Five Red Apples on Gray

I painted this in a workshop taught by Carol Marine.  Apples are one of her favorite subjects so I thought I'd give it a try. I chose delicious apples because they have a wonderful even red color.  When you paint  an apple that is multicolored red and green stripes it's hard to describe the red and green colors without suggesting planes of light and shadow. 

Red Pear, Black Pot

The shiny black pot created such lovely reflections.  It was easy to lavish too much attention on them - I had to go back and lower the value so that they stayed in the background.  I like the color combination - red, black, gray - very striking.

Salt Shaker Reflected in Blue Cup

I spent a lot of time on the reflections in the cup.  I really enjoy the yellowish spot on the cup which reflects something out of view.  It keeps the painting from being monochromatic.

Kiwis and Glass Jar on Green

Kiwi fruit is covered by a fuzzy brown skin, but the skin is actually very thin and light can still shine through it. This light makes the kiwis glow from within.  I also like the lost edges of the jar. 

Apple Slices Backlit SOLD

This was a tasty greenish apple with touches of red, or maybe it was a reddish apple with touches of green. Although I painted quickly, the hot light turned it brown.  Next time I'll douse it with lemon juice to stay white.

Two Horses SOLD

Two Horses in a pasture with sunlight. A simple composition with color dominance, interesting shapes, and uneven intervals.  In the reference photograph,  there was a fence in front of the horses.  The fence also blocked a viewer from entering the painting.  I took out the fence so you could see the horses, and I added diagonal brush strokes to lead the viewer into the field.

Pinto Pony SOLD

The sun is high and slightly behind this pony and creates a wonderful light edge on the horse's back that tells us it's a sunny day.  This horse was spotted (no pun intended) in a pasture near Prosser, WA.

Near Dockton SOLD

A sunny view of houses on the beach at Quartermaster Harbor near the Dockton Marina.  The pilings are left from boatyards and drydocks that were built over a hundred years ago.

Open Fence SOLD

This building is an old carriage house now used as a horse barn.  It has a small paddock attached for the horses.  I added an open gate to the fence so the viewer felt there was a way to "walk into" the painting.  One of my favorite times of day - late afternoon with warm lights and purple shadows.

Garden and Greenhouse in Fall City

Another painting from last August in Fall City Washington.  The day was both sunny and cloudy so there was lots of drama in the gray clouds.  The houses are older on small lots and offer great compositional possibilities.  Because the bushes and trees are blacklit, they are more simplified and massed together.  I had fun getting the perspective of the roofs believable and getting the shadows on the roof to show exactly where the sun was.

Fall City Houses

Painted in Fall City in August during a workshop with Ned Mueller.  A small town with older houses on small lots.   The sun was shining but the clouds were out too.  I liked that almost half the painting was a green lawn, allowing the viewer to "walk in" to the painting

Through the Madronas SOLD

The view from my yard on Maury Island looking west across Quartermaster Harbor towards Vashon Island.  Painted out of doors in late summer.  The sun was bright overhead and we had been having very dry weather.  I was annoyed during my painting by a helicopter buzzing overhead -- I finally paused in my painting and found out that my neighbor had set his yard on fire!

Apple Fork Spoon

I've been painting, but I haven't been photographing my paintings lately, hence no blog posts.
I really like the shine of the fork and spoon and it was fun to play with the composition.  The 6" x 6" format is great for forcing you to simplify and strengthen the value pattern.

Vashon Arts Tour at Barnworks

Tahlequah View
This is the view from my yard - painted out of doors on a Summer day.  This is one of several paintings that are on display at Barnworks during the Vashon Arts Tour.  Barnworks will be open December 3rd and 4th and December 10th and 11th.  Barnworks is located at 12122 SW Cove Road.

My favorite view; every day I look out the window and see something different. In the winter the sun sets just above the distant hills and the sky can be filled with streaks of orange & pink.  In the summer I often catch a glimpse of a sailboat coming out of Quartermaster Harbor.

Center for Wooden Boats SOLD

Last August I painted this at the Center for Wooden Boats on Lake Union in Seattle.  The day was still and there were just a few ripples in the water  and the light bounced off the water and back onto the hull.  I really enjoyed working on the water and the reflections.

This is one of several paintings that I will have on display at the Barnworks  at the Vashon Arts Tour.   Located at 12122 SW Cove Road on Vashon, the Barnworks  will be open for two weekends December 3rd & 4th and 10th & 11th.  

Serranos

The light was almost directly above these chili peppers and my angle of view was high, so the shadows were minimal.  I worked hard to observe and  include shadows, reflected lights and shiny highlights to add a feeling of depth and volume.  This was a fun composition to arrange - I spent many minutes with the viewfinder arranging and rearranging the chilis.

Fork Spoon Vinegar

Although I usually paint on a white canvas, this time I toned the canvas with a red-orange tone and red has found its way into all the gray mixtures creating a lovely harmony. Titanium white added to other pigments actually cools the mixture so the gray is warm from the red-orange and cool from the black and white pigments that were mixed together.   I was also having fun trying to get sparkle and shine from the metal silverware and the glass vinegar bottle. 

