Palette Knife Still life

Palette Knife Still life

6x6in  oil on canvas board  85.

Working with the painting knife for a whole painting provides lots of freedom for an artist because it is no use trying to get the more controlled look of using a brush. Another plus is if you like an interesting surface with lots of texture!
As you can see, the overall effect is more impressionistic with many broken edges. If you do see a smooth area it is where I pressed down with the back of the knife or scraped it back.
I usually combine a brush and knife in my paintings but it is good to do one or the other for a whole painting to keep the excitement of discovery, fresh.

Artist Info:
I find it is useful to have a very flexible painting knife so I use the Holbein "S"  series. I highly recommend them. They are fabulous painting knifes and not quite as expensive as Holbein's top of the line ones.

Compatible!

Compatible!

6x6in  oil on canvas board

These little vases are from Thailand so what could be more appropriate than a bit of leopard pattern to go with them.
After painting the bright colors of the Picasso Rose yesterday, it was quite a change to use earth tones.

Artist Info:
I kept the dark areas as transparent as possible using Transparent Oxide Brown with Ultramarine Blue and for the cloth I did a Transparent Oxide Yellow wash first, then placed the dark spots of the pattern with the same dark mixture.  For where the light was hitting, I came back in with Naples Yellow to negative paint around the black leopard spots and used a cool mixture for the shadows.
As I am trying to paint in a looser fashion I was careful not to make everything perfect and hard edged.

Rose in the Style of Picasso

Picasso Rose

8x6in  oil on canvas board   100.

Painting in the style of means not copying an artist's actual painting, but coming up with your own interpretation...which is much easier and fun!
Picasso produced an immense output of work. I have read it is over 20,000 pieces, which boggles my mind.  His creative versatility and the ability to continually develop new stylistic resources, led him along the path of having as many critics as admirers.
I am an admirer - his work has never bored me.

"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards you can remove all traces of reality."
Pablo Picasso


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Rose in the Style of Georgia O'Keeffe

Rose in the Style of O'Keeffe   Sold.

6x8in  oil on canvas board  100.

The new Challenge from Daily Paintworks is one I will enjoy.

It is The Picasso It Challenge posted by Gloria Zucaro
The goal is to paint something in the STYLE  of a painter you admire.

My "something"  is naturally a rose as I have just painted a series of them
I chose the style of Georgia O'Keeffe  because she became known for painting flowers. She completely changed the format of flower painting by making huge canvases filled with a close up view of flowers.
I have never painted a full frontal flower before and I found it fascinating. I refrained from making the image more sensual but I could see how she found it so...especially when she painted in monumental scale. I have wondered if she did this deliberately, knowing it would attract the attention it did.

Meet Mr. Chomp!

Meet Mr. Chomp!


6x6in  oil on canvas board

Mr. Chomp is a rescued cat. My close friend, Pam, witnessed a car almost hitting him when he was a wee little kitty and because the car didn't stop, Pam did. After taking him home and then to the vet, Pam and her husband adopted him. He is a gorgeous cat with a sociable disposition.
I love his name and it came from a book of short stories that Pam's husband, Stephen R. Cox, had recently published, called, of all things, Confessions of a Dog Assassin
Mr. Chomp is also a very  lucky cat other reasons...one of which is they take him for a walk every day ( in a cute harness) and he loves it.

Relaxing Cats

Relaxing Cats   SOLD

6x8in  oil on linen board  100.

I bet it is a bit of a surprise to see no roses!

Today I felt like painting something different after working for several hours on a large landscape. This was a fun painting to do. I know these cats very well and felt quite nostalgic painting three of them together as there are only two alive now.
I used the same round brush again, but had to go to a much smaller round to do the ears




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Roses From Son #1

Roses for my Birthday From Son #1

6x8in  oil on linen mounted to board  100.

Life is great when your children spoil you and bring flowers.

I enjoyed a lovely surprise today. A fellow blogger, Haidee-Jo, painted me a birthday gift of a rose cupcake. She lives in France and I have never met her, but it is an example of a fellow artist's warmth and generosity. I hope you visit her lovely blog. Thank you, Haidee-Jo.

I painted the yellow roses completely with a round, #6 bristle brush. I used it mostly on its side and leaving the the point for details. Unlike the appearance of individual strokes the flat brush produces, the round brush blends colors together easily, but a swift side motion will give a clean stroke similar to the flat. You can see an example of this on the back rose and some of the leaves. A Russian artist I admire uses only round brushes for his paintings and does amazing things with them.

Birthday Roses

Birthday Roses

not for sale

What a wonderful day. The family all together and I still had a short time to paint.
This was a quick palette knife impression of some of the flowers I received.
Thank you to everyone who wished me Happy Birthday. Nice!

Red Colander

Cherries and Lemons

6x8in  oil on canvas board   100.

