Blogger Day

 Well, that's a new one. I have had this blog for 13 years
but had not heard of Blogger Day.

Hi everyone who reads this blog.

I have been painting outside mostly this summer, 

on nice days usually. This painting, though, is from a photo
I snapped while walking back from painting in the wetlands near the Juneau airport.   

The beautiful orange color of the airport doo-dads
against the blue of the big garage for airport vehicles got my attention. 

I did take a few progress shots: 

Airport Doo-dads (with Background)     oil on canvas    12 x 16 inches

(I will be adhering this to a board at some point, when finished. And framing it.)

My studio is going to be getting some TLC 

as soon as I get it emptied out so it can have a new floor, ceiling and walls!

So I have moved up to our "office" room.

I know people clean out their studios from time-to-time

but I have NEVER done it ...

so you can just imagine the STUFF I have to go through.

I have been throwing stuff away, I have! And I have a large box of paintings 

that I have deemed weak, so they will be sanded down. I have already sanded a couple and it is actually quite fun! Cathartic?

So this painting is going to sit a bit. I may thicken the paint and think of a new title. Any suggestions for a title off the top of your head?

Anyway, Happy Blogger Day!

and

Happy Painting

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Note: If you receive my blog posts by email, please know that Google is taking away Feedburner, the email subscription service. I am starting a website:

TeriRobusStudio

so signing up for my newsletter there on the website will be the best way to get blog news too, and any other announcements. 

I hope you will sign up for my newsletter! It will be a journey for us both!

Thank you for reading all the way to here!

Bouquet painting ... again!

Drawing and/or painting flowers and bouquets is a love of mine. 

This is a still life, from real life, that was a fun project. 

charcoal sketch

from

 this bouquet 👇

I felt like doing another bouquet painting
and i just happened to have this little

Mother's Day one. (Thank you Matt! 💓)

I had a board already made with gesso 

and some acrylic iridescent gold

splashed on it ... I think the gold was leftover from

painting a frame ... ?

Anyway, it looked like the size i wanted,

so I began to sketch (with charcoal first). Again I didn't think to take

more progress photos ... 

This one progress shot while painting indicates where 

those funny little buds are in the bouquet. 

I don't know what they are, do you?

I love the background iridescence in certain light.

These flowers, from Mother's Day ... are still holding strong, 

with a bit of trimming. 

So, when was that? Over 2 weeks ago! 

Amazing!

👇

Dusk Was Falling      11 9/16 x 9 inches    oil on prepared panel

Thanks for checking this blogpost out! I really do appreciate it!

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ps I have heard that the entity that transfers this blog to you via email (feedburner) will no longer be supporting my emails.

I am not sure what to do. I have heard of another service called "follow.it" that will send these blogposts out. I am very technically challenged so I hope I can figure it out.

Wedding Bouquet Painting (belated)

Our daughter and son-in-law 

got married a few years ago (well ... 7).

I had asked for a photo 

of their wedding bouquet and was sent it. 

I put it in my "to paint" album

and thought about it and how to do it from time to time

 ...

until I made a decision in March of this year. 

We were going to visit in April

 and I thought it would be nice 

to give the painting to them when we were there.

So here are the photos 

(none with progress with the paint ... i forgot)

 about this little sweet bouquet

 painted in acrylic!

I painted with acrylic so it would dry fast

to be able to pack it.

original photo

my set-up

my palette

Pi Day Wedding Bouquet
4 x 6 ? acrylic on prepared panel using micaceous iron oxide ground

Here is a link from Golden brand acrylics about Micaceous Iron Oxide.

I tried it out on this small panel and then put some gray gesso over;

and you can see it peeking out and in a good light

it might show some sparkle.

It is great for dry media, pastels or colored pencils

but can also be used with acrylic or oil paint.

Have you used it?

Found this vintage frame for the painting!

Thanks for looking!

I really appreciate your time.

I hope you are all well and looking forward 

to normalizing a bit as we all get vaccinated.

Get your vax! 

💓

The House Next Door

the house next door (b&w)

Hello!

