PKR Exercise, Sardine Can

Again, this Peggi Kroll Roberts exercise requires a value study in 3 values from the 10 swatch scale, but I let myself have 4 of them. Then in the second painting you match the color value to the grey value, hence the spots of color on the first painting. Detail is absent so you can just concentrate on the form's values. The result is not very glam, I know, but it's a really fun and exciting exercise! I wanted to have the ratio 1/3 light to 2/3 dark. I feel my perceptual tectonic plates shifting. I can see that this approach more easily produces a painting with all the relationships clearly established, and this gives it immediate clarity AS A WHOLE. Understanding this is a big leap, I think. For moi.

Marshmallows and Peppers

This top painting is my daily painting, very small, and I was just trying to have some quick fun after slogging away on the Peggy Kroll Roberts exercises from her DVD on value plans and changing value to color. The exercise paintings are below, the black and white one has only three values from a ten swatch value scale and the colored one matches (sort of) the color to the value of the grey painting. You can see the colored spots of paint on the grey one -- I was trying to figure it out. I think it is a very valuable lesson! Pun. So clever, I didn't see it coming.

I think this exercise sort of bends your brain around to more accurate evaluation of values, and therefore, more better paintings. Apropos of nothing, I learned a new word recently: bashment. It is slang, my favorite, and means loosely, wickedly enticing. So you could be wearing a bashy dress for instance ( any form of the word is acceptable) or drive a bashment car. Also, one could make bashment paintings if one could get those values down.

Sandy

I have been doing Peggy Kroll Roberts exercises and nothing is post worthy, so here is a kitty.

Pink Cake

In addition to the flower pastry, I bought this slab of pink cake at La Fiesta. It is a Pepto Bismol pink, like no other.

Plums, DPW challenge

I finally got it done completely honestly, no fudging. Each stroke had freshly mixed paint. A great exercise. I think the paint itself looks more vigorous. This is my entry for the Daily Paintworks Challenge. To see what everyone else has done, click here, then click on the challenge for this week.

Mexican Pastry

It was my intention to do this according to the rules of the DPW challenge, mixing fresh color for each brush stroke, but the pastry was so intricate that I soon fell off the wagon. I have been mixing color with the palette knife lately - big batches of the general color necessary - rather than mixing only with the brush. I think the color is better when mixed with the knife, then small adjustments are mixed with the brush from that batch. The color seems to retain its strength better, each application of it. Anyway, I guess this new idea blew out my organizational neurons on this exercise, so I'll have to try again. I do like the feel of the background though, laid in with a large brush and slight color variations.

This pastry is made with just pie crust with a colored bit in the middle. So innovative.

Cyclamen on Dark Blue

My pink cyclamen will not come forth with buds, it is just all leaves. So much for plant rehab at my house. I still have hope, though, but in the meantime, the white ones will do. I did pay attention this time to the warm temperature of the whites, just getting familiar with the range. I would like to do one where the background is almost the same value, or even actually IS the same, as the blossoms, with just temperature change, so that the flowers are just barely there.

Ikea Bowls

I finally found a sheet of paper that is exactly the color I wanted, and it is under this set up:

a grey that is yellowish, but not brown and not red. I want to play with some color against this grey and see what I can do. It also has some big chunks of other stuff in in, gold foil and shreds of fiber sticking out, but it's crawl, walk, run in this rodeo. Also, I want to make things work abstractly using realistic forms, I find this idea so exciting....

Dish of Smelt

I took a brief hiatus because I suddenly forgot how to paint anything at all, but now I am back in the saddle. I set up an all grey still life to see what I could do with it, a stretch for me as I am a pink and orange over the top color enthusiast.

Joey

Well...... a commission.

It was quite fun doing the sky. At first I put in a serene robin's egg blue sky and it was all wrong, wrong, wrong, so I turned my back on it. Then I thought, well, the sky could have a lot of chop to it, like the fur. So I scraped it down and got out the bristle brush and mixed up a wad of dirty blue paint and smacked it on. Bingo. So sad, but it cannot be seen in this photo. I was happy enough with it altogether under the circumstances.

Two Peaches

Today there was a lot of wiping, but still I was happy to be painting. This is my 4ooth post, it snuck up on me. What if I hadn't done this blog thing? I would have missed so much.

Cyclamen on White

I have been looking at whites and searching for the best background for these cyclamen. Bright color, soft, no color, dark, what will make them float off....

Thanks everybody for the hilarious eclair Haiku, I had SUCH a good laugh!

Belligerent Eclaire

This was the strangest eclair I have ever seen (grocery store). It had a slab of extruded chocolate icing about 1/2 inch thick at the center of it, laid on top of the lid and weird yellow custard inside it. It was so horribly compelling, I have written a Haiku of sorts to honor it:

Belligerent Eclaire

Belligerent Eclaire

No longer shouting my name -

Fated: Painted. Eaten.

