Avoiding the task at hand...

I should be folding laundry, but instead....
I'm playing with Lucy's camera.

The quilt on our bed is one that my sister Isobel made. (I love color!!!) It makes our room so cheerful and bright. So I don't mind folding the laundry, really. But it's that time of day when I don't want to do anything I should do. I just want to cuddle somebody or run away or go swimming or paint a pretty geisha girl on a huge board. When is it not this time of day?

Sketchbook Series: Painting

I am working on a group of paintings this year. This is one I started and ended up finishing last night. Crank it out, baby! Here it is in progress:

I enjoy painting the human face and/or figure more than anything else, but I only have myself to use as a model. Don't worry, not all my paintings this year will be self-portraits. I have a few animal themed ones and some geometric ones and geisha themed.

I'd like to honor the spirit of Japan through my geisha paintings and express my respect for the culture that is undergoing so much trauma right now. Of the geisha themed art I sell this year, I will dedicate the proceeds 100% to the relief effort.

Bird Days

Despite the lack of posts, we are still plugging away. We have quite a formidable flock.

"Fat Over Lean" is one of those rules of which I didn't understand the necessity before actually doing the opposite. I always just imagined Jack Sprat with his wife plopped down on top of him eating a plate full of "no lean." That's not what the rule is talking about. Oil doesn't dry out between brush strokes like acrylic. This means that if you have a thick layer of, say, dark green and you want to go back over it and add touches of light green highlights, it's not going to work. When you delicately touch your brush of light on that field of thick dark, it's just going to get all mixed up and messy. I've read there are also long term repercussion such as cracking of paint and other similarly dismal disasters. I am so glad da Vinci followed the Fat Over Lean rule on Mona Lisa's lips.

Some of my better birds include my little Carolina Chickadee and my Yellow-breasted Chat. James has a Bronzed Cowbird that I like so much I've asked him not to give it away.

Bird Days, Day 1

So Lily and I painted our first birds. Lily painted a plump Northern Cardinal while I did a Scarlet Tanager. They both came out much better than either one of us expected. And it was so much fun! I think I finally experienced what Betty Edwards has been talking about in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I don't draw much, and I've never used oil paints before. But as Lily and I were working, I began to notice a strange sensation that I hadn't felt before. The right side of my brain had taken over, and it was intoxicating!

Bird Days

James and I are starting a new series wherein we each paint one bird a day for twenty days. We are painting in oil on wood. On Day 0, we gathered our supplies and prepared our surfaces with gesso (fig 1.A).