Company: Left Hand With Cigar

This cigar had a magnificent ash.

Half of HEB Cupcake

Today I am posting my 100th painting (the top one) and below it is the last painting I did

before I began the blog. I really have loved every minute of the whole ride, even the bad bits.

Watermelon, Black Plate

I am having lots of trouble posting - blogspot has gone beserk on me, can't imagine what else is going wrong on the other end...

I DO know that there are two peaks of exactly the same height in the top half of the painting and won't do it again.

Perch on Glass Plate

I learned many things with this fish. First, I got a new camera, a Nikon coolpix, $150, and it does everything I ever dreamed of and more which I hope to learn about. Then: I laid down my white highlight areas first and worked into them, much more successful in keeping the whites clean. Also: I bought of tube of Cadmium Green to experiment with and it makes subtle but light filled greenish greys, very happy with this.

In addition, I went blogsnooping and found Dan Carr. (Google him, I can't remember where I found him.) He has painting videos! So helpful. His blog is very journal like, with lots of erudite information and musing. He did mention this term, though, that made me cower: excess color syndrome. I might have a case of ECS.

Hammer and Eggs

What to say about this one....it's not exactly meaner, but not as sweet in coloration and also not so soft, which is what I wanted. It is still too tight, though. I don't know exactly how to remedy that except just to work through it. I don't think it is technical stuff that can fix it, I think it is my carefulness. Aaauugghh!

Perch on Pink Plate

I find it compositionally challenging to cram this long fish into an 8x6" panel, but I have the panels, so that is what will be happening as far as daily painting goes. Maybe I need to look at it in the terms of a Haiku: the given is the fish and the small rectangular panel, figure a way to make it work. The round brush was not as alive on a canvas panel as a completely smooth one, the paint went down differently. I will be sanding those canvas boards smooth in the future!

Jar of Olives, Tomato, Knife

I swear the jar was tilted.

Red Baby Bananas, Guavas

This one was pretty straight forward, these little meaty bananas were fun and the guavas made perfume.

Better Chicken

This is the second try.

Better bowl, better color in the chicken, but not so frankly done as the first, which I was aiming for.

I will not redo it, though, because I am going to eat it for lunch. Scroll down for the worse chicken.

This is the first try. Things went along gloriously until I got to the reflections in the metal bowl and then I lost control. Also, another wonky bowl. I have something to say about painting chickens, and it is this: basically, you have a corpse. And as such, the color is pretty gray and yellow (chicken fat) until the color starts to rise, and I assume this is from the flesh being exposed to the air. Anyway, it gets pinker, then moves to deep purple and brown. I have done enough chickens to know all the stages, some of which are better for painting than others.

When I stood back and looked at this one, I put it aside to see if I could do a better one.

Old Slippers

This painting was just fun and without agony and makes me feel like I have Learned Something!

Rubber Gloves, Soap

The really aggressive orange of these gloves is not photographing accurately, but I want to try painting them again anyway. One of the problems I have working in this small format is that my brain's default setting is always, LIFE SIZE. I usually have a long period at the beginning of a small painting getting the drawing right for the canvas size. And I always think of Bonnard, who worked on large unstretched canvases so he didn't have to deal with this issue. However, I like very much doing these small paintings and plan to re-train my brain to adapt. Unlike Bonnard, who could do anything he wanted because he made the most tender beautiful paintings in the world.