Passion Flowers Painting Complete!

"Passion Flowers"
36"x24"
Acrylic on Canvas

Just finished this painting a few minutes ago!... what a load off! It's been on my easel way too long. (I say that far too often.) And unfortunately it's a very dark, cloudy day (the weather is giving me a little preview of winter I guess, ugh!), so I just couldn't get the lighting to work for this picture without using the flash... hence a little bit of a glare on this. But I am impatient and wanted to get a picture of the painting and didn't have time to look for my tripod.

Now the dilemma... I bought a frame for this a while back, and it's a silvery-champagne color. I think this painting looks nice without a frame though- I could just paint the sides a dark green. But I hate to waste the frame that I bought! So later today, I'll bring the frame upstairs from the storage area and see how it looks. I can't attach it yet anyway, since I need to take the painting to get the image capture from my usual wonderful experts at American Art in Annapolis.

I've already started my next painting, which is much smaller than this one, at just 11"x14". A few nights ago I dreamed of this spider painting and woke up feeling like I MUST create it. I know I just recently completed a spider drawing, but the idea behind that one was to be gross and scary and creepy on purpose since I created it specifically for the Halloween show at Gallerie 13. I guess I had the spiders on my mind, but the new spider painting is a more cheerful one- a spring time atmosphere with pastel yellows and greens in the background and a big mostly black spider in the foreground. I think I'll paint a wasp spider... they're pretty cool looking!

It's A Livin' Thing...

Or at least it is until I kill it!... Well, them.

Observe:



I have found new love.
In the form of succulents.

I've had an aloe plant for a couple of years now, as well as a jade plant. The jade plant took a lot of trial and error but I finally found success with it in bright sunny windows with a tiny bit of water once a week or so... and most importantly out of reach of the dog.

I believe the one in the green pot is a member of Haworthias. The other two look similar to my jade plant, so maybe it belongs to that Family (Genus? Order? Whatever)? They look like a jade with fatter, pointier leaves.

They've been surviving in this spot for about a week now with no signs of ill health, and the dog hasn't discovered them. Or maybe he HAS discovered the bitter stuff I sprayed all over them. At any rate, I've officially taken them off suicide watch for now.

I bought them to compliment the Carribbean wall my husband and I just finished up, here:


We finally got to hang up some of the pottery we painted on vacation in Cancun, back in 2007! (Which happens to be the same trip where I took the inspiration photo for my Palmera del Coco painting.)
I had gotten these great teal stained picture frames a while back, so I put some tropical pictures in them.


Here are some photos of the ridiculousness during the painting process.




What an awful photo, but I'm sharing it anyway since it's funneh.

Feels so good...

to be able to call a project done. Really, really done.


I actually took the time to do something I don't look forward to at all: Scanning in a painting. Here is the final, finished painting!

Look familiar?

I started a new painting yesterday! ...Sort of.


This is actually the same painting as a drawing that I did a couple of years ago....
But how can that be?



Soon after I finished this drawing, "Hawaiian Ginger," I decided to order enlarged prints of the original drawing. I ordered most prints on paper, and thought I'd try one on canvas. Usually when I enlarge my colored pencil drawings onto fine art paper, they come out looking like pastels- each pencil stroke becomes enlarged and looks like a pastel stroke- a tad bit softer and lighter, too. It usually looks pretty nice.

Not so much with canvas.

I am not sure what went wrong, but the drawing on canvas came out nasty, darker, hard looking... Really awful.
I was so disgusted with the canvas print that I threw it into the back of my art closet. I had no idea what to do with it, but I wasn't going to just throw it away, since that's a waste of money- and prints on canvas and mounted on the stretchers aren't exactly cheap. I thought maybe one day I'd just paint on top of the ugly pigmented canvas and enhance it somehow. But I had my doubts about that. Helping the monstrocity seemed impossible. It sat in there for over a year.

After finishing the palm tree, I was taking a bit of time (eh, a couple days) to figure out what I was going to paint next. I kept thinking about that canvas sitting in the back of the art closet- so yesterday became "one day."

