Salon Challenge #3 (Part 1)

Painting Challenge #3

Two-inch paint brush 

Human figure

Limited Palette of 4 colors:

Azo Coral

Cadmium Red Light

Burnt Umber

Burnt Sienna

(White)

We've had a good long while to finish this painting

(about 3 months)

 and so we all decided to

reveal them at Barbara's house a few days ago.

Our reveal was so exciting!

Here are my progress shots.

Our palette!

Sketch of my subject. 

The photo I found for my painting (on one of the art blogs I follow) 

was fairly monotone to begin with; 

it felt just right for this limited palette. 

I requested and acquired permission to use the photo 

from the artist/photographer Melanie Kobayashi and this is her website:

Bag and a Beret

Her post where I found the photo is HERE 

... keep scrolling down in her blog 

to see the actual photo that I "stole".

Charcoal and alcohol to set sketch on board.

I drew what her legs might look like under the dress 
to be sure of placement of the dress, etc.

Hazy wanted to check the painting out. 
I wasn't happy with the dress looking so transparent.

Fought Against   oil on wood panel    36 x 24 inches

(There are a couple of final touches I want to make, but this is essentially finished.)

Close-up  -  the lips are Cad Red Light!

Mel's actual photo, flipped by me.

Stay tuned for my next post 

which will be photos of my salon colleagues' challenge paintings!

Thank you SO MUCH Melanie K  💕 for giving me permission to use this photo and 

for taking such fun and crazy photos for your blog. I wish you all the best!

AND

Thank you all for checking in to this crazy irregular blog!

Red Flower Pots

💘

Texture. Texture. Texture.

Say that word enough times 

and it begins to sound just ridiculous.

But - I picked out a canvas that I had gessoed long ago

and either had some thick gesso left over 

or 

a thick acrylic medium of some kind 

that I dripped and dropped on the canvas. 

It left a nice texture. 

I have oodles of "to paint" photos on my computer, 

 so I found a nice flower photo that I thought might work

on this textured canvas. 

The following are a few pics of my painting process.

For the composition, I used a photo I took at my Mom's house.  

(The flower pot b&w on the iPad shows in the photo above.)

Not sure what I had in mind when I put a greenish underpainting with 

some purple and blue smears of paint on the canvas ...

 but along with the texture, it makes a good underpainting now.

You can see the drippy texture 

under those first drawing brushstrokes. 

It doesn't look very nice at this stage.

About a third of the way done.

Red Flower Pots         oil on canvas        8 x 8 inches

The combo of reds, purples and greens are nice - quite a simple palette.

This was a really fun painting to do on a couple of cold February days. 

💗Happy Valentine's Day!💖

Thank you for viewing my blog!

Ilulissat painting

I have been painting away on this little Greenland landscape and having

fun with the quaint houses that are impossibly

placed together on the rocky hillside.

The underpainting was a warm brown tone that still peeks

through in spots on the finished piece. 

I hope the eye moves 

from the bottom left in an "S" shape, 

or maybe it is a "C" shape ... a zigzag?

- winding up to the top left.

Some of the houses mysteriously changed color :)

As you see in these progression shots, 
more and more houses were appearing.

I counted 25 or 27 buildings, or what could be buildings.

I think those are kayaks near the shore up on their racks, 
and there is some kind of antennae on almost every house.

The smooth rocks in the foreground must have been rounded by glaciers.

and

NO TREES

A reminder of what I started with:

photo by Evelyn Hannon of the travel website http://journeywoman.com/

And this is my interpretation of that photo:

Village of Ilulissat, Greenland    10 x 12 inches   oil on panel

I would like to thank Evelyn Hannon again for giving me permission
to use her wonderful photo of this sweet village in Greenland.

I think this was a good exercise.

Thank you so much for following along!

Ilulissat progress

I made the sketch seen on the previous post

 to familiarize myself with the scene of 

the village of Ilulissat, in Greenland,

and made a copy of that pencil sketch 

 so I could add some color with watercolor sticks.

Derwent "Artbar" watercolor sticks - don't think they make them anymore (?).

In the photo below, my colored sketch is to the left of the painting.

I don't know about you,

but to see the photo in black & white and do the sketches

helps me to get the painting set in my mind.

(Even then, things happen when painting that weren't planned -

sometimes good, sometimes ... oops.)

Pretty happy with this start.

Thanks for looking in - and if you are a painter doing 

the February 28 Paintings in 28 Days,

I wish you happy painting!

