Lemon in Harmony

5"x7"

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v mc m j h xcvmxc,dxc;szdxjcnfhgkg nnukikjrtgdzsghnk.lk,klyjh igo tttttu 6re4ty6568

That was Nugget's contribution to the post, if you were wondering. An I always mean to post early in the day, but it never actually happens....

Anywho. I'm loving this one- that pink was so much fun, and it works so well with the brightness of the lemon....

#1126

Full Moonlight

6"x6"

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It was a beautiful day, the sort of day that makes you believe that springtime is here, now, right at the end of January. I wish. We went to Duke Gardens today, first trip of the year, and that was wonderful.... and here's some pretty moonlight to keep the day going :)

#1125

Silver Skull III

6"x8"

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I tried to come up with a creative title for this one, honest.... ok, gotta go, Nugget is squawking at me :(

Backlit Lemon

6"x8"

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Much better! Nothing I'd do in my bigger pieces, it's too loose, but I think I really got the 'feel', you know?

#1123

Apricots on Windowsill

6"x8"

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This one.... I dunno. But we learn from everything, that's why we do dailies, right?

#1121

Key Shadow

6"x8"

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Here's a daily for you! It was inspired by a David Brega piece from back in the seventies, I saw it in this last American Art Collector and just loved the idea and tried it on my own, got a bunch of reference pics over at my parents house with an old dresser of theirs... I think you'll be seeing me use it again :D

#1121

The Hand of Time

18"x24"

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Sorry I missed the last couple of days! I've been all obsessed with a couple of non-dailies and haven't been doing my little bitty ones like usual.... and, well, I wanted to share these anyways :)

#1120

Anna

18"x24"

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#1119

Waterfall

18"x36"

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#1118

Pressure and Reflection

8"x10"

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This piece, for me, is related to the one I shared yesterday... same size, same mostly subdued colors, and the nut-thing is from the same bin at my mechanic's :) The mirror ball you've seen before, the c-clamp is something from my parent's house...

You know how you read articles about great still life painters, and the interviewer mentions that he or she walks in the studio and sees all of these objects that seem so familiar, because they've seen them in a bunch of the artist's paintings? That's always made me smile, I guess because I know it'd be the same if someone came over here, and because it would be so, so cool to go over to the studio of a still-life painter I really admire and see the real objects and compare them to the artist's idea of them, you know? Scale and color intensity and if maybe one things has been painted so many times that it has become something entirely different in its painted life than it is in reality...

#1117

Study in Circles

8"x10"

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Yay for a more complex still life! The two metal washers and the dark sphere (the head off the gear shift for a lawn mower, believe it or not) are things I bummed out of my awesome mechanic's awesome bits and pieces of randomness bin while I was getting an oil change, and combining them with the beautiful little flask shaped glass vase and some water... Beautiful, and completely unexpected.

And in case you're actually wondering- no, soooo not a daily :)

#1116

Forest Dawn

12"x24"

sold

This was done as a commissioned piece- I had been wanting to paint from this particular batch of reference photos but hadn't worked up the nerve- they looked so difficult! But it was a real joy to paint, and it is happily installed in its new home now :)

#1115

The Blue Tractor

6"x8"

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Weird for me, I know. Really different. But I love the feel of it, and I'm thinking about trying it again, but way bigger. Like three foot by four foot. I'll let you know if I work up the nerve for it :)

#1114

Lady Apples

3"x5"

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Yes, these little guys had to be shipped all the way across the country.... but they're so adorable I couldn't resist. And they're so small that Nugget will pick them up and eat them like a really tiny for-real apple! It's so cute...

#1113

The Blue Marble

2"x3"

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I am having way to much fun with the I-get-to-paint-tiny-little-things-on-tiny-little-canvases thing...

#1112

Pecan Halves

2"x3"

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Hahaha, post number one thousand one hundred and eleven! Now wouldn't it have been cool if that had happened a few days ago on January eleventh 2011?

'nother one of those tiny little stretched canvases, so I get to paint life-sized pecan halves, which is so cool! I had an awful time keeping the baby away from them while I was working on the painting, though....

#1111

The Close Up

6"x8"

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I'm doing my best to bring summer back, aren't I? No, this isn't an import- I got it at the farmers market over the summer and took a bunch of reference pictures. Looks lucious, doesn't it? I think I might finally be getting a handle on how to do the stem part of an eggplant...

#1110

Broken Shell and Golden Mean

9"x12"

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Like a lot of artists, I'm a sucker for texture. And the broken shell idea... it has everything, right? Texture, subtle color shifts, a sense of history and place, the beautiful balance that comes with the shell itself...