I have been working on various things; 

a portrait commission, and my DOR paintings 

and just wanted a warm-up to start the day earlier this week.

This little painting was the result. 

I didn't take too many progress photos, but here are a couple.

This is the photo of my view of the house next door 

(from the sofa) ... good neighbors!

I found a nice panel already prepared and sketched the main

areas with charcoal and fixed it with the Spectrafix fixative 

for charcoal, and pastel.

This was my challenge, to see if I could do

a painting of this view, and actually

like the result.

I must say, that I think it turned out pretty well.

One happy happening, was that my plant on the sill,

a lipstick plant Aeschynanthus,

 had just popped out a quad of lipstick tube blooms!

 Here is the result of my efforts ... as you may have

noticed from the photo, 

there are many more alder branches

than what I painted in. 

Who wants to go crazy? I think it gave

the idea of alder branches with snow on them, so - 

no going batty trying to put them all (or even many) in!

The House Next Door   13.5 x 12 inches oil on prepared Masonite

Just want to mention, if you are still here, that my virtual gallery

show has a couple more days left for viewing.

Happy First Friday!

Go HERE 

to take a look at my Strong Women paintings. Please note that if you are on a cell phone or tablet, you must download the Exhibbit App but if you are on your laptop or desktop,

that link will take you right to my gallery.

Four have sold, and I am so grateful for the

people giving those paintings good homes!

Thank you so much for viewing this blogpost

and the show! 

Let me know if you have trouble with it by just responding

 to this email if you are subscribed.

Or, my email is teri.robus@gmail.com.

Happy Painting!

🎨

Oh and Happy Easter!

🐇

Teri's Virtual Art Gallery

 

Greetings dear blog readers!

It's March! Spring will be here soon!

I have decided to finally have a show of my 

Strong Women 

series of paintings, 

which I began sharing as blogposts in May 2020.

However, it will be a virtual show 

rather than a live, in-person exhibit. 😔

To enter & view, and read no more, just click here.

This body of work was begun without a series in mind, 

until I painted Ann, the companion to Nan . . .

That is when I began to think of other paintings with women featured. 

Thus began Strong Women. I feel it is fitting to share this series

in conjunction with International Women's Day,

 Monday 8 March 2021, running through April 7, 2021.

With each painting I tried to think of the woman and how this portrayal showed her strength. I worked mostly in oils (one has a bit of pastel) on a prepared ground on Masonite panel. 

I learned so much doing this series, 

and very much appreciate your attention!

Click here to enter the virtual exhibit. 

Oh by the way! I just opened my March/April 2021 Artists Magazine

and saw that Jerry Weiss wrote about 

the Artemisia Gentileschi exhibit at London's National Gallery. 

His article was a concise compilation of Artemisia's life and work; 

in conclusion he writes, 

"Artemisia formulated a new vision of woman as a heroic presence in art, both as creator and subject. In order for the artist to forge a transformative career, it was necessary for her to confront misogyny on both mundane and terrifying levels. Four hundred years later, she's an inspiration to women, who often face many of the same obstacles."

My final painting in this series addresses

this strong woman, plus another of our own time. 

See you in the (virtual) gallery!

And when you are there, be sure to click 

on the "media link" to view my blogpost

about each painting's process.

Teri's Virtual Art Gallery 

Paint like you train

This post is probably mostly for the art/painter nerds out there, like me, 

who want to know anything and everything about art, and how to do it. 

But I hope anyone with a little interest in color will enjoy it too.

 

Since I have been taking several online painting workshops

during this pandemic, my husband asked me the other day,

"So how are you going to put the things you are learning into practice

when you are painting?"

(To tell you the truth, I was wondering the same thing!)

Yer Za Vue, who taught the Exploring Color workshop that just ended yesterday, 

(online at WinslowArtCenter.com)

was asked that question from a workshop attendee, 

a question probably many of us were wondering. 

She said, (paraphrased) 

"you learn all about color theory and the different ways to apply it, then you go out to paint and all of that flies out of your head and you just paint".