I figured I'd change some things, as there isn't really much sense in me having two original pieces of art that look exactly the same. The most obvious thing to change was the background: A blue sky, instead of the white that it was in the original photo I took (it was overcast that morning).
Then I started working on the leaves.

As I began painting, I had the same brush in hand that got me through all of those palm fronds. It worked great for the sky, but I put one coat of paint on the leaves and it just wasn't happening for me, so I took a break. Today, I picked up my absolute faaaaaavorite brush- the one that got me through Design I in college. Ahhhhh....
I found that the leaves came much more easily. Maybe having a coat of paint already on them helped. Maybe the fact that this brush holds 10x as much paint as the other REALLY helped. I am much happier with the blending, and it seems like the painting is progressing much faster now! Since I changed the sky, I decided to go a different route with the leaves, too- I added more yellow to them and brightened them up. A lot.

In the photo of the new painting, the sky is just about done. The flowers have not been touched at all, and you can probably see that they have a much rougher look. The green leaves all have one coat of paint, some have two, and you can probably tell the difference there, too. The leaf on the far left side, in the middle, really shows the "before" paint, and the leaves around it are all "afters." I still need to perfect some of the blending here and there, but so far, I'm happy with this!

Aw, heyll yeah!

I might finish this painting after all!




I really wanted to have it for the Seawall Show next weekend. I had hoped to finish it long before now (so that I'd have time to get it scanned and made into prints), but with everything else that's been going on, there have been times when my painting sat on the easel, lonely, for weeks at a time, untouched and neglected. :(

I am ashamed of myself.

I was looking through my blog and realized I started this painting back in February. FEBRUARY!?
SERIOUSLY FEBRUARY!?!?!
That means this year I've done two paintings and two drawings?! What a disgrace.

On a more positive note, I am happy with the progress of this painting this week, and if I do finish this today or tomorrow as I am hoping, I'll update this blog-thing and post the pictures of it in progress all in a row- I always think that's fun to look at :)

Deez.... Palm Nuts!

I am so excited to think that I may possibly be done with the palm branches on this painting. I think once I fill in the middle parts, I may add some more various colors here and there, depending on how everything looks when it's done. Maybe more green to the nuts, maybe more yellow hues in some of the fronds....



I began painting the nuts yesterday, so some of them only have 1 coat in this photo, but the ones on the lower left may be just about finished here.

Unfortunately I REALLY would like to get this painting done this week so I can bring it to the Seawall show with me on August 23. I am not sure if that will happen- I will have to bust my behind, for sure.

It's getting there...

The palm tree painting. It is a pretty tedious one, with having to paint each individual little frond and everything. But I hope to have it done relatively soon! I'll be on travel this upcoming week for work, and I won't be bringing this painting with me like last time I was on travel- it's just too big. But the colored pencils and some paper will be accompanying me, so maybe I'll get to work on something nice while I'm away, if I get any ideas between now and then!

There will be a treeeee...

On this canvas one day! It's slow going though, that's for sure. Although perhaps the palm fronds won't need as much detail as I'm anticipating putting into them.

I had to start off painting the sky and some clouds for the background.

Next, I painted all the parts of the tree white, so when I add the color- the blue in the background won't show through and make the colors look too dark. The white behind them will, hopefully, keep the colors bright.

I picked up some "hooker's green" (you laugh?)which is a really great color... except it's pretty transparent. That's frustrating because I've had to put multiple layers of it down on the green parts I've painted so that the fronds don't look like a complete mess! Then the green gets too dark. I'm going to have to go in and add some yellows and white and brighten it up now.

Aaarrrrgh!

In this picture with some green added, you can see that the bottom branches are a lot darker than the ones above them. The bottom branches and fronds have 3 coats of green, while the others have only one. I like the color of the paint with just the one layer of it, so I'm going to keep that in mind. I like finding just the right color, then perfecting that color, so I can keep it consistent throughout the piece.

....Not that plants need consistency, of course.

And... on to something new.

Red poppy painting is done! Yay! I love completing a painting. I may leave it for a month or so and go back and fix anything as I see fit... But for the most part- yeah, I'm going to call it done.

