Valentine's Day Flowers, Revisited

I scraped down the painting I'd started in the kitchen and worked it back up today.  The result is looser, more luminous and is a much more emotional painting.  Better.

Valentine's Day Flowers - Painting in the Kitchen

It's snowing, it's cold, and I have a huge bouquet of flowers fading fast from Valentine's Day.   I set up today in the kitchen since I couldn't get the flowers to my studio.

It got dark as I was getting a sense of where the painting was going.  Depending on how the flowers survive the night, this may be all I get of them.

Ties, Hat

I think it's time to send the ties off to the donation bin...

Shirt & Tie

I started on a new shirt & tie painting today in the studio..  It took me some time to figure out how to tie the tie and I didn't get it quite right, but I think it's a fine match for the wrinkled shirt.

Ties of the 1990s

Painting Ties

There was a pile of ties destined for a donation bin and I've decided to paint them before sending them on to their next life.  As I was hanging them up, I was thinking that I must have seen a painting of ties, couldn't place it at first.  A Google search for Thiebaud and ties came up with his 1969 painting Row of Ties.  He painted ties hanging on a rod and the 60s wide ties with swirling patterns were definitely more vivid than the drab 90s ties my husband was taking out of circulation.  I'm a bit sorry that I looked up the Thiebaud ties, but I plan on painting these and making the image my own.  Here's the start in the studio.

market flowers

I've been working on this, slowly, over the past week or so.  It's the flower market at Pike Place Market in Seattle, a place I visited last year.  I'm not sure if I've hit the sweet spot between enough detail and too much detail.

Painting the Nude

Today we had the same model as last week, same pose.  I brought a larger canvas, it helped.  We've got her again next week, stay tuned.  I didn't want to paint her foot today, and set up the composition so that it wasn't on the canvas, which clearly is a lousy way to deal with a painting problem. I did like the foot that tucks under her leg, though.

Flowers, after the figure - updated

I painted a nude figure in the studio yesterday and I was not getting in the groove, not at all.  I have nothing to show for that effort.  I made the mistake of using a pretty small canvas and it went downhill from there.  We'll have that model next week and I hope to make a better showing of it next week.

For now, here's more flowers, painted using a photo from Maine last summer as a reference.  Good way to cheer up in the gray of winter.

The painting started out just fine, but I went back into it today to lighten the grassy lawn and create stronger contrast between the lawn and the trees at the background.  I ended up giving the flower stems a stronger role in the painting and I like the energy they add.

this is how it started last week

this is how it looks in final form

Another sketch of the unexpected - Metro Goat - Updated!

this is the start of the work 

Continuing my exploration of "what if" skteches, the view of blinding light that awaits at the top of the escalator has been replaced by a goat in Tuscany.  Maybe that would put a smile on the face of haggard commuters coming up from the metro.

I'm not sure when or if I'll turn these sketches into larger paintings, but the ideas are flowing.

I worked on this some more today, I figure I might as well take the sketch to a greater resolution, so here it is: