Wednesday, July 31, 2013

"H" is for

"H" is for/ oil on board/ 4" x 4"/  available at Low Country Gallery (HH)
Honeydew, of course! A sweet friend searched all the local markets to bring me "H". She ended up with one from the grocery store. After it finished "posing", it was consumed and was soooo delicious!!

Artist Note: Having just finished teaching my class, I find myself selecting color palettes we discussed like this analogous choice: yellow (warm cad medium, true cad light and cool nickle yellow) green (warm cinnabar light, cinnabar and sap) and green blue ( carribean) plus white.


Tuesday, July 30, 2013

"G" is for

"G" is for/ oil on board/ 4" x 4"/ SOLD
Grapefruit! As I painted this beautiful red grapefruit, it occurred to me that it looked like an orange.....and without a smaller orange beside it...

Artist Note: The visual compliment of orange is a prussian blue (green blue) so I chose patches of blues and greens to arrive at this.


Monday, July 29, 2013

Last Pet!

Last Pet/ oil/ 5" x 7"/ SOLD
This is the last painting for 2013's pet project to benefit Animal Crackers. I am waiting for a few promised paintings to be varnished and sent or to be viewed and picked up. Then, I will post thank yous and final total donation! I am waiting for a proof of the book of paintings and will publish links and details as soon as this is ready.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Watercolor Chicken Sketch

Watercolor Chicken Sketch/watercolor/  8" x 10"/ SOLD
Done with a lot of water, this is another watercolor sketch.

Took more time than I expected weeding the giant
rain-happy weeds from the garden today. I also tried to improve a large painting I am working on, following the suggestions of the crit group yesterday. Thank you!



Saturday, July 27, 2013

Beach Sketch

I am "sneaking up" on larger format paintings and have been unsatisfied (so far) with the results (which is why I have missed posting the last couple of days).  This is one. My goal is to record at least one larger painting a week to mark progress from here forward.
Tomorrow, I hope to finish the last pet portrait for Animal Crackers. I will post that painting and complete the matching book of collected paintings and post details.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Late Arrival

Late Arrival/ oil/ 6" x 6"/

The book of pet paintings is almost ready to print a test copy. I have one more late addition after this one and the pet project will be officially completed for 2013. There are a couple of paintings that may yet find a home and be added to the tally for donations to Animal Crackers. Thank you again for your support. I will post the numbers and contributors soon.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Sand Scribbles


Sand Scribbles/oil on canvas/ 7" x 14"/

This painting is from a photo I shot at Hilton Head. A family dressed in white was out at dusk for a beach portrait.  While they waited for everyone to be gathered,  these girls found something to amuse them.  Lucky me.





Artist Note: I used a blue-orange limited palette for this painting and painted on a piece of canvas from a pad. I under painted the canvas black which helped me to paint the white dresses.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Velvet in Rainbow Colors

Velvet in Rainbow Colors/ watercolor/ 8" x 8"/ $75
I am almost finished a year of daily paintings. As I begin to outline next year's goals, I know that I will complete a group of well-executed large watercolors. Some smaller paintings will be studies for these large paintings and some will be completed for fun or for a sense of closure. This is such a painting: a warm-up of an image that has been in my mind.

Artist Note: The colors in this are Jean Haines' palette: translucent orange, cobalt turquoise, winsor purple, scarlet red, sap green and a little ivory black. Most of these are transparent colors, so they merge and don't make mud.

http://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/sue-churchgrant/velvet-in-rainbow-colors/155538

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Looking "Good"

Looking "Good"/oil on board/ 6" x 6"/ 
I was very fortunate to have an amazing group of students in class this past week. It was so much fun to see the theory start to show up in each person's paintings!

This is a "warm up" painting. My goal was to have fun with color and brush strokes! This royal tern looked like he was pleased with life as he strutted along the beach and I was pleased to paint him today!


Thursday, July 18, 2013

Pet Project #21: Charmer

This little dog was painted from two photographs. One had the pose and the other the colors of the final painting. This proved to be a great exercise as the pet project winds down for this year. I will total the donations and gather the paintings that have benefitted Animal Crackers and publish this likely later this weekend. In the next month, I will work on the book to further help AC.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Pet Project #20: Waiting for you

I have worked on this after my class the last few days. The painting is small (5" x 7") so a tiny brush stroke can dramatically change the size of a feature (ie the snout gets thicker, or the eye larger). The photograph had the window and the scene outside sharply in focus and I enjoyed blurring these out and making the dog's eye the most important part of this painting.

