View From My Chair mixed media 5″x 5″
Black lava meets sand
Warm water around my feet
The green turtle sleeps
Tag Archives: Painting
On Being Influenced by Bonnard
Flowers from Patric and Mary May 2016 acrylic on canvas 18″x24″
Tuesday a friend and I went to the Pierre Bonnard exhibit at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Bonnard’s paintings are full of the warm colors and light one sees in Southern France. After seeing the exhibit, I had a wonderfully fun week painting my interpretation of a special bouquet from Bloomers Florest.
Happy Mother’s Day!
I’ve been beta testing a new art app – Pikazo
And what to do now?????? Just saw what you are seeing and the color is way off. Delete post? Leave it up and try to correct it? Pikazo knows how to do it right, but man, I can sure mess up it up. So I tried correcting my mistakes but the color is still not like my painitngs. You know what? Go to Pikazo and you’ll see the true color of these things. If I want to post on the internet any of my art work, I’d better try using white paint on a black piece of paper. Maybe that will work for me.
Karl Stiefvater, the app’s St. Louis-based inventor and his business partner, Noah Rosenberg asked a group of friends to beta test a new app. Lisa, wife and behind the scenes worker bee invited me to join the secret group. We weren’t given much instruction – just jump in and see what the app can do. This app is amazing. I started out with a picture of one of my self portraits, then paired it with the style of a preset artist. I tapped the paint ! button and waited and soon Pikazo sent me a painting based on the information from my two choices. But there is more! Under style there is a custom button. You can put in your own image, any kind of image from your photos or the internet. I put in one of my paintings. You are not limited to selfies in picture. Try anything, Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s the fun of it. The app eggs you on to make just one more picture. The results are fantastic. Go over to the Apple app store and pick it up. It’s really fun.
Pikazo’s painting using my sketch and my abstract painting
The possibilities are endless.
(ahh this is better color)
Painting and Drawing in Italy
Serravalle acrylic on canvas 12″ x 16″ 2015
Our group was made up of five students and one teacher, Eva Bovenzi. John, Eva’s husband came too. We met 40 miles outside of Venice, in Vittorio Veneto, Treviso. We stayed at Palazzo Galletti. Built in the 14th century, the little palazzo was on a quiet cobblestone street in Serravalle, the ancient part of town. We worked for 8 days in Alma Ortolan’s downstairs studio. Besides restoring frescoes, she gives her own workshops in fresco technique. After breakfast, our group would meet for an image presentation. Then, we went off in different directions to sketch. After lunch we worked in the studio, which was followed by a critique and dinner. My small suitcase on rollers, was filled with art supplies. I packed two 12” x 16” boards which were used as support for presized canvas that wrapped around the board and was tacked with artist’s tape. I took sketchpads, drawing materials, tubes of acrylic paint, brushes, a palette, rags, water container and a backpack to carry my art supplies when I went out sketching. Completed rolled paintings fit diagonally into my suitcase when it was time to pack and go home.
Taking watersoluble crayons and sketchpads, Arina and I walked through the quiet old town to sit in Chiesa di S. Giovanni Battista. Choosing the statue of Madonna del Carmine I sketched for more than an hour while listening to my friend happily humming as she sketched sunlight touching a column.
The next morning, I walked up behind the houses into the trees. While I was sitting on the ground sketching, one of the locals walked into my view. Stooping down he filled his straw basket with raw walnuts. His black and white dog kept running up to me bringing me a stick to throw. Thinking of Cezanne and loving the background color coming from behind the tree I walked back to the studio.
After a few well-intentioned strokes my new painting took on a mind of it’s own.
While slurping noodles, I was reminded of my trip to Vietnam
Cone hats
pattern flat
primary colors
of a Vietnamese
modern painting
While slurping noodles, I was reminded of my trip to Vietnam.
Destroy a Flower and Draw!
Dahlias from Fran (click on image to enlarge)
You don’t need any art supplies to draw. Go on. Try it. smear a little more coffee on that coffee ring stain. Take your pen and add a few strokes. Coffee is such a beautiful color. It smells good too.
When I was in Egypt I was sketching and dipped a stick into a small bottle of brown ink that I had in my backpack. I got back to the hotel and noticed my sketch book smelled strange. I had mistaken a bottle of Echinacea for walnut ink and made a drawing with it. I brought the herbal remedy along to boost my immune system and reduce the severity or length of a cold.
The herbal drawing of the Temple of Luxor has kept it’s color. It’s kept its smell, too!
Dip your finger in that glass of red wine, pat it on a piece of paper. Any curry powder around?
How Do I Paint a Tree ? Sierra Nevada Mountain Range
We stopped on the way for In-N-Out Burgers
Fries and orders of strawberry milkshakes
Manmade shapes turned into nature’s biomorphic forms
As we climbed to a little under 7,000 feet
We baked french bread at this elevation
And didn’t make adjustments to the recipe
Straightening our limbs we step out of the car
First, just quickly go look at the pond!
Oh, look at the quivering yellow leaves on the Aspen tree!
Down by the creek’s edge, I look up
Past cottonwood trees at the water’s edge
I see a little fir Christmas tree tucked in
Between the tall green Jeffrey pines.
A War on Childhood – Middle East
I’m wondering; should I add this print to my painting?
Or this ?
Shades of Grey – Trying to be Straight
Trying to be Straight mixed media on canvas 56″ x 77″ double click on image
How do I write about this painting? The painting isn’t finished. The photograph shows a parallax error. This is a report on it’s beginnings. It’s trying to be straight, but its not. The measurements are a little bit off. How do I make a straight line? The canvas is five by six feet. I’m small. By trial and error I put together a painting using a T-square, a plumb line. I tied a weight to the end of a string. The string fell straight down. The painting is about connecting two marks or points to make a line. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. A line has a beginning, movement and a stop. A line can go off to infinity in both directions. Here, lines are broken leaving room to wander through space.There’s a grid or it it a net? The goalie misses the ball; loopholes are found in tax laws. Shape, is it really a solid square? The white line – Is it the bulkhead at the pool? impermeable? The painting looks milky. But, milkiness exists. The edges of things are not quite what they seem. The plumb line is our constant.The mind set is complicated.
Inspiration for this painting came from a collage by Canadian painter Stephen MacInnis. The Long Series is a group of mixed media paintings on paper. 12″x12″. Stephen’s goal is to complete 10,000 pieces. At the moment he has completed over 1,400. I just bought this one. It’s interesting to me, that I, too, have been working on a lot of the same things. Click on images to enlarge.
Macinnis.http://sbmacinnis.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/long-series-1515/
A Conversation Between Paintings
OPPOSITES What would be the opposite to the big painting? #1 The big painting falls loosely to the floor 56″ x 77″. I used a white gessoed old canvas. #2 The small canvas is stretched tightly and gessoed black. 11″ x 14″ #1 With charcoal and a brush I sketched a line drawing of tulips then continued to write freely on the canvas. #2 Repeating a formal pattern of black and white using shapes or form, I used a palette knife in some areas. The purple shaped tulip form or mass echoes the line drawing of the flower in the big painting. #1 Free script covers the canvas. #2 Stamped letters are incorporated in the pattern. A little yellow balances the complimentary color purple. #1 main color – green #2 main colors black and white
I’d never painted a checkerboard pattern of black and white shapes. When I sit and study it I see all the variations in painting application, value, intensity of whites. There is a lot to look at. Subtle differences in paint application create variations in value and intensity. I worked on it until my eye could move around the canvas without being interrupted by anything. One area didn’t dominate the picture. The small dots picked up from the rough surface of the canvas work with the other elements.
