In the rush of an hour and a half of drawing and painting sometimes u just run out of time.
Probably change the red on her cheeks. I think it’s a bit much. But better than the purple I had on her cheeks to start with. I left it in Aiken so I would get a fresh look at it Monday and not be able to torture her all weekend painting her at home.
The background could use some work too. It’s just some ultramarine blue that I scrubbed on with a paper towel when it spilled in my paint box. I finally just let it dry instead of cleaning it up. What a mess that was.
Colors used titanium white, nickel Azo gold, pyrrole red and dioxzine purple. Burnt umber for hair. Cad yellow yellow ochre and a bit of Green gold in the drapery.
Thanks for reading!
Margaret

Day 616 – Flapping those wings.

March 9, 2016Leave a comment

She’s been thru a lot of changes now. Really love her wings. In fact really like EVERYTHING except one tiny thing. Her right breast. How did it get so round?! But that’s easy to fix. At least I think it is.

Hardest part will be going downstairs to the garage to get the paint out of the car.

Here are a few before and in he process photos.

Saturday after an hour and a half. Maybe she was better then. I dunno. Anyway she told me she wanted to be an angel.

Monday. At some point I think I for her left foot to light in the bottom. Hmm how?! And I didn’t like the stripiness of the wings.

Knocking Back the gold and dark streaks in wings. I added a lot of brushy dry white.

And the bottom part brushes out whiter. I also added a lot of iridescent gold and a smidge of copper which is impossible to see in a photo.

Ok so I will fix her foot and her breast. The foot makes her look floaty somehow. Took me till Judy now looking at all these photos to figure out why she looked that way. 👀 And I thought the problem was her breast.

Thanks for reading.

M who needs a nap now. Xxx
Margaretxxx

Day 611 – Stick fun!

March 4, 20164 Comments

I have been playing with my stick bamboo stick all week. Done a sketch everyday. The Carbon Black ink from Gouletpens works best with my stick. Not the India ink. It seems to load on the stick better.

Anyway after I tried to shade the ibis in the back grey since he’s in the shadow I decided to do negative painting in the background letting the ink puddles bleed into the brush water to make various shades of grey.

It seems impossible to get control of that ink flow. It leaves a lot of hard edges which are great for Key West underbrush but not on a bird.

After the grey puddles dried a little I went back in and drew ink lines in for sticks on the ground.

If I could change this I would get rid of the grey on the farthest back ibis.

This is yesterday’s ibis. I actually like them except for all the black. These are young ibis and have a lot of mottled grey on their necks.

Maybe I will redraw them and add some background? I think they are funny. The Ibis at the Key West Wildlife Center are beggars and wait for snacks aka dog food that was fed to them.

My favorite still are the chickens. I don’t know why but I LOVE chickens.

Did I say writing with a stick does not produce the most graceful writing?

Here’s another chicken sketch done earlier. I can’t imagine dong this on location. I would have an inky mess everywhere. Not good when it’s permanent and very black!!

I also had a paper problem. I used my beloved 93 # Aquabee first but the ink is so thick from the stick that I got out my #98 Canson mixed media sketchbook and used it. No more ink soaking they the paper. At least not yet.
And here’s Livia again. One of the first sketches withy the stick from last Sunday. I don’t know why I didn’t notice one of her legs is smaller than the other. But that’s an easy fix. Sketching frequently had a lot of surprises like a too skinny leg.
Enjoy your day. Happy stick sketching.