what to do, what to do

Brainstorming

• I can put more paint on the cloth in settled areas just to varigate the surface and to add further cover over earlier imagery
• I can experiment with putting some of the design of the background blue curtain in it to see how the pattern would work
• I can decide to paint over that tulip
• I can decide to keep the tulip but join it to the bouquet
• I can complicate the colors of the patterns in the green cloth even more just for the heck of it
• I can continue developing the flowers, though I want to keep them painty and abstract
• I can develop the bottom of the Limoges vase
• I can figure out the area of cloth nearest to the Limoges vase
• FIX the area of bouquet nearest to the vase rim — needs leaves, stems, something besides just the mass of dark green

My note to self above.

I rearranged the cloth again to get ideas.  I used crumpled craft paper to shape the mounds this time.  Got to remember that for future still lifes.

I’ve tinted the photo to have the cloth color match more closely the colors I’m using in the painting.  This is such a fabulous cloth.  One could make a wonderful painting of just the cloth.  Drapery as landscape.

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putting patterns on the green cloth

I’ve set the flowers aside for a spell while I paint the cloth below the bouquet.  Here’s the beautiful cloth that I’m looking at and interpreting for the painting.

the vase of flowers grows more sure

Here’s how the painting looks on Friday night.  I put the study on a table beside the easel to make it easier to draw from.  The picture begins to feel more solid after a day of work.  I love painting that vase — and I’m not done yet.  The paint all over the canvas is very thick because I’m covering up parts of the earlier version.  There’s still lots of things to figure out, of course — like the entire bunched up green cloth that takes up the whole bottom half.

Here’s a closer view.  The painting measures 40 x 30 inches.

What a fun day of painting, working on this picture.  You cannot look at blue and green all day with scattered red and yellow and violet and not be in a terrific mood.

Still quite a ways to go.  But I’m very glad with this stage.

the pine tree

After much time spent painting with acrylics, oil paint beckons.  I have a couple large acrylic flower paintings that need finishing — and they will not be neglected.  But I long to smell the linseed oil again too.  So I’ve pulled the pine tree from the stacks and have been getting ready to work on it further.  Here it is pictured with a couple of preparatory drawings.

And I have built a picture frame for the dark flowers seen on the right.  It’s getting ready to go on exhibit at the Art League in Alexandria, Virginia.

A busy time.

more flowers will arrive

I have to find more flowers for the bouquet.  I go in search of pictorial flowers.  I look for them in the pictorial gardens.  And a lot of things are beginning to bloom now that spring is here — even pictorial things.

Under the bright pictorial sun, with my face toward the pictorial wind, I walk through the pictorial field to pick flowers that I can bring back to my still life.

reinterpretation — riffing on the pattern

Years ago I bought a beautiful table cloth at the Smithsonian institution.  It has one pattern on one side and another on the inside so it’s a versatile still life cloth.  As with anything else that an artist paints it gets interpreted.  The pattern of the real life cloth doesn’t exactly match the pattern of the cloth in the picture.  It’s like jazz — it gets improvised.

And in that strategy the artist finds a great deal to explore and enjoy.  This particular cloth has a great melody.  I never get tired of looking at it, thinking about it, painting it.  Thank you, textile artist, whoever you are who created my still life drapery.

bowl of fruits

I’m working on another large still life.  Almost everything is inside the painting already, and yet the painting isn’t its things only; thus there’s still a lot of painting to paint.  I add colors without a plan, thinking “this might look interesting here.”

Almost everything is there and yet it still seems to have more potential than I quite know what to do with.

 

pine tree drawing

I’ve pulled a 30 x 40 inch painting of a pine tree out of the rack.  I began it a while back but I’m ready to finish it now.

Made this drawing above to sort out some questions I have about the top of the tree.  The drawing measures 24 x 18 inches so the image is just a bit smaller than the related section of the painting.

The pine tree is an oil painting so I’ll be switching gears from acrylic to oil.  The studio will soon be filled with the wonderful aroma of linseed oil.  Soon!

the greening of my studio

I’ve assembled some of the landscapes in the studio to see how they look together and to decide what work remains.  As a consequence there’s a definite “greening” to the decor.  It’s still wintry enough outside this mid-February to find the green quite comforting — very comforting indeed.

My winter pond painting has a frame now.  It’s there on the lower right.

figuring things out

Some of the landscapes I’ve been painting are just scenes without any special significance.  And this landscape began that way.  However, as I keep tinkering with it, the scene begins to suggest something to me.  I don’t know what it is.  A memory?  Some hidden meaning?

While I was tinkering, I made a drawing.

The little yellow tree used to take up more space, as in the drawing.  But I decided to make it smaller.  And somehow that works better.  But I don’t know why.  Not in terms of naturalism, but just as meaning.  Or so it seems.