Silver Bowl Orange Slices Green Cloth SOLD

Another 10 x 10 painting that I did for consideration for the Vashon Allied Arts Auction held in September.  This one has lots of juicy reflections in the shiny silver bowl and some lovely saturated colors in the oranges.  And a fun bit of lavender in the shadow side of the orange slice and on the far side of the shiny bowl.   Even though the green cloth covers the largest area of the painting, I think the dominant color is orange because it is so intense or saturated.
A brief note about color: pigments have three qualities; hue - that means the name of the color like hansa yellow or azo orange or burnt sienna; value - the lightness or darkness of a color; and saturation - how much of something else is mixed with the pigment- a yellow straight out of the tube is more saturated than one mixed with white.  So the oranges in this painting are almost straight out of the tube, whereas the green is mixed with yellow ochre and white and purple and blue and a few other colors I can't remember.
Why create dominance? Having a dominant color gives the painting a theme; dominance organizes the composition and moves it away from chaos; it makes the painting stronger. And a painting can have dominance in any and all elements - shape, size, direction, color, value, line and texture.

Black Cup Three Tangerines on Pink

Another of the 10" x 10" paintings that I created for the Vashon Allied Arts commission.   I really enjoyed painting that spoon and fork and I like the dull brown color reflected in the dark cup.  It's really interesting how the change in size affects the composition.  A 10" x 10" painting is almost three times the size of a 6" x 6" painting.  So both the golden background and pink foreground seem quite intense because they cover a larger area.

Orange Slices, Silver Bowl on Pink SOLD

This is another  of the 10" x 10" paintings that I worked on for the Vashon Allied Arts Fundraiser Auction.  I painted several so that I would have lots to choose from.  I really like the orange slices and pink table reflected in the silver bowl. It feels like you could reach in and touch that silver bowl and it would be hard and shiny.  But it's just paint!

Orange Slices on Blue SOLD

This is the third painting that I painted as a commission for the Vashon Allied Arts September fundraiser auction.  I like the colors in the tabletop and in the shadow of the orange slices.  The blue goes from very saturated  to very neutral blue.  But it looks blue because it is against orange which is the complement of blue.  I also like the green stripe.

Black Cup Orange Slices on Green SOLD

The second of the three paintings I chose for the Vashon Allied Arts  September fundraiser auction. This time the orange slices are on a piece of glass on top of a green tabletop.  That way I get to paint the reflections and the cast shadows and the green color of the tabletop.  The gray in the background allows me to use a large number of intense colors The piece of calm gray balanced the orange and lavender and gold as well as that vivid lime green. I also like the reflections on the cup.

Paintings of Oranges - Orange Slices on Pink SOLD

Vashon Allied Arts commissioned me to create a work for their annual September fundraiser auction.   I painted several 10" x 10" paintings on the subject of orange slices and then chose three as a triptych.  Painting in a larger format was fun though it was difficult at first.  I like to paint items actual size, not enlarged, so the effect on the composition was to increase the number of orange slices and items that wound up on the canvas. 

Turquoise Plate Yellow Cup Sienna Wall

The same cup stack -- this time I put the turquoise plate on a piece of glass.  The light color under the plate is light bounced around by the glass.  I like the blueish-greenish stripe at the bottom of the painting- the color of the edge of the piece of glass.

Yellow Cup Stack on Glass

Another stack of cups  on a sheet of glass to give more reflections.  I enjoy the limited colors, yellow, black, and white and that hazy yellow gray streak that interrupts the reflection on the glass.

Turqoise Plate Yellow Cup Lavender Shadow

My titles are really plain vanilla.  When you do so many paintings it's actually hard to remember them all.  Hence the verbal clues about what it looks like.  I do like all the colors in this one.  There's enough reflected light to move the color around, and every color sings against the neutral black white and gray.

Cherries with Gold and Silver

The silver bowl acts like a distorting mirror for the reflections of the red cherries and the gold tabletop. I reduced the contrast and darkened the reflections to subordinate them.  I especially like the gradations on the interior of the bowl - it almost makes the hard metal seem soft.

Three Cherries on Glass SOLD

Here are three more sweet dark cherries.  I added interest to the composition by placing the cherries on a clear sheet of glass. That way I get both a shadow and a reflection and the color of the tabletop shining through the glass.  And I get more of those lovely reflected lights on the underside of the cherries.

Silver Bowl and Three Cherries SOLD

It's cherry season again.  Black objects are hard to paint so I look for a red dark sweet cherry rather than a black cherry.  That way there's more contrast between the light struck areas and the darkest shadows.   I like the cool reflected lights on the bottom half of the cherries.  Lots of reflections in this one.

Orange Slices and Orange Stripe

I think I found this little plate at Target last year and when I got it home thought "Why did I buy that?" and put it in the closet.  But I dug it out recently and discovered I'm a better shopper than I thought.  The square shape and the angular cast shadows go well with the angularity of the orange slices.  The color is just the right shade of green - sometimes it's duller than  the background, sometimes it's more saturated; I can explore all sorts of subtle shifts of color and intensity.  It's a perfect plate!

Shiny Bowl Reflections

More orange slices.  The bowl was in shadow, the oranges were in the light.  It was fun to try to paint the reflections without being too tight.  Really love those shiny metal bowls.