I'm happy with the poppies, and I didn't strive to make this painting look photo-realistic, for once. It's taken me a few years to really get away from doing that. Because, really, if I wanted it to look like a photograph- and if the composition is something that I am taking from one of my photographs- then why not just print the photograph itself?! So I'm striving to make things look realistic from far away, but up close, making sure that it's obviously a painting.

It was hard to get a good picture of it without getting some kind of a glare (this was the best I could get)... so, once I scan it in, it'll be uploaded into my online gallery.

Then I can figure out how I'm going to frame it, and that's always fun, too. That sense of finishing something feels like such a huge relief, and accomplishment.


But I admit, sometimes the only reason I really go out of my way to finish up a painting is that I have another idea for a painting that I just can't wait to start. And so it was with this one. So today, I started my palm tree painting. Or is it a sea anenome? ...Only time will tell.

Tis the Season: Giving back to the Rainforest

It seemed like when I was growing up, around 2nd or 3rd grade (1985-ish), us kids started hearing more and more about the rainforest. "Save the Rainforest! The rainforest is disappearing at an alarming rate, and it must be saved NOW!" And our teachers taught us a little about recycling here and there, but... that was about it.

So as a kid I thought, "Okay. Recycle and turn of the water while you brush your teeth and you're 'doing your part.' Cool! The rainforest and all the animals will be saved."

But over the years, it seemed like I was still constantly hearing about the rainforest and how one day it would be completely gone. It even got to a point, at least for me as a kid, where I almost got sick of hearing about it. I mean, here I was recycling (when I could, since many public places don't even offer recycling bins alongside their trash) and trying not to waste water and all... and apparently the rainforest wasn't doing any better.

Fast forward about 15 years, to a time when my husband and I took a trip to Hawaii, and I got to experience a tropical rainforest for the very first time.
And then another 4 months after that, and I was on my honeymoon in Puerto Rico, hiking in the El Yunque rainforest.
4 days from there, and I was in St. Lucia, hiking around near the Pitons and exploring various water falls.

After visiting these places and experiencing it for myself, after all those years, it finally clicked. "Wow. So THIS is what they're trying to save and making such a big deal over. I get it now."

It's really easy to to just dismiss things that you hear about but have never personally experienced.


It may sound cliche, but I think all that travelling and hiking around really changed my life.

It definitely changed my art. And right now, my art is a big part of my life.
The giant, over sized leaves on so many tropical rainforest plants almost make you feel like a tiny minuatureized version of yourself walking around in someone's greenhouse. Plants that may look slightly familiar (houseplants you'd find in most stores, a lot of which I already had at home myself) are 10 times larger than what you might be accustomed to seeing.
But that's just the foliage....
Wait till you see the flowers.
The brightest of colors all combined on a form that looks almost alien (if you don't live in the tropics)... simply amazing. Heliconicas of all shapes and sizes.

If you're ever somewhere and within a few hours of a rainforest, and you've never seen one for yourself- you simply must go. (Even if you don't hike, there are usually areas where you can drive and see things, and easy access to a visitor center.)
Be sure to stop in at the visitor center (if one is available). They will have information on that particular rain forest, and sometimes you can see a short film about the area you are visiting. It may seem like a sort of hokey thing to do, but the films that I've seen in the visitor centers tend to be about 20 minutes long and they really are very interesting and educational. You'll learn a lot in a very short period of time.

I felt so inspired upon my return from these tropical places. I wanted to take all the beautiful things I had seen and put them onto canvas. I did with a couple, but I still haven't had the time to paint all the rainforest plants that I'd like to.

So now I've got all these ideas and a few drawings and paintings, and I've sold a few prints. I recently began to think, "here I am with all these ideas and inspiration- But the things I'm painting aren't even things that I created. They were created by Nature."
In a way it felt sort of like cheating, because it's too easy. Nature just puts it out there for all of us to see. So now I really feel like I need to give something back.

I've decided to start by taking a percentage of all my rainforest related prints and paintings and when I sell them, I can donate that. Since right now that wouldn't be anything very substantial... at all.... I'm thinking about other options- and I need to research some charities, too.