The spiral thingey in the background is meant to represent the mathmatical perfection of something like this, even in its worn state. Maybe especially in its worn state. I have it framed and up on the wall in my studio right now- I'll try to post a picture of that sometime soon, it just glows :)

#1109

The Black Lighter

2"x3"

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Trying a different strategy for warming the world today :D

#1108

Tuberoses Detail

2"x3"

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Still all icy- so not leaving the house today. I am quite certain I've gone three years here in North Carolina without seeing a flake of snow, and this is our fifth round this season! Wild.... Anywho, more wishful thinking in the form of flowers today. Even though tuberoses are more of a late summer thing...

And my tiny princess is 15 months old today. All grown up :)

#1107

Longing for Spring

3"x5"

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Truly, this has got to have been the coldest winter ever... and it's only January! So here's some wishful thinking, in the form of a pretty pink tulip.

#1106

Egg XXV

6"x8"

sold

I think this is my favorite raw egg piece so far! Probably because of the shell- the depression where it's all cracked somehow came out just right.... and the multi-layered pools of egg white are kind of cool, too. I think I mostly got lucky with how this one cracked and stared to pour out :)

#1105

Egg XXIV

6"x8"

sold

I love how blue and gold go together....

#1104

Avacado Half

6"x8"
sold

And now my more usual view of an avacado. A lot of green gold and naples yellow goes into the flesh of an avacado when I paint it, and you have to be really careful to keep that wonderful, creamy consistency- nothing like the crispy texture of that apple shalf from a few days ago, for instance. I think I do it mostly through the thickness of the paint- you let it kind of sparkle across the underlying texture of the canvas for the apple, but you keep it as smooth and rich as possible for something buttery like this...

And a picture of my little Nugget- I realized it's been a while since I posted one of these! This is her all passed out in the carseat, with the snow-tinted sunlight shining in...
#1103

Whole Avacado

6"x8"

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Couldn't resist the light on this one :) I'd never painted an intact avacado before- the inside is so much prettier than the outside- but the outside has a certain charm.

I can't see one of these things anymore without reliving this moment I had while reading Hemingway.... he was talking about feeding one of his cats "alligator pears" and how odd it was that the cat liked them, how it would ride on his shoulder as he walked around outside and how much he loved it, and I was having this tickle in the back of my mind, knowing I should know what an alligator pear was, and then bam, I remember that it's an avacado!

So of course I thought about a cat who eats avacados and likes riding around on shoulders the whole time I did this painting. It made me smile.

#1102

Soda Top

2"x3"

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This was an impulsive choice for a still life subject, that's for sure, but I kind of like it. Metal is always challenging, especially flat greyish stuff like this, and I love painting things life sized (like this) or sometimes larger...

And someone- "a painting friend"- posted a comment on my tequila shot painting giving me suggestions on photographing these little bitty paintings, and it was a lot of help- this one definitely came out a lot clearer!

#1101

Halved Apple

6"x8"

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Hehe, post number eleventyhundred... this apple half, it kind of reminds me of Orinana Kacicek, and since I absolutely lovelovelove her paintings that is a happy for me...

#1100

Red and Green

6"x8"

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Experimenting, a little bit. The white background is actually just the blank canvas, and the pear itself, the color is a combination of quinacridone magenta and green gold, very beautiful transparent colors that work surprisingly well together, and then the neutrals are vandyke brown, paynes grey, and just a little bit of white. Maybe my goal was to do a really transparent, set it and forget it sort of painting, and I guess for me it is- you can go back and fuzz but so much with all transparent colors and no paint on the background :) It's got a nice glow to it, this way...

#1099

A Little Seed

2"x3"

sold

Isn't this adorable? I am so in love with these tiny little stretched canvas- they're so adorable, and you can paint tiny little things like acorns life-sized without making them feel all lonely like they would on a larger canvas :)

#1098

Put a Cork in It

2"x3"

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Hehehe... same stupid problem with the fuzzies, but this was so much fun to paint!

#1097

Tequila Shot

2"x3"

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It's next year. As usual, I don't feel anydifferent.

But the blog is three years old now. I wonder if it feels any different?

A little better with the fuzziness issue... but I would very much appreciate any suggestions on photographing these little monsters! This is such a gorgeous painting, honest...

#1096

Shell Fragment

2"x3"

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This is going to drive me crazy- this is an absolutely adorable little painting, but I can't get a clear picture of it for love now money! I'm betting it's the size...

In a few hours it'll be next year. The weather is finally back to a normal sort of North Carolina winter- fifty-ish and drizzly, which is a huge relief from that psycho cold we've been having....

