Blog Birthday!

On this date, 14 years ago, I started this blog. It has been my art journal.
To those of you who read this blog, thank you for reading!

 

I love the Peruvian Lily, Alstroemeria. I buy the bouquets 

all the time lately. They last & last.

When I want to warm up for painting, they are handy to grab

and set-up in a still life. I can at least get this painting started before 

thinking about and readying for the "main" painting. I may finish it,

or it will just sit and wait.

I must love them, because I just realized today that 

I had made three paintings of these flowers in the last few months.

Here is how I went about this recent

painting and then at the end I will 

show a pic of the three paintings together.

This sketch 👆 is just for me to get the hang of the vase,

and the main blossom.

This also is just messing around with the charcoal 

to get my mind into the flowers.

This is a teensy thumbnail sketch for the composition. 

I had decided to use a cradled panel my husband made me that was 18 x 12 inches, 

 ready with two coats of PVA and an oil underpainting.

I set the vase on a chair and was

looking down at the still life.

I forgot to take more progress photos! 

Here is one partway thru ... 

the sign (arm's length) was for another painting I was doing.

The vase is made of pottery 

with an awesome gold glaze on the rim.

A close up

Alstroemerias I I I    oil on cradled panel   18 x 12 x 1 inch

L to R

Alstroemerias    oil on canvas  16 x 12 (Oct 2021)

Alstroemerias II     oil on Multimedia Artboard  10 x 8 (Dec 2021)

Alstroemerias III  18 x 12 (Jan 2022)

Think there may be a little touching up to do on this last

painting, but i thought for my blog's anniversary

I'd post this.

Thanks so much for reading 

and if you blog, happy blogging!

... as always, 

Happy Painting!

💚

First post, 2022 (Challenge #1)

Hi dear blog readers!

For my first blogpost of 2022 we go back to 2021 ...
... to the first painting challenge of the pandemic.

Painting Challenge #1 

Parameters
1. Zorn palette:

       - Yellow ochre

   - Ivory black

                        - Vermillion or Cad Red Light

       - Titanium white
                2. Street scene & landscape
            3. Mixed media (inclusions)

We met for our reveal in the first quarter of 2021. It is just so exciting to see what

each of us has done with our limited parameters.

Old Sins Cast Long Shadows      20 x 16  acrylic, toothpicks 
by Patrick Ripp

Under the Boardwalk     12 x 10   oil, newsprint   
by Timi Johnson

We forgot to take photos of the grouping, 

so I cobbled this image together from single photos.

Needless to say, the colors harmonize well.

This was my inspiration for my street scene. Of course i had to add

a landscape in there somewhere (parameter#2) ... i would call this

 a cityscape, wouldn't you?

Here 👇 is my original sketch.

From my brain.

Gridded out with some changes. 

Note the vanishing point lightly drawn in ... this is important to remember.

Began sketching in the scene on my cradled 12 x 16 prepared panel, 

on a light blue underpainting.

i had no idea how this would turn out. 

The Zorn palette is certainly tricky for a landscape (for me).

To make green, from our limited palette, i used yellow ochre 

and ivory black (which is a cooler, bluish black).

... if you would like to learn a bit more about blacks,

HERE is a nice post 

from James Gurney, a painter/educator whose work i really admire.

So i got to this point and was not satisfied. 

My inclusions for the "mixed media" part (parameter#3) of the challenge

were marble dust and cold wax.

i have a nice straight-edge from Home Depot that i picked up and began 

putting paint on the edge and "drawing" lines to the vanishing point.

Wasn't sure if this was going to wreck the whole thing; 

i just kept going, finding more straight lines to match up. 

It was really fun!

My final piece turned out to be something that i could appreciate. My husband still doesn't like the curvy street in the street scene, but that's ok. 

Drive Through   
 12 x 16 x 1.5 inches   oil, CWM*, marble dust on prepared cradled panel

i don't have this painting up on my website yet; will do soon!

My fine art website is fairly new (yay!) and will always be

a work in progress.

i hope you will check it out,

sign up for my occasional newsletter 

and let me know in the comments below here what you are working on!

TeriRobusStudio

Thank you so much for reading all of this.
Take very good care and happy painting!

🎨

*CWM = cold wax medium (i use Dorland's brand.)