Italian Paintings/ Little Peaches on Pillowcase

These are little do-nut peaches, I don't know what the real name is for them. They are flat and fleshy, and with leaves still on them! Miracolo! My camera is not working too well, but  a camera expert is soon coming to visit.

This is dinner: green beans, blanched; pomodoro tomatoes, chopped; beautiful sort of watercress, very curly and larger than the American sort, more substance to it; parmigiano (slabs); lots of green, green olive oil and a bit of vinegar.  And I sort of splurged on the wine, 8E for this bottle, which isn't too bad a price - wine peppery and robust. So happy! I think it is my duty while here to learn about Italian wines.

Belle and Student Work: Cherry Pie

Upper painting - Belle, an English bulldog I think. I tried this painting twice, the first time mostly grays and yellows and it didn't feel right, it wasn't light hearted enough. This was not because of color, who knows why, I'm sure Wayne Thiebaud could do it.  Also I have been looking at other peoples' backgrounds.... as usual, it is another world all to itself. I lifted a lot of paintings out of Catherine Kehoe's Powers of Observation site and made them as large as possible on the screen of my Mac, so every time I sit down at the computer, there are ten of them to look at with various background treatments.  Bielen's backgrounds are the most stunning -- both there and not there. How to make the background the perfect surround for the image, integral to the  painting of the dog/baby/sugar bowl? How not to see the back ground as separate -- In this case, there was so much baby pink in the dog's muzzle, I had to go for the quinacridone rose, and then the cadmium red light was not far behind.

Lower painting - a student's work. I think it's so nice, good color and positively iconographic.

Nude Sitting

Today I drew bottles, pitchers and jars for the ellipses, also did some reading in a pretty good perspective book that explains and demonstrates foci and tangents, etc., hoping all this will somehow pass into my brain. I think it so strange that the brain really does lie to you about perspective, and that you must unlearn the old way of seeing. I want to think it doesn't matter about perspective, however when I see work in which it is perfect (Kehoe for instance) I am knocked out. So I suppose there's nothing for it but to learn it, DULL as it is.

Above is one of the 15 minute drawings from this week. I particularly like this model. She is very small and comfortable in her skin. She takes good poses and wears her hair flat to her head so it's easy to see everything. Sometimes models have long hair that is draped all over everything, or 5 inch ear rings they have to be argued out of.

Anxious Girl

I shot this little girl at a playground. She looked so anxious and had all the signs of depraved living -- circles under her eyes, pale grayed skin, and she was back lit, causing her face to be in shade. Her skin was luminous though, even without color in it. I don't know how to do that!

There is an astonishing amount of gray in flesh and sometimes it can look pearl-ish, which is what I will be trying for as soon as I figure out how.

Moroccan Bowl with Fruit

I got new glasses.

Cupcake and Pitcher of Marshmallows

A friend send out vouchers for cupcakes from a heavenly local bakery, the Galaxy Coffee Shop (and cupcake emporium) as a Valentine's gift! Isn't that the best idea?! Thank you Nick. So the cupcakes will be starring in my next few paintings. This one is chocolate peanut butter with a section of a Reese's Peanut Butter cup on the top. Very very difficult not to eat it.

Primrose

Terrible photo.

California Lemons on Aluminum Foil

This was an interesting one to do -- sort of like riding a runaway horse. At the set up stage,I thought the strange pinky greys would be a good balance for the strong yellows and greens, warm and cool together and it would be subtle... well, I was really panic stricken for much of the painting of it, the forms and reflections were so similar and it didn't fall into place until the very end, and that was a surprise. I so much like that aluminum foil -- it is reflective but not shiny -- so ethereal.

Oranges and Eggplants

More grappling with looseness, and also this is a glass bowl, not plastic, and the rim of it is completely square. Interesting result of doing that plastic bowl so many times: this one was so easily perceived, I could get right to it.

Study, Browns

so...ripping along, keeping it as loose as I can, not staying too long on any one thing.

Support team: thanks for those helpful words.