Wish you were here

I love teaching, especially when it is a class full of people that "dare greatly". This is such a class. However, it is fantastic to have this mix of ages (you can't see but less than half of our class in this photo). The young artists "jump in" to the assignments. The teens "sneak up on it" carefully outlining what they will paint, (sometime soon : shadows and safe bits first). The adult learners all mercilessly allow the "voices" that stop us to slow them waaaaaaay down. ( I haven't painted for awhile, my paint is old, I don't know how to draw and really I don't want to fail). Quieting the voice, taking deep breaths and then just jumping...The class is quiet. Everyone is concentrating... and we are painting. How lucky to share this!
Off to class now and sorry, I love it but it makes me tired....so I may miss some posts.

Monday, July 15, 2013

Class Starts Today: Apples to Illustrate the Purkinje Shift

Rods are relatively more sensitive than cones to blue and green light (shorter wave length). In addition, only about 1% of our cones are blue sensitive so the cones are relatively insensitive to blue.Therefore, in dim light, blues look relatively lighter and reds relatively darker than they do in the daylight.  This is the Purkinje Shift.

This painting of red apples in a blue bowl was painted to illustrate the Purkinje Shift. In daylight, the red cherries appear to be lighter or about the same value as their blue bowl. However, when it becomes dark enough to not see colors, turn the lights off, and wait 10 minutes to dark adapt. If you are fully dark-adapted, you will use just your rods and will not distinguish colors and in a few minutes, the blue bowl will appear LIGHTER than the cherries.
In today's class, we also made a red tomato white, black and super red by altering the color light shining on it.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Class Starts Tomorrow and Pet #19 Improved

Yesterday, when I photographed this and posted it, I wasn't completely happy with the right (as you look at it) eye. However, the paint was wet. Starting fresh with dry-to-touch paint seemed a better solution to correct it. Below, you can see the touched up painting.The white iris has been toned down and the softer highlights have been added. Small changes but a big improvement. It makes this dog look less "bug-eyed". Note to self: Paint the eyes with a clean dry brush on dry surface.


Tomorrow, I begin teaching a class at my local art center about understanding and learning to see color. One of the most valuable reference texts for this class is "Vision and Art The Biology of Seeing"  by Margaret Livingston. This class has experienced adult painters through middle school beginning artists. Therefore, there are advanced and beginning exercises.


Here is an example of an exercise about luminance. Mine is quickly painted and not perfect. However, it illustrates that artists can alter the luminance of an object by shading its background. This center circle is one single shade of grey. The gradation of the greys in the background makes the center circle appear brighter or darker at its edges. This exercise is taken from Livingston's book and is after Shapley 1965.



Saturday, July 13, 2013

Pet Project #19: Teenie Tiny

This cute miniature pup had the cutest stance.

Artist Note: I left some of the black surrounding the dog's body to "flatten" the design of this painting.

Friday, July 12, 2013

Pet #18: "Faithful" Completed

The eyes in this image were what made this an interesting subject to paint.  I also love the dog's red collar and pose. The green blue seemed to work in the background.

Artsist Note: The background was mixes of cinnabar green, cobalt blue, naples yellow and some titanium white.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Pet Project #18: "Faithful" Step 1

I started this white dog on a black primed gesso board. Karin Jurick taught me to do this during her workshop last fall. This gives immediate dimension to the subject as it is painted.
Here the eyes and nose are black board with only touches of grey or white where the highlights will be.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Pet Project #17: Warm Heart

Warm Heart/ oil on board/ 8 x 8/available at Low Country Gallery )(HH)
Because I grew up loving Lassie, I have a special place in my heart for this breed of dog. This one was cropped out of a warm family photo where the dog was obviously greatly loved.

Artist Note: Again, my challenge is to integrate the dog into the painting by working on edges.




Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Red Delicious Apple Painting Continued


As the layers continue, there is some purple added to the alizarin to darken it and some brown madder where the red is slightly browner in color. The sharp edges of the highlights are softened. The deep shadow near the stem is painted in and the background painted wet into wet of palette greys.