Painting on the easel today - gulp ...

I like to challenge myself, 
but I may have bitten off more than I can chew today ...

I saw this photo on Instagram back in July 
and told myself that I wanted to try to do my version of it in (oil) paint.

Ilulissat, Greenland - photo by Evelyn Hannon

So I actually wrote to Evelyn Hannon to ask her permission to try it. 
She graciously said yes!

Evelyn writes the website http://journeywoman.com/ and

I follow her on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/evelynhannon/.

If you have not been to her website or looked at her IG, 
please check it out. 
She takes some amazing photos and travels all over the place! 
A woman after my own heart!

Initial sketch to get my head around what to do. (approx 7 x 9 inches, pencil)

Found some 10 x 12 inch panels I had prepared sitting nearby, 
and decided this to be a perfect size. 
It would be so great to have a big studio to make some GIANT paintings, tho'
... 
like 50 x 60 inches!)

So this is what is on the easel so far. I will post again with further progress (I hope!).

Thanks for checking in!

Happy happy painting!

btw - who is out painting in the snow? 
We actually have some - I need to get out!!!!

Happy New Painting Year!

It seems like people's attention is more attuned 

these days to Instagram and Facebook (those links go to my pages at those sites).

So sometimes I post my painting snippets to those social media sites.

But since this is a painting journal - of sorts - for me, 

I will continue putting my progressions with more detail here in this blog.

The story of Ann ...

On our trip to the East Coast last fall, 

I snapped a photo (in an airport)

of a lady with lots of personality. 

I made this sketch of her. 

Found a board for my substrate. (Matt cut it for me.)
I coated it with PVA.

Scratched in her basic form (bust) on a dark brown (oil) underpainting.

It dried quickly using my special medium*. 

 Nearly finished, with wet paint, I added my sig.

"Ann"   Oil on wood panel  18 x 12 inches

As you see here, Ann is a companion piece to Nan.

All I need now is a frame.

Thanks so very much for checking in.

Happy New Year everyone!

Happy painting!

*Let me know if you want the recipe.

Merry Christmas!

Block print anyone? 

I carved this one from a cork floor sample (approx 3.5 x 4.5 inches). 

It worked just fine! I found some very nice paper 

that took the block print ink so nicely. I used black ink only. 

Example below. These are our Christmas cards.

Dunlin - block print by TeriGardnerRobus, after carving by MatthewHRobus 

Dunlin - red cedar wood carving by MHRobus

I wanted to try a block print of one of Matt's carvings, so I sketched it first.

Dunlin sketch - 5 x 4 inches

Cork block with ink

Dunlin are amazing little shorebirds. They are highly gregarious in winter, sometimes forming large flocks on coastal mudflats or sandy beaches. Large numbers can often be seen swirling in synchronized flight on stop-overs during migration or on their winter habitat.

Here is a great photo of them.

Dunlin  (Calidris alpina)

Photo by: Jonn Leffmann

 [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], 

via Wikimedia Commons

Thank you to all who checked in during this past year. 

Best wishes for a Happy Holiday Season!

Salon Challenge #2

Our 2nd salon challenge was decided 
by picking items out of a hat.
(I mean the written word of the item.)  
We just blurted out things that might
be interesting to paint in a 

Cubist Still Life

and picked 4 out of a hat. We chose:

1 - A gourd or pumpkin

2 - An old shoe

3 - A round glass "thing" or bottle

4 - A sea shell

 I sketched my items, from all different perspectives, 
onto brown paper with charcoal 
and cut them out.

I wanted to make my cubism still life as a tondo 
because I had seen some cubist paintings made that way.

Examples of tondo shapes (they can be oval too):

Picasso - Still Life With Chair Caning - 1912

Braque - Still Life With Violin - 1914

Picasso and Braque as you may know
invented cubism.

We chose an 8 color palette:

Alizarin Crimson Permanent    
Cerulean Blue
Ultramarine Blue    
Yellow Ochre
Dioxizine Purple    
Phthalo Green    
Turquoise
White

Sketchbook sketch (about 5 x 5 inches)

I thought I might use more dividing lines, but I didn't.

Here is my sketch onto a panel 24" square.

I forgot to take painting progression photos ... 

Below are the photos when we revealed our cubist paintings.

Patrick's

Barbara's

Timi's

Apex    oil on panel     20 x 20 inches

Thank you so much for checking in!

Happy Painting!