Personal Art Blog

Sharing the lessons I teach at the Artist Guild and the personal discoveries in my art.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Flowers - On The Shelf #5



















Flowers - On The Shelf #5

8x6in  oil on canvas   $125. SOLD

My second shelf painting with flowers.
My wonderful daughter sent me some beautiful flowers
(not these) and this is a trial run on using the shelf.
I am looking forward to painting them tomorrow.



Artist Note.

This was an effort at trying to paint this in half an hour - failed!
It ended up taking almost three hours because I kept having to
scrape it off. I was being too realistic, making every flower equally
realistic. Not my goal of how I wanted it to look.
I know I can paint "realistically" if I wanted to, but I was after a
very loose interpretation. The goal was to have only one of the flowers
portraying what it type of flower it was and the rest had to be believable,
but really abstracted.

I am still having major problems downloading into Blogger
from my Picasa program. Before, I could click on "create"  and it
would go directly down to  "publish to blogger."
Is there any other easy way to handle downloading into Blogger?


27 comments:

  1. I have another name for this painting. It is Happiness. Love the light fun energy of this one Julie. It was worth the three hours.
    I am now using my Canon program but I have Photoshop installed to learn. Picasa can drive me up the wall. Not a good thing!

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    1. I like Happiness - thanks Helen.
      You are on a roll with your newer technique and I am very happy about it.

      I had Elements but went to Picasa because of the easy download to blogger.

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  2. Such a beautiful palette of colors! I think you were very successful with this piece. That said, I think every piece you post is truly stunning, Julie.

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  3. Another lovely piece, Julie. I am always curious about your backgrounds. Are these colors you see, or are they colors that appeal to you?

    I wish I could help you with Blogger, but I don't us Picasa, just download directly from my files to blogger. I have found that when I have an issue with blogger, sooner or later it disappears, so maybe the answer is for you to keep a certain amount of images on your hard drive and download from there. Good luck!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Carol - loved your Fall piece today.

      My backgrounds?... I do them a couple of ways. The wall behind the shelf is a grey and it goes bluer grey at the top to the light but a greener grey lower down. On this piece I placed a grape color paper behind but the same principle applied. If I were using a warmer light source it would reverse.
      Thanks for your reply to my blogger problem

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  4. this is absolutely beautiful, Julie! You can see the kind of flower and yet its impressionistic! A success!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you. You are always so encouraging. I have to ask if you were a cheerleader in a past life?

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  5. The textures and colors in this are fascinating. Great job!

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    1. Thanks Virginia - good to see you are back paintings. Wonderful warm and cools on your new painting.

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  6. Well, I think you did a great job with varying the detail. And your vase really has that lovely, shiny and reflective quality to it. It's a very nice arrangement-effortless without seeming like you tried too hard for that. Good job!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you Libby. To have it look effortless is due to scraping down with the handy shaper at each failure and not painting over and over to create the dreaded MUD!

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  7. The goal is achieved, at least to my eyes.
    You know dear Julie, the whole series 'On the shelf'(I've originally misspelled 'shelf', writing 'self' which oddly I think is very suitable for you always present a part of your self in your paintings), I truly adore it!! I think n.1 and With Lemon, Please are 2 of my favorites... or the Red Teapot and n.2... Alright, I just love them all!
    I don't use Picasa, I download directly from files of my computer when I post. Sorry I can't be any more help.
    Warm regards.

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    Replies
    1. It is always a pleasure to read your comments and I appreciate your visits.

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  8. An amazing still life: the vibrant colors are everywhere so harmoniously treated that the "impression" is very realistic, regardless of the fact that it is not painted in a realistic way!
    Dear Julie ,I love the impressive power of your gesture and I admire your great skill in painting!

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    1. Thank you Rita, As usual you are articulate and poetic.
      Congratulations on winning the blog award.

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  9. Julie, I always love to hear your thoughts behind the paintings, this one is no exception! Regarding the blogger problem, I don't use Picasa either-- I love me some photoshop though. Once my image is cropped and resized (72pixels, 7" x 7" usually) I save the imagename.jpg or .jpeg into a general folder on my computer. Grabbing that image using the "Browse" button from the blogger post interface has never been a problem. I find the folder in which the image is stored and click it into my post. Maybe after you edit images in Picasa--save them to a new folder?? Hope that helps? If you can, get your hands on photoshop and use it, you will love.

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    1. Great comment and very helpful. thank you Diane.
      I have always been concerned about the learning curve on Photoshop as I am very basic in my needs. What you said makes sense and I will look into it.

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  10. this is an amazing piece...well done Julie

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    1. I appreciate it... and congratulate you on your blogging award

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  11. Love this one! Beautiful! I love all the subtle colors throughout. I struggle with blogger as well so can't be of help. I upload directly from my files which I have corrected in Photo Elements (I used to use Photoshop and which I still had it!). I'm going to get a Blogger for Dummies book! Good luck and thank you for the inspiration!

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    1. Thank you Jennifer. Glad to know you use Elements. I have it and can go back to it with hardly a hiccup!

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  12. I can be amazed over realism and the fact it looks like a photo (and how much time there must have taken), but I have never wanted to paint like that. I appreciate personality and that an artist puts something of them self into what they do.

    I love how your paintings are recognizable and you do what you do so well, and this is no exception. Well done. =)

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  13. I love the beautiful melding of colors within those strokes of the painting knife, Julie!! Great fracturing!! :)

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  14. Wow! Wow! Wow, Julie! This painting is perfection - I just adore it and am not surprised it sold so quickly. Bravo!

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    1. Your words mean a lot Susan because I admire your work so much.

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I love that you are taking the time to comment and thank you for it. I am sure other readers will enjoy them too. If you cannot comment through this format then email me at juliefordoliver@gmail.com
Cheers,
Julie