I mentioned this to my husband and he said, "Oh it is kind of like the military or fight saying "_ train like you fight, fight like you train _"

So I shortened the saying and replaced "fight" with "paint" and it goes:

"Paint like you train" 

... and voila! . . . the learning

comes out as you paint! (you hope)

One the many takeaways from the class with Za for me was

the idea - Temperature Shift. 

For areas of a painting that you want to keep the color without changing the value (without muddy-ing), you can shift it's temperature by adding a bit of the color next to your chosen color on a color wheel,

to either warm it up or cool it down, depending on 

what your painting needs (or what you want to make up ... i.e. artistic license).

 

Here is my exercise chart with Temperature Shift,

using a blue and a red, along with the b&w to show

the attempt to mix high key, middle key and low key value examples.

It was amazing to do the exercise and try to keep the value as close to the original as possible. And the colors on the palette were gorgeous!

Here now is the little painting I made from a source photo Za shared.

Please note this is much redder in this photo than in real life. 

Please also note the sky - where I attempted to shift the temperature 

from warm near the setting sun, to cooler as you go up.

The other really neat exercise we did was desaturation of color,

also without changing the value.

I used Green and Yellow for these. Yellow is so high in value,

it is very hard to match that, so it doesn't look quite right.

Thanks so much for sticking with this post. Do you already do these

color techniques? Do you use the color wheel? 

Happy painting and be healthy and safe.

🎨

Strolling on an Eaglecrest Boardwalk

Detail from Strolling on an Eaglecrest Boardwalk

Hi all. Here is a bit of color for these gray February days!

 

A few September days in 2020 were glorious in Juneau

and we (Plein Rein Painters) met up at Eaglecrest to paint.

This boardwalk runs through the bushes and bogs 

of the muskeg and connects to trails in the area. 

I painted, not this, but another view that day, but I cannot find it, 

so maybe I painted over it or something.

Anyway ... I wanted to show you the way THIS (studio) painting developed.

Made a grid over my blue ground, for some reason I had this blue ground ...

I liked the way the boardwalk came in on the lower right
and the tree headed off the panel on the upper left.

After letting the painting sit for awhile, I asked my hubby

if he saw anything that might help the painting.

He mentioned that the trees were a little bare except for

the very tops, so I added some limbs here and there

along the trunk. They still look like Eaglecrest trees to me, too!

This month I am taking an online class learning about color. It is making me think about color more seriously than I have in the past.

For this painting, I realize it is mostly a complementary color scheme; blue & orange, with some green in there which borders on being a triadic color scheme. 

Color is so varied and amazing and each person sees color a teensy bit differently.

Strolling on an Eaglecrest Boardwalk    oil on prepared Masonite   14 3/4  x 12 1/4 inches

This painting still needs to have varnish for the darks to get some luster.

Thank you for checking in to this blog!

Stay healthy

&

Happy painting!

🎨

 

Art Podcasts, are you a listener?

 

detail of a cold wax + oil painting in-progress

Podcasts are great to listen to while painting or walking, or vacuuming! 
(Which is what I did for awhile today.) 

And today I listened to one that fit right in to my thoughts about painting in series.

It was "The Messy Studio"

https://messystudio.fireside.fm/165, 

hosted by Rebecca Crowell and her son Ross Ticknor.

I listen to this podcast because: 
1 - it's about art (duh) and 
2 - Rebecca is the co-author of the book Cold Wax Medium (CWM)

and is an artist creating interesting works in CWM and oil paint ...

at least I think they are interesting. 

Plus she always has cool subjects

 to discuss.

So, this isn't a huge post but I am giving "public" notice

that I am

continuing on with my series

DOR (Dead on Road) ...

(my blogpost on Oct 1, 2020

talked about it)

 ... and the podcast was reminding me that even though

there may be a halt or a hiccup here and there,

I am still very interested in completing

at least 5 paintings for the series. 

(Each one takes quite a bit of time, because I like to layer the oil & CWM  

so it will be a slowly developing series ...

and I am ok with that.)

detail from wip CWM painting (second in series)

If you have any questions about painting in series, check out that podcast

or shoot me a question in the comments box below.

See you next time! Take good care of yourselves!

🎨