And I got to go see the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art today! It was amazing, absolutely amazing.

I know he was an illustrator. But aren't we all, in some way or another? I knew he had a sense of humor, I knew he was amazing at creating expressions and emotions....

What I didn't know was how absolutely breathtaking his brushwork was. Glazes here, negative painting there, thick daubs in just the right spots, not a wasted motion or a single goofy "hey look at me, I'm oil paint" slappy gob-on-gob thing... just whatever he needed to create the illusion, you know? To give life. It was amazing :)

#1095

Bonescape

6"x8"

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It's my birthday. I'm twenty eight today.

Which is weird, but not for any good reason. Maybe I had some kind of delusion, that once I had Nugget I'd quit aging? I dunno. She's fourteen months old now, and all grown up, my very silly little princess. So, she's half in months of what I am in years... which might officially make me old as dirt :D

I decided to do something different today, zooming in on that awesome cow skull around the eye socket and doing what I'm calling a bonescape.

#1094

Sophie

8"x10"

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Puppy portrait! Now that it's after Christmas, I can share this one, and I'm so glad- I'm very proud of how it came out. Sadly Sophie passed away this year, and this portrait was commissioned as a Christmas gift in memory of her...

#1093

Green Pears

6"x8"

sold

Snow still on the ground, and it's supposed to be seventy degrees on New Year's Day- welcome to North Carolina :) It makes the pears make more sense, though, doesn't it? These two struck me as having an awful lot of character :)

#1092

Tea Commission, part 2

8"x8"

sold

Yep, loving on the tea. It amazes me how many different types of beautiful teacups there are... though of course. I gravitate toward one or two in my collection over and over again. It'll be interesting to see if those favorites change, over time...

#1091

Tea Commission, part 1

8"x8"

sold

I had forgotten how much I love these cup-of-tea paintings... they just glow so wonderfully :) This was one of two- I'll share the other tomorrow :)

#1090

Study in Sienna

6"x6"

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The snow held out till late enough for a wonderful Christmas day, and I have to admit, having my little Nugget is helping me to actually like the snow for the forst time in at least a decade.... I guess I have to enjoy anything she enjoys so much, and looks so cute in :)

Something warm, here- my favorite little teapot.

#1089

Waterlily

6"x8"

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All I want for Christmas is warm weather.... and it ain't gonna happen. You know we're supposed to have snow on Christmas for the first time since (I can't believe this either) 1909? That'll throw a wrench in some holiday plans, I'm sure. I'm glad I don't have to get on a plane... hugs and best wishes to all of you that do! And all of you that don't. Hugs and best wishes all around :)

#1088

Breaking Clouds

6"x6"

sold

We've been having some really odd cloud formations around here lately, and today I pulled over with my camera to get some reference pics... really like the result, even if though I got a bit fanciful with the colors :)

#1087

Egg XXIII

6"x8"

sold

Sorry about the delay in posting, things are kinda crazy around here. Of course. Like they're not crazy at your house too, huh?

And I don't know what on earth it is about raw eggs, but something.... I'm gonna be high up enough in the roman numerals soon that I'll have to start looking up how I'm supposed to write them out! How did people ever do math with those boogers, anyways?

#1086

Egg XXII

6"x8"

sold

#1085

Egg XXI

6"x8"

sold

#1084

Mother and Child

6"x8"
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Gah, I've been having some serious glare issues lately, haven't I? Need to look into that...

Anyways, this is a totally awesome little statue from Haiti that was just begging to be painted. And then it needed something more, so I rolled in a marble.

#1083

Satin Bow

6"x8"

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Something a little more seasonally appropriate. It was fun to paint, even though Nugget kept running off with the subject... so then I'd have to retrieve it, and lay it out as close as I could to the way it was.... my little helper :) Painting is different with my little fourteen month old in the studio, that's for sure! But I wouldn't have it any other way.

#1082

Seagull Feather

6"x8"

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It seems I am still trying to summon summertime with my daily paintings... and failing dramatically, at least here in Durham, North Carolina! So is it the coldest winter in like ever elsewhere, too?

#1081

Green Glass

6"x6"

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Gr, glass bottles get so tricky! Especially when they're kind of tinted, and you're trying to make the light more dramatic than it actually is :-/ Note to self: for the umpteen millionth time, just paint what is there. Once that's right, then you can start playing around :)

#1080

Heirloom on Blue

6"x8"

sold

'nother tomato, and this one looks even more nummy... I'm a summertime sort of person, that's for sure!

#1079