I love this red colander and I have had it quite a while, but this is the first time I have painted it.
I have not quite finished it, but too bad...son number one is arriving in half an hour and I am excited to see him.
It is my birthday tomorrow and my husband and daughter will be cooking, so it will be a fun and happy day.

Something Simple

Early Morning Light.

6x6in oil on canvas board  85.

After yesterday's struggle I decided to follow my own advice and do something simple. This is a memory exercise based on simple shapes of different values.

This landscape was done with a limited palette of Ultramarine Blue, Cad Yellow Light, Permanent Alizarin and Titanium White.

First, I pre-mixed a yellow green, an orange color, a brown and a purple from the above colors.

A Yellow Ochre was made by pre-mixing a reddish purple to the same value FIRST as the ocher color I wanted and then adding the cad yellow light. If my purple had been too blue then I would have got a neat green instead of ocher.

The secret to good color mixing is to make your colors the correct value before adding them together.

Two G's.

Garlic and Grapes

8x6in oil on canvas board  100.

Struggled for a couple of hours on a painting and wiped it off, so then I had pressure to finish this one.
Times like this I wonder why I don't paint just one object. Something simple...

Lemons and Pansies

Lemons and Pansies

6x8in oil on canvas board 100.

Another painting using yellow, but this time as the dominant color. Every mixture, even the purple, has yellow in it.
This one was fun to paint.

The Bali Calendar

The Bali Calendar

8x6in  oil on canvas Board  Not for sale.

A very dear friend gave me this hand-carved calendar which was made in Bali. Most of the design has been burnt into the wood slats with a fine tool. The Months are in English, but the other writing is in Balinese. It is a work of art and I love it.
I am going to send this painting to my friend as a gift and I do hope she likes it.

This is the first time I have managed to incorporate the calendar into a still life set-up and I found that the hanging pull can take over the whole painting...so I placed the pull next to the pansies as part of the bouquet.

I enjoyed working with the yellow again and will try a different yellow harmony tomorrow.                            

Fruit Bowl

Fruit Bowl

6x8in   oil on canvas board  100.

I wanted to work with some different colors today and it was easy to raid the fridge. I decided to go with yellow using the pear and golden apples and have the black grapes for contrast and drama..
Yellows are always warm and cheerful and are perfect used in a close cropped design like this.
Another plus for using the warm color of yellow is the eye can focus on it  better than a cool color. I have no idea why this is, but I do know that I was taught that yellow is the first color to drop out of the spectrum in receding space. Every time I gaze at the golds of sunrise and sunset, I try and figure this out!

Changing a Challenge

Rose and Silver with Fruit.

6x8in  oil on canvas board  100.

This is the first time I have participated in the Rookiepainter Challenge #30. If you click on the link you will see my painting. Scroll down and you will see the photo of what is provided to copy.
I enjoyed doing it and then I enjoyed making the changes, which you see above, to make it unique and my own. Only one area was not changed. Do you have a favorite?

Someone asked why I did the Challenges. A good question and easy to answer. For me, it is like cooking the meals when all the children were around. Coming up with what to make was sometimes a problem. The same goes with painting these small paintings...what to paint? It is never a problem with my large pieces but trying come up with something every day can be challenging and obviously they would not use the title if it was not the same for many an artist.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Wild Rose Bowl

Wild Rose Bowl

8x6in  oil on canvas  100.

I was going to call this Rose Bowl but then I thought I would get some football fans expecting something else!

I was assured that it is a "wild rose" design by the friend who gave it to me. Whatever it is called, it is a beautiful bowl and I enjoyed painting it.

I used the palette knife as well as the brush  and followed the color wheel,
going from blue into green, mixed from blue with yellow and ended with the orange accents.

Roses and Silver

Roses and Silver

6x6in   oil on canvas board  85.

This is a continuation of yesterday's quick study. This morning I saw that the rose had not only perked its head up, but had started to open. By placing it down by the side of the silver creamer and adding more leaves it filled out the square format in a more interesting way. I tried to make the color a little more lively in keeping with the drama of the overhead light.

Shakespeare has a line that I hold close to my chest.
Beauty is brought about by judgment of the eye. 
To my eye, this is more beautiful than what I painted yesterday.

Rose and Silver

Rose and Silver

6x6in oil on canvas board  -- continued the next day.

My daughter, Lorraine, picked this beautiful red rose for me yesterday. I placed it one of my mother's silver pieces.
This was a quick sketch done with brush. I did not have enough time to do anything more complete.

Sunset Study

Sunset Study

7x5in  oil on canvas board.   90.

I see the advantages of using the palette knife for speed when painting a sunset. It is amazing how short a time the actual sunset takes. The color begins while the sun is still above the horizon,  becoming even stronger and richer when it drops just below it.  This is the time I wait for as my eyes are not blinded by the intense rays. The upper sky remains very light for quite a long time, illuminating the areas not back-lit or in shadow. Painting sunrise or sunset plein air is an emotional experience for me because I get frustrated that my knowledge of paint cannot duplicate what I see.

