Fall Challenge

Late September Weeds on Studio Chair

6x6in oil on canvas board 85.

This weeks Fall Challenge is a difficult one for me in sunny New Mexico. The comparison of temperature differences to other more northern parts of the country is obvious when I look entries showing pumpkins and beautiful fall leaves. In the spirit of the challenge I walked out onto the open desert next to my studio looking for inspiration and all I could see were these tiny, yellow flowers in great abundance. When I say tiny, I mean tiny. I have no idea what they are but they must be in the daisy/aster family...little spiky petals. Northern New Mexico most likely has the magnificent Chamisa blooming at the moment and I have photos of those but I wanted to paint from life.

I did enjoy painting the chair and will try several from different positions.

Four- Not Three

Four - Not Three

6x8in oil on canvas board 100.

The title comes from the "rule" in painting that you should have an odd number of things in your set-up. One, three, five etc. Well, this started off as three but using the boat shaped bowl made the design move in a definite direction and I realized when I was near completion that it did not please me. I put a piece of glass in front of the painting and painted another apple in several places until I reached this position. Maybe having some of the apple going out of the picture allows it to be not quite the unwanted even number of four. Maybe a title change to

Three and Half - Not Three?

Sunset Study

Sunset Study

6x8in oil on canvas board 100.

This was painted very fast. In reality the front ground was not this dark but the reproduction shows it so I am going to have to go with it. There were a lot of clouds and they were pink, mauve, peach, gold and a very pale yellow. I discovered that a lot of the color range depended not only on the position from the setting sun but also how dense the different clouds were.

The bend in the Rio Grande River makes for a dramatic cut of light against the dark of the land and the reflected color from the sky had to be knocked back a bit otherwise it competed too much with the drama of the focal point.

Palette Knife Red Onion

Palette Knife Red Onion

8x6in oil on canvas Board $100.

My previous painting with the onion took so long that it started to sprout!

This one was fast and fun. The colors never get muddy when using a palette knife. I think the best rule is to "follow the form" with the strokes. The use of the knife is good for an artist like myself because right off the bat, it breaks up the edges which gives a different appearance. I love to do landscapes with the palette knife for that reason.

Grey Poupon and Onions

Grey Poupon and Onions

8x6in oil on canvas board $100.

When will I ever learn...I do these daily paintings for several reasons but they are supposed to be quick, small paintings where I learn something and also enjoy painting them. This one was a real struggle and I should have given up. I have an expression I use when teaching... "off with its head" and I proceed to wipe whatever it is, totally off. It is the most valuable lesson and I failed to do it here and the end result is I have spent many, many, hours on this little painting. The problem was one of poor design at the start and I kept trying to adjust it.

Thank goodness I am satisfied with the end result.

Flower Stall

Flower Stall

6x8in oil on canvas board 100.

I really admire the market people who get out early to set up their stalls. You can see some amazing and creative displays - especially with the vegetables. But on this particular day it was the flower lady who caught my attention as she was lovingly going through everything, snipping and talking to each bunch as if they were her children.

A painting with colors as bright as this one needs "grays" to balance the painting, otherwise the colors would look garish instead of rich, so there are green, mauve,blue and even red grays in here. I mixed in the complement of each color to achieve them.

Line Up

Line Up.

6x8in oil on canvas board $100.

I wanted to do a simple pear painting. Line 'em up in a row and have at it. Not as easy as I thought it would be. My goal was an artistic one. Separate the light and shadow areas without the usual subtle variations. I ended up with basically an analogous color scheme, blue dominant and range of greens with some orange, the compliment of blue. A cool painting!

Rio Grande, Hatch, NM

Rio Grande, Hatch, NM

6x8in oil on canvas board $100.

Hatch, New Mexico is where the best chili in the world comes from. It is almost the end of the Chili picking season and soon we will no longer see the large roasters tossing the chili around.

I love this time of year. The smell of the chili roasting, the cooler days and nights and soon the cottonwoods will be turning gold. We still have amazing clouds but as we advance further into October they seem to go away.

Seeing Red

Seeing Red!

6x8in oil on canvas 100.

I thought the Daily Paintworks, Limited Stroke Challenge, sounded interesting and gave it a go. Credit goes to artist Nancy Colelle for this challenge.

After you have drawn in your still life and before you begin to paint, you give an estimate of how many basic strokes you need for each object and when you start to paint, you try and stick to it. I found I was sweeping the brush around forms without lifting to try to not use too many strokes and then wanting to go back and correct the accidents. To keep score you make a mark for each stroke next to the painting. I did about 39 strokes and then added the 6 highlights...do they count?

The beauty of this exercise is it keeps you in a limited range of values and teaches you economy of brush strokes. No dibby-dabby-do painting here! If you are an artist, I recommend you try it.

Quiet Pool

Quiet Pool

6x8in oil on canvas board 100.

I painted this from a photo I took in Colorado. Before I started this painting I pulled up my memories of the place. Only when I could remember the warm sun, birds chirping and the sound of the small waterfall gurgling softly into the pool, did I start to paint it. I think it is important (for me anyway) to recall the emotion I was feeling at the beauty of the scene and try to impart it into the act of painting.

The Shawl

The Shawl

8x6in oil on canvas board $100.

This is another fast painting. We had two hours to paint the model... including her breaks.

