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!

🎨

Thirteenth Blogiversary!

Macarons  digital image

My first blog post, January 26, 2008
was not very interesting ... not one picture!

Reading it, the memories of that first (& only) digital art class 

while attending UAS (U of Alaska Southeast) are flooding back.

... and all these years later, I am interested in

learning about digital art. I think it could help me design

my painting compositions. 

It will not take away my love of actual painting, drawing 

using real pencils, pastel or charcoal, I do know that!

Tangerines
(recent digital art that i am attempting to learn)

Above is my work from a tutorial by a with-it gal named Lisa Bardot.
She conducts her tutorials on her YouTube channel and
is very fast and really good with her digital illustrations.
When she slows down, she is a very good teacher. I need s-l-o-w when I am learning a massively complex thing like Procreate.

So, that first Digital Art Class 13 years ago, mostly taught Photoshop (gaaak)

but got me started to explore more art, 

and I specifically targeted painting. 

I definitely didn't learn as much as I wanted in that class, 

but it was the jumping off point for this blog and

that is a good thing.

During this pandemic, I did do a bit of painting and blogging 

but lately have had a dry spell (my last post was nearly 2 months ago). 

That's ok, it happens. It takes time and energy to blog 

and there is certainly time, but no energy for it.

But I hope to get back to it with more consistency and today is a great day to begin.

I guess kind of where I left off for unfinished paintings was my DOR series. 

Two DOR paintings are almost finished and one is sitting there in my mind, ready to begin.

(That link takes you to the first post about the series, with unfinished progress shots.) 

I would like to take you through more of my painting process

for this first piece,

so here is more progress since the Dec 3 post:

Most of the painting takes place flat on a table.

There are layers going on and some

scraped off.

This was a stencil shape I tried.

This is fairly close to how it will look in finished form.

If you have questions about the CWM (cold wax medium) 

let me know and I will try to answer to the best of my ability. 

I have not been working in cold wax for long, 

so I am experimenting all the time with it.

🎵Happy Blogiversary to me🎵

and

I hope you are all safe and healthy and thinking about getting 

your vaccinations one of these days!

😷

🎨

Southeast (Alaska) Mood

I think the best paintings might get painted quickly, 
when you are not thinking too much and maybe are distracted a bit.

Plein air painting can be like that.

While painting at the Shrine of St Therese one early spring day, 

this is what happened to me.

We had just arrived for our painting retreat

and some of us rushed outside to catch a couple of

hours painting time.

I didn't go very far from the lodge, a couple of steps away. 

Just beside the labyrinth.

I didn't even take any progress photos.

When I got the painting home and lived with it for awhile,
I realized there was too much sky. 

So I cut it off.

And it works now.

Southeast Mood        oil on Arches Huile paper mounted on Masonite     

en plein air     8.75 x 15.5 inches   

Dorland's CWM varnish    

Here it is in its beautiful frame made by my own hubby.💞

Looking back, I did a post about the retreat, here, and this painting

was in the post. But it doesn't hurt to talk about it again, I think. 

Especially when I like the painting.

Hope you are hanging in there. Please take good care and give yourself

some quality time during the holidays.

Paint!

🎨

The Brightest One - a painting

Hi out there in Neverland.

This is a detail of the latest thing I have finished painting. 

 
I'm also still working on my DOR project 
but not ready to post anything else 

besides my last post about it. Here.

About to begin my third DOR painting and I haven't even finished the first two! 

Here are the progress shots for The Brightest One,

including the photo of the still life bouquet that was my inspiration.

The background is a cardboard box cut out so a corner and walls remains.

The painting happened fairly quickly. Only a couple of shots of progress.

My goal was to paint with freedom and not too much thought. I had my colors picked out

and tools handy and began with large arm movements.

This really helped me to loosen up.

The unvarnished and unframed painting.

The Brightest One    oil on panel     16.5 x 11.75 inches

I just realized that this painting has a really nice Thanksgiving-ish color scheme. 

So I am wishing you all a good Thanksgiving - 

and

try to find things to be grateful for.  

It will help your day (any day).

and

be good to your fellow human.

Thank you for checking this blog. Stay safe and warm.

🦃