If anyone should comment on this, doesn't it seem right it should be in Haiku?

Cyclamen with Rose Background

I used to buy these flowers when I lived in Boston, in the dead of dreary winter of course, and they were so intensely colored, like a flame, except for the white ones which were altogether pure. And they are in sort of frozen motion with their petals flung out every which way, not like a flower at all, but more an idea of a flower. I always managed to kill them fast, but here in Texas I have figured out their living requirements: a sill in strong light and a saucer underneath to put water in, instead of watering from the top. And water every day. I have managed to keep them happy for a couple of months now, and I have another pale pink one, that I rescued and have in rehab hoping to have a go at it soon.

Cupcake and Cheese box

This orange is sitting on an empty Brie container that I gessoed so it would be white. I'm trying to stack and combine things so there will be more of something. Or less.

Cupcake (Three Forms)

Chocolate peanut butter cupcake and 2 other simple forms....looking for ways to make the relationships interesting, necessarily trial and error.

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.

Pitcher of Marshmallows

Marshmallows are the best things to paint! Everybody should run right out and buy a bag of them. It's so easy to see the gradation of whites and the form makes itself right before your eyes. And they're so funny and light hearted.

The Pink Knife

A good painting day today....much to think about from Lorraine Shirkus, who commented on the Sunday, Feb 13th post, 4 posts back from this one. I tried to push this every way I could, more confident handling of paint, quicker painting, bigger brush, broader areas of color, less obsessing if something didn't go down right. And more paint! It was really exciting.

Cipoline Onions

I dropped this one face down in the flower bed while photographing but the scratches don't show much. Working with those bristle brushes is amazing. It leaves big ridges in the paint stroke, and you can pile on the paint and it stays on top of the stroke below (mostly) without messing up the underneath paint.

Baby Eggplant and Onions

OMG, horrible painting day today, wiped everything and at the end couldn't face another ellipse, so tossed everything on the table top and made a run to finish something before I ran out of steam. I'm totally brain dead.

Baby Eggplant

I already wiped this one down, but I'm posting it to prove I did something with the painting day. I liked the composition when it was in drawing stage, but of course once color was down that huge slab of white, and it really WAS that white, and I wanted that white in it for the contrast with the eggplants, and anyway, blah blah, it just doesn't work. It's funny, those little round eggplants are sort of - unpleasantly round and sort of unfriendly, so I don't know what is best to do with them, how to present them at their most alluring. Maybe by morning, I will have an intelligent thought. Most alluring might be in ratatouille.

Croissant and Napkin

This is sort of lightly done, which is a good thing. What I really mean is, it has taken a lot of slogging for this to look like it fell off the brush.

Croissant on Red Stripes

A variety of brushes, small and large bristle and a large flat. The bristle brushes leave distinct ridges in the brushstrokes - maybe it is because I am working on panel. I am getting used to and might prefer that larger bristle brush, but I notice if I am tackling something particularly beyond myself I go for the flat because I can control it better. This equals tightness, I think.

Winter Primrose

OK, Ok, I've had some fish complaints. Here is another go at the grocery store primroses. The leaves were a luxurious tropical jungle, nice counterpoint to the big freeze we have here. My other news is that I did paint the underside of my glass palette a neutral grey and it is so wonderful -- much better than white. It is easier to gauge color against the neutral background - much, much easier. Oh yes, also, this painting is my contribution to the challenge for this month (flowers) on the web site sometexasartistsliketopaint.blogspot.com. To see everyone's entries, clickhere.

Fish Portrait

I have been shut in my house too long without outside contact. Help.

I tried to figure a way to fit this fresh sardine, which is quite large - about 9 inches, onto a 6 inch square panel, and have it work. And.....instead of a painting of a fish, general and universal, I have a portrait of a specific fish. A banker executive fish who likes a high thread count in his sheets. It's very very cold here again, I'm going back to my electric throw.

Candy Wrapper, Old Orange

More of the trash items, big flat brush, black gesso. I was aiming for strong color with grey, just to see how it works, maybe. Or doesn't work.

Detritus

This is stuff from the trash, except for the half of a candy bar left in the wrapper, which went into the trash as soon as I ate it, so I figured that was ok.

Smelt on a Striped Cloth

Big bristle brush for some of it, little bristle filbert (1/4 inch) for some of it, I 'm gradually learning when to use which brush. Also, I got some grey gesso and will paint my glass palette on the underside so I have a neutral mixing ground rather than white. I see several folks around who have that grey palette, maybe it is a good thing or even a great thing for judging color. I did paint a piece of paper grey and slipped it under the glass to see what it felt like to work on grey and it was surprisingly helpful.

Smelts in a Mexican Dish

These shining smelts are so full of color - tomorrow a plainer dish for them. ( I am underlined today for some mysterious reason.)