It was a warm light source so I knew the shadows had to be cool but there was a lot of light bouncing around making it hard to work with the white shawl because there were no dark shadows to help show the folds. The model was very beautiful with a red rose in her hair but I chose to leave it out. Hard enough to do the face fast and this small, never mind a rose too!

Five Pears

Five Pears

6x8in oil on canvas board $100

Another quick study and when I paint fast it appears the painting acquires softer edges.

This is a brushwork accident and I find it appealing. My basic inclination is to "tidy it up" but I managed to take the photo before doing it... so now it is cast in stone and stays as is.

I think the tendency to tidy up is from my years as an illustrator, when the clients wanted a more finished look for their presentations. One day in the future, knowing me, I will pick this up and start working on it again.

Quick Study

Quick Study

6x6in oil on canvas board 85.

Sometimes I find I want to focus on only one thing. This usually happens after painting a pile of landscapes where multitudes of decisions have to be made.

This is only my second go at exploring my new and beautiful, turquoise vase. I did a different viewpoint - looking down more instead of the side view. I am more enamored with it than ever and want to paint it again.

Black Grapes

Black Grapes

6x6 oil on canvas $85.

My husband brought home these delicious black grapes. Unfortunately he found that they have seeds in them so they will not be eaten quite as quickly. They do make nice dark shapes in a still life though so I am happier than he is.

Farmhouse near Green Valley

Farmhouse

6x8in oil on canvas board $100.

This lovely place was near Green Valley, AZ. Obviously a more fertile place than where I live in New Mexico. I was really attracted to the area as it had many, beautiful places for an artist to paint. I hope to return and paint some of the wonderful mountain spots there.

This was done with a simple "analogous" color harmony. Mother Nature came up with it long before all the color theories came out.

Sunrise over the Rio Grande

The Value Challenge - Sunrise Over the Rio Grande

8x6in oil on canvas board.

On the Daily Painters site they have another great challenge - do a painting using four values.

I took a scene I am very familiar with and changed it a little bit for a better design.

Sunny Lane

Sunny Lane

8x6in oil on canvas board $100

The warmth of the late afternoon sun casts the glow of its color on everything in its path.

The blue of the sky manages to be the perfect foil for the sun as it reflects down onto all the shady areas with lovely cool blues and mauve shades.

Santa Fe Mosaic

Santa Fe Mosaic

8x6in oil on canvas board $100.

Back to using the Rectangle Challenge. This time I deliberately went for a more mosaic look to see how far I could take it. I managed to remember to change the color slightly with every brushstroke and I tried to soften edges with color and value changes.

Big change from yesterdays stormy sky.

Stormy Sky in Tucson, AZ

Stormy Sky in Tucson, AZ.

6x8in oil on canvas $100.

My husband and I drove to Tucson to meet a long time friend, Dave Hon who was there on business.

We had just finished visiting Tubac followed by the spectacular Desert Museum and were heading to the hotel when we saw this stormy sky. We knew it was going to be a doozy of a storm but had no idea so much rain would fall. I think I heard it was 2 inches in less than an hour. Lots of flooded areas. Quite exciting if you are snug in a dry spot but driving in it was scary...especially in the dark when you do not know the area. This morning was amazingly clean and clear. Our friend headed to the golf course and we headed back to New Mexico. I painted this in the hotel room, from memory, before we left.

Sunrise Study

Sunrise Study

6x8in oil on canvas board 100.

I have enjoyed a couple of beautiful sunrises recently and this one was yesterday. This is what I see from my deck; I feel so fortunate to have a view like this right outside my door!

Sunrise is not usually as intense in color as sunset but when I painted this I held back the color a bit because it was such a vivid orange, which even as I was looking at it, did not look real.

At this stage of the sunrise when the sun has not peeked out yet, the bushes are really dark shadow shapes with a slight glow from the bright sky catching the edges.

Rio Grande at Caballo, NM

The Rio Grande at Caballo, NM

8x6in oil on canvas board $100'

Yesterday I posted the view from more or less the same spot only I was facing west.

This painting needed patience to paint because they would release the water from the reservoir and it would churn along past my spot, all brown with not a reflection in sight. I tried to figure out how long this would take before the reflections came back but then the light had changed so much that I almost gave up. This is such an amazingly beautiful spot I could not do it justice but the joy of painting is... I can keep trying.

Caballo Landscape

Caballo Landscape

6x8in oil on canvas board $100

It was plein air painting today with the group. ( PAPSNM)

We went to a lovely spot where the Rio Grande comes out of a dam. Everyone's paintings turned out well. I did two and will post the other one tomorrow.

Made in Japan

Made in Japan

8x6 oil on canvas board $100.

An artist in Japan hand made this little gem of a vase, which was my good fortune to find on my recent trip to Santa Fe.

The glowing turquoise glaze on the top melts into a rich, deep blue and then falls to a dark brown base. Is so beautiful that I know I will never be able to capture it but it will be a joy to paint. I painted a coral color as an accent as I love the turquoise and coral combinations in native american jewelry from New Mexico.

The white freesias are in there just to bring me pleasure.

Bosque ll

Bosque ll

6x8 oil on canvas $100.

Yesterday's painting of the Socorro Bosque was painted plein air (on location) but todays' was painted from a photo I took, then displayed on my monitor. I enjoy painting from the monitor because it illuminates the shadow areas where as a photo usually prints the shadows too dark.

This view position was turned around from the other one and the sun was behind all the gathering clouds. It makes for a cool toned painting.