To have a daily painting emailed to you every day, please enter your address below.

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Peach Study #8, Free Peaches on Green Paper



These are not glam super market peaches, but free peaches from a neighbor's tree. Problems are the same though, and they are, as my friend and painter Lorraine Shirkus says:  the values are difficult to see because the dark coloring of the peaches can occur in the light and the light coloring in the shadow side.  You have to hold that in your head and also keep the understanding of where the light is hitting and then I think, not care and see how it ends up.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Cherries in a Gold Box




Peach interregnum.  These cherries are in an origami box made from gold cardboard.




Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Peach Studies 6 & 7, White and Black




I guess ----- the top one is under exposed, because the peaches are really on a white cloth, and yet, against the second one, on black, they don't seem so far apart. That bright spotlight does burn out the color though (on the black) where the light most directly strikes the surface.  Today on my early morning bike ride I came across a table in a drive way with plastic bags full of tiny peaches -- with leaves! - and a sign that said, Free.  So now I have plenty, with stems AND leaves. So exciting.







Wednesday, June 13, 2012


I am trying to find  a new way, a different way to put the paint down.  I don't know what way this is, I just need a form I am familiar with that doesn't present any new learning curve, if only that could be true, so that I can practice with the paint itself.  Almost to the end of these  peaches though, their little leaves are wet and soggy from refrigerator condensation and the peaches themselves are spongey.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Peach Study 3, On Red



I set this up on purpose with everything darkish and hot, just to explore.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Study2 of Peaches on a Wrinkled Napkin



I swear the  darks on these peaches are so deep a red/brown that they are almost black.
And here is a link to a story about Robert Rauschenberg and his famous erased De Kooning drawing: click here.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Peach Study 1



I have a slew of these peach studies coming.  They are not very thrilling, just some of the requisite slogging necessary for progress. To compensate I will offer this interesting anecdote: Renoir once had a side job painting religious scenes on Venetian blinds for Christian missionaries to use in the tropics in their conversion of natives.  That is a pretty good story (true), I may have made a mistake and started at the top.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Mugshot 60



This is the head of one of my favorite models, a boxer. She is overwhelmingly majestic.  I did this in a class with Jennifer Balkan, another timed painting, and I had a couple of bad starts so had to wipe and then very little time left to get it down, hence the thin paint. I wonder if there is a moral to this story.  Occasionally a very restricted situation forces me to use some hidden resource.  Certainly I am in a panic state when that happens and I won't be choosing to be there if I can help it.  If only I could get there without suffering for it. I'm against suffering.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Gomez



This is a little worried Chihuahua sitting on a wildly patterned couch. And -- he is sort of smiling.
Impossible to resist painting it, I practically tore the photo out of a student's hand.  She did a very nice painting herself of  another shot of Gomez, which I will post when I get her permission.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012



This is a real mugshot from a Florida jail.  I thought this boy was so beautiful. I have painted him before, but still....I always think, now I might know a little more and be able to paint him better.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Mugshot 57: The Lessards



OOOOH, I have been computerless for some time, odd how everything becomes so quiet when your computer isn't working, like the world has stopped and I guess, really that world HAS stopped.  All systems go for now though, I'm ecstatic!  This is a painting done from an old black and white photo, and I think it dates from the 20's, I forget exactly.  The groom looks like a biker to me, a Jimmy Dean, and I happen to know the bride possessed a bit of wickedness herself. All those value exercises paid off here. I just treated that suit like it was a jar of jam, laying in the darks and lights, squinting and shifting my eyes around, and voila -- clothing!