Accidental Hiatus and Life According to my Iphone

Didn't mean to disappear this month. Time to show the blog some love again. 

This little collage will get you up to speed:

Oh, and ignore the duplicates, please. I'm annoyed at myself for doing that too... but as they say, Perfection is the enemy of the good. Or something like that.

So, it's been a busy month! A little explanation, you say?

Top to bottom (left to right):

Row 1:

(a) Theo got his very own carpet square in my studio. The typical afternoon in the life of the studio pup. (b) A little nocturnal painting action. (I'll post a photo of the outcome soon.) (c) Epic morning at the easel! I've been itching to paint a good waterfall this summer. My wish came true during a family vacation to Garrett County, MD. This was Swallow Falls National Park.

Row 2:

(a) Inspired by some fabulous Australian Impressionists, like Arthur Streeton, to paint a tall 'n' skinny. (b) This is a flashback to June. Taken by my mother. (c) I am still recovering from this one. Beautiful morning on the dock, despite the intermittent rain, almost falling in the water (with all my gear), a skinned knee, dropping my fav Rosemary brush in the lake, toes falling asleep (Raynaud's Syndrome), and getting a little sea-sick from the rising and falling of the dock with each passing motor boat. Still glad I did it.:)

Row 3:

(a) The banks of the James in Charles City. (b) One of the sailboats floated away while I was painting it. This was also Garrett County, MD. (c)  Lazare Gallery. Such a treat.

Row 4:

(a) Painting with a "limited color palette". It's the trim that never ends. It goes on and on my friends. (b) Delicious color palette for the sky of a commissioned painting. (c) Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. A fabulous week with my extended family.

Row 5:

(a) Working on the greens. (b) The big brush for the big sky. (c) One of my many studio paintings this month. I'll post it soon.

Row 6:

(a) I was standing on top of a 30 foot waterfall. So fun! (b) Duplicate (c) Duplicate

 Row 7:

(a) Back to June. This was Jockey's Ridge, NC. The older brother is attached to one of those kites. And we named the raft Ginguite. A story for another time. (b) The pup! We went trail running sprinting/stopping/sniffing/leash-tangling. (c) It's sewing time with Grammie. :)

 

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A Commission in the works

Hope you all are having a good holiday. I missed some time painting last week, so I spent the majority of the day in the studio with this one:

 Below is a  18x24" painting I've been working on for the last few weeks. I'm enjoying the intense spring colors. Those blues, yellows and reds are so delicious.

The biggest challenge with this house portrait is the perspective of the garage. It looked awkward even in the photos. I've spend I don't know how many hours moving the angles of the roof, shutters, siding a millimeter over and a millimeter back again and again. 

So many lessons I should have learned already. Don't attempt to paint something that looks wrong before you even begin.

I'm still not happy with the angles, but it will have to wait for another day.

To be continued.

Landing in the new home.

Since my last post...

We packed up everything we own, which wasn't that much, since we were moving from a one bedroom condo.

We closed on our big beautiful house.

Had our first house guests.

Emptied our moving truck into our new home! 

I would definitely call this house a cleaner-upper, as opposed to a fixer-upper. It's got good bones, but quite a bit of grime had settled over the years. According to the neighbors there were 6 cats living in the house before the previous owner passed away. We found one of them behind the oven.

We replaced all the appliances, some of which we were expecting to replace. Others, after using once or twice we didn't feel they were particularly safe.

Other things, like reclaiming the driveway from the overgrown bushes, replacing wax seals, leaking faucets, getting rid of the mother of all yellow jackets nests, repairing screens from the porch, painting the ceilings, wall & trim for the (very likely) first time since the house was first constructed, replacing all the light bulbs with compact fluorescent (one of the many joys of having a husband who works for the power company)

 Yeah, I knew you wanted to see that last one. ;)

And what post would be complete without a photo of Mr. Theo in his new sunny spot.

Thanks for reading! 

I'll be back to posting the artwork very soon.

In the meantime...

I don't have new artwork to post, so I thought I'd share a few photos from the rest of life with you folks.

After a summer of Insanity, I've gotten back into running. Purchased by first pair of barefoot Merrells on sale at DSW just in time for my favorite running season -- fall.

I've been trying to figure out my food intolerances, which has been time consuming and frustrating. It seems like the foods change every day.

 

Sweet potatoes are on the "safe" list (so far) so I am happy.

 I entered "Summer's Glow" to the Crossroads Art Center All-Media Show and was honored to receive a red ribbon.

I'm working on two different quilts with two wonderful women -- my mother-in-law and my grandmother. Unfortunately I only have a photo of one to share.

The biggest news is that we sold our condo and, yep, that is our contract pending on a house!

  

That's right. We are going to have our own four walls and our own yard. Right now it's a mess of weeds, but we're hoping get the flower beds, vegetable garden and koi pond going again.

 

One day it might appear in a painting or three, or many.

 

Mark thought we were looking for a house, but really I was on the hunt for the perfect studio space. I think we found both.

 

Theo doesn't quite know what to think of it all.

 

Honestly, neither do I. If all goes according to plan we will be moving into the house in two weeks. In the meantime, please excuse me if a little dust gathers here on the blog.

My Framer is the Coolest

Today I stopped in to Collector's Gallery to pick up a few of my framed paintings (the two below and one that was immediately taken to Caturra and hung, Bright Morning):

After talking a bit David Humphrey puts this in my hands:

Um. how amazing and kind is that? He framed the article about my project to painting the town of Midlothian. We don't get the newspaper and I hadn't seen the printed form of the article yet. I thought it was only published online. Anyway. David Humphrey is great.

And here's one-to-grown-on, just because it cracks me up. What a pup. :)

A Green Monster

The color green.

Love it and hate it.

It's the color of summer, life, growth, strength. It's very appealing in a small piece, but quickly gets tricky to handle in larger pieces. And by larger pieces I mean anything over 11x14. :)  

Here's a snapshot of two of my works-in-progress.

Green and green...

Theo always wants to get in on the camera action.

And lets me know he has a green rope toy, too.

Back to the point. Stapleton Kerns wrote a timely article on how to deal with the greens of the summer landscape. Wonderful, wonderful article.

http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2012/06/dealing-with-summer-greens.html

Fantastic bit on smuggling red into your paintings: 

Good color in landscape painting often calls for recognizing the role various reds have in the color notes of the painting. There's a story about a venerable New England painter who taught a lot of workshops. At the end of a long day he would run up and down the line of students, outside at their easels when he was tired and he would just say to each of them "more red, more red!" It sounds silly but it was more than a joke, because it WAS good advice. Almost every learning painter fails to get enough red into a painting. I try to weave a lot of it in as it steps on all of those greens that are so annoyingly ...........green. It also takes the electric look out of a sky and keeps shadow notes from being too icy. Red is a wonder product!

I love how Steven Goodman paints his greens. There is always a bit of "pure" green, but the majority of the greens tend toward yellow, orange, blue or brown. I get that hot summer green feel from some of his works.

Today I'm painting reds, yellows and blues into my greens.