Completed as a study for  tomorrow's larger painting.

Today, while varnishing paintings, I decided to change the background color (which meant changing some of the foreground color, then the eye color) of an earlier painting.

The revised painting is shown below.

















Monday, July 8, 2013

How to Paint a Realistic, Dimensional Red Delicious Apple

In watercolor, I find that I am able to achieve the most realistic dimension by layering. First, I find the highlights and where white, I leave the paper dry. Where the highlight is slightly bluish, I wet the area and slightly beyond, wait for the shine to leave the area and paint the thinnest wash of thalo blue into that area. I dry the paper completely before proceeding to the yellow underlayers.  One of my favorite teachers, Susan Tustain Harrison (link) uses a priming method to gradually build up layers of glazed thin color even as she builds her under layers. To achieve the depth of color, in these yellows Susan would have painted 3-6 layers of thin color. Each layer would have been primed, color applied and then dried before the next layer was applied. I am too impatient so I wet the area thoroughly, watch for the shine to disappear and then apply the under layer in 1-2 layers. Here you can see the under layer is two different yellows: warm indian yellow on the left and cooler aureolin yellow on the right as you look at the painting.
Because this is a deep red apple, the under yellows need to be an intense yellow color.


After the paper is bone dry, I paint wet on dry with soft brushes to not disturb the underlayer(s) of paint. For this layer, the reds are mixtures of alizarin crimson, scarlet red, translucent orange and permanent rose. Going from the darkest red area beside the bright yellow: you can identify alizarin crimson, then scarlet and translucent orange in the area around the white patch of highlight, then thin areas of permanent rose or permanent rose plus scarlet and on the outside right area scarlet and a touch of alizarin crimson.The shadow is started by wetting the shadow area and then running a line of clear water along the bottom of the still-wet red apple and allowing the paint to run into the shadow area.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Pet Project #16: Gentle Friend

Gentle Friend/ oil/ 8" x 8"/ SOLD? 25% donated to Animal Crackers
I was sent an image of this beautiful dog to add to this project. I wanted this painting to show how gentle and kind a pet she/he is. Therefore,  I concentrated on the face and in the face,  the eyes and the smile. I wanted all the rest of the dog to be less important.

Artist Note: Losing the edges and keeping a likeness were challenging for me in this painting.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Pet Project #15: Interesting Perspective

Interesting Perspective/ oil/ 8" x 8"/ 25% will be donated to AC
I chose to paint his little charmer because of the interesting perspective. The photo source had little information about the eyes, so I took artistic liberty and made eyes that seemed to match the expression of the mouth. With only a few pets left to paint now, Animal Crackers should be able to help some more needy animals thanks to your support!

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Pet Project #14/ Dreamer

Dreamer/ oil/ 8" x 10" / 25% donated to Animal Crackers
This beautiful image was sent for the pet project. I love the intensity of this animal's gaze.

Artist Note: This was painted on a black underpainting. Again, my "go to color of choice" is Shiva ice blue which seems to find its way into most paint mixes.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Look what came by e mail today

I wanted to share this "share".  While, it is always a delight to see my paintings in "new homes",  this  is especially creative. Three 4" x 4" paintings from my 2013 "Iris series" were collected and then float framed in an absolutely fabulous presentation. It makes me want to go and paint more! Thank you!!

I am also honored to share that my painting Chessmen (2013 version) was juried into The 68th Annual Juried North Carolina Watercolor Society Show. This acceptance makes me "signature status" for WSNC. I will put details of the show and an image of my painting on my web page when I get a second to up date it. Tomorrow, I have an absolutely beautiful dog to share for the 4th!

Monday, July 1, 2013

July Hydrangea Study

July Hydrangea Study/oil on board/ 5" x 5" /SOLD
This is a study of some of the colors of the beautiful hydrangeas that are blooming presently in my garden. It is also a pause before the last few pets for the pet project which appears to be fairly successful as a fund raiser for Animal Crackers (thank you, everyone).

Artist Note: This was painted over a black acrylic background which was  "fractured" using Julie Ford Oliver's (link) method. After the hydrangeas were painted, a few added areas were scratched out for line interest.