Time for Tea

Time for Tea

7x5in oil on canvas board  SOLD

Using the palette knife and brush I did this little still life rather quickly, using the open color principal from yesterday's blog entry. It is not as obvious as yesterday's rose painting, but I carried the red outside the teapot and cup and came back in with the surrounding colors leaving tiny peeks of the red here and there so the strong red color was incorporated comfortably into the surrounding area.
When I was at elementary school, there was a game where we held a dandelion or buttercup under each others chins and asked if we liked butter. The answer was always yes because we could see the yellow glow. This was my first understanding of open color.

Chagall quote:  "All colors are friends of their neighbors. "

Pushing Color

Pushing Color

6x6in  oil on gesso board   85.

After working on yesterdays vessels and doing two different color harmonies, I wanted to see how a painting of roses would respond to having the color taken out into the surrounding background. If you look you will see the yellow, orange and pink flowing around the area of each corresponding rose.
When a color spills over the edges of the forms, it is called open color. Open color results in the " lost and found "edges that give softness to the forms and variety to the edges.  I have gone way outside the boundaries of the flowers here as I will be using this as an example for the next class. Sometimes an exaggeration is easier to see and understand.
Closed color is the reverse. More like a coloring book where you stay within the lines. Open or closed is a matter of personal preference but open color is supposed to be more like human vision.

Vessel Study l & ll

Vessel Study l & ll

6x8in oil on canvas board  NFS

I wanted to do something different today so I clustered a few of my small vessels together
and painted two different versions.
This blog is where I do my experimenting and as I am committed to doing it daily, I cannot scrape or wash off what I do....much as I am tempted.  This is why there are two of the same set -up but with different views out of the window making the harmonies very different.  Neither of them satisfy me but there are parts of these two pieces that I like so I will keep them for reference material.

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Overhead Light

Overhead Light

6x6in oil on gesso board  85.

 I picked my lovely little Japanese vase and a cloth of almost the same color for this demo I did in class with reference to Qiang Huang's "casting shadows. " I think I will explore this color harmony further because I think it could be beautiful. Brush only used on this and I think I missed my knife.

 A busy day, what with class, haircut, planting some pansies and now I have to head out to vote.

Rose Study

Rose Study

5x7in  oil on canvas board   90.

This is a demo I did for the Artist Guild members this morning. It was based on Qiang Huang's lesson of Painting the Light. He teaches five light effects. This one is Casting Shadows.


I started out by carefully analyzing the darkest area first. I painted that area and then moved on to the next darkest area, gradually working my way up to the lightest area. I painted all areas going strictly by value.  The rose was the lightest part of the painting but its deepest shadow areas were a middle value...same value as the lightest part of the cloth.

Below you see my handy, portable, value and color checker.

Most of the time I see darker values way darker than they actually are, so I curl my fingers into a tunnel and squint through to the the tiny hole at the end. This may take getting used to but it really works because the inside is completely dark and you can gauge your values using the interior as your darkest value. When I did this with the rose study I could see right away that my dark areas were not as dark as I thought they were because the inside of the tunnel was much darker.

I hope this is not too confusing, but learning to compare my values has helped my work so much.

This is also a wonderful way to isolate colors in the distance when painting a landscape plein air. I do have a proper card for isolating, but it isn't always with me when I need it.

Not a Rose to be Seen!

Not A Rose to be Seen!

8x6in oil on canvas board  100.

For those of you prepared to see another rose painting, this will be a surprise.
I enjoy doing the DailyPaintworks Challenge when I have time, so today I decided to push myself out of my comfort zone and do this figurative piece. Not using my palette knife...just the brush.

The Crowd Challenge was submitted by Carole Marine with the following directions...
There is a lot going on in this photo of a crowded German Restaurant. Try your hand at selecting and painting part of the crowd.


I  liked the figures in this section of the reference photo, but I did not want to paint the woman smoking so I changed her hand a little bit. I loved seeing her purse on her lap and the shopping bag between her legs. Very natural habits shared by women the world over.
I also changed a few other things to fit my idea of what would help the painting.

New paintings are submitted to the Challenge all week long and as there are some really good figure painters in the group, I will look forward to seeing what everyone else has done.

Yellow Roses

Yellow Roses

8x6in oil on canvas board  100.

After doing the small studies of the roses outdoors, I took a deep breath and set up a still life. Keeping in mind I still had to follow Qiang Huang's teachings and remembering  to use the brush and knife, I painted the shapes first in their local colors using the brush. That was the easy part.  Qiang emphasizes that an artist has to paint the light and not the object. This is the basis of his beautiful paintings. I found it helped me to examine the shadows and try and gauge the way values/colors are before they turn into the light. Looking at the shadows provides exactly the same emphasis on the light, just a different approach which works better for me...I think! Still learning so not absolutely sure.
The palette knife was used to apply thicker paint for texture and mushing the edges where they needed it.