Christmas Ornament with Eggs

Christmas Ornament with Eggs
11"x14" oil painting ckm 2012

This is a little Portmerion bowl with two eggs and a red Christmas ornament side lit by a window on a very gray day.  The objects reference Christmas and Easter in an ambiguous way.  It became more highly realistic because I wanted the reflections to be precise and there was no way around that other than using the maul stick to support my hand out of the paint and going back in with glazes.  I'm not entirely sure it is finished because realism is a compulsive road to start on begging for repeat refining and an iterative approach to being done.  For now it is done enough.  I hope it inspires thought or painting something yourself, or both, enjoy!

Christmas Holly

A quick study of variegated holly with two shiny ornaments for Christmas.  A bit more impressionistic than usual.  I planted the holly topiary tree a few months ago to be able to make a few snips for Christmas decorating.  It has been growing very slowly which made this little bit about all the plant could spare for a trim, and it is quite spikey so all those red tips you see are sharp and need to be avoided. 

Christmas Poinsettias Oil Painting

Christmas Poinsettias 2012
12" x 12" oil on canvas

This year's Christmas Poinsettias painting has the lovely spotted variety in the painting.  I went for a less traditional composition this time just enjoying the forms and splashes of color. 

Paintings Overview

I was asked to update an overview of the paintings over the past year and this video has a nice slideshow format of nearly everything from July 2011 to the present.

Poinsettias Oil Painting

 

Here is the poinsettia painting from Christmas 2011, it is 12" x 12" oil on canvas.

The video shows the time lapse of it being made:

Hoover Tower - Stanford

Hoover Tower, Stanford
12"x16" oil on canvas

This is a view of Hoover Tower from the Dish trail in the evening.  You are looking at Stanford University campus, the bottom of the SF Bay, and the dry hills beyond in the east.  The tower ended up a strong focal point leading me inclined to call this "Axis Mundi" but I thought better of that and will merely mention that we are looking at a vertical tower pointing to the heavens from a place of higher learning.  The composition is very stable, the buildings blend into the trees, and busy minds are at work among the greenery.

Watercooler Chat - Marbled Godwits

"Watercooler Chat"
Marbled Godwits at Ulloa St. Beach, San Francisco
12"x12" oil on canvas

These are Marbled Godwits with mottled feathers and long red-tinted beaks standing in the thinnest remains of a wave.  I took the photographs of the beach at Ulloa Street in San Francisco almost exactly a year ago, and finally painted them this weekend.  I cannot recall having painted birds before, so their shapes are interesting to observe along with how the shadow overlapped the reflection of the Godwit on the right and made the reflection appear darker in that area.  I did get back to Garrapata Park, south of Carmel again just before sunset this week, to have the very briefest amount of time before the sun was blocked by a cloud bank.  This had the odd effect of lighting the hills up bright red while leaving the foliage in cool light, maybe enough for a painting, just have to wait and see.

Coast at Wilder Ranch

"Solid Coast" at Wilder Ranch
12"x16" oil on canvas

Wilder Ranch is north of Santa Cruz and is a public park with hiking trails and the old white buildings from when it was a dairy.  The property is right on the coast and has miles of sandstone cliffs.  This painting is from a vibrant sunny day hiking along the edge of the cliffs with a nice, steady sea breeze. 

This size canvas is a little different to work with, and it gets exaggerated with the high horizon line.  That made a pretty neat area for all the water colors on the left.  I hope to be out when it's later in the day to see the sunset lighting the rocks and see how that turns out.

Blazing Vineyard, Napa Valley

Blazing Vineyard, Napa Valley
12"x16" oil on canvas



This painting of the vineyard was originally very naturalistic, which was fine, but I decided to experiment and alter the palette quite a lot while still keeping the same shape outlines.  This is now a fall vineyard with some sense of the energy which goes into these vines and the winemaking to come.  Fantasy mixed with reality.  This is a view of a vineyard on the west side of St. Helena heading towards a park.  On that point (parks in Napa Valley) the Bale Grist Mill tour was one of the best I have been on and I will share some photos from this: 


Rows of Organic Flours of several types for sale $5

working grind stones





working water wheel

work bench,  nice lighting!

This mill was in Napa Valley long before it became wine making country and the farmers would bring their grist to have it milled into flour.  The mill has been kept very nicely with a lot of hand sawn and scraped timbers.  They still grind flour, corn, and buckwheat, powered by the water wheel during the tour, explain how the whole thing works, and the history of the valley is also shared.  Flour sacks ground at this mill are available to purchase for $5 a bag.  We have been enjoying the buckwheat and whole wheat flour in pancakes.    





This nifty crank machine will take a dried ear of corn and scrape off the kernels and drops the cob into the bucket below.  The dried kernels then get ground into polenta or corn meal. 

Halloween Paintings and Ideas

I was shocked to read Halloween is just 8 weeks away, because it will slip by so fast and I have a pile of ideas left over from last year.  HGTV posted some cute and pretty fast decorating ideas, and if you want to paint a Halloween painting I am sharing the ones I posted last fall which have some how-to information.  I am planning to make a nice Halloween still life with my trusty plastic skull, that will be coming in a few weeks.

This is a painting demo of two pumpkins backlit outdoors.  It is a nice fall painting because it hints strongly of Halloween but they are not Jack-o-Lanterns yet.  This is 12" x 16" oil on canvas.

 

This is our yard from last year, the ghosts were a last minute idea to make a backdrop.

 

They grow an enormous amount of pumpkins in Half Moon Bay, CA and this is a view looking into a bin of them on a foggy fall day.  This is a 12"x12" oil on canvas.

 

Piper's Sunflowers Drying

Piper's Sunflowers Drying

I liked the previous Piper's Sunflower so I painted a grouping of sunflowers.  This is 16"x20" oil on canvas, no time lapse movie made this time.  These are several more of the dried out sunflowers I enjoyed looking at during my son's bagpipe lessons.  The blue background has a few close value colors to liven it, and I've veered back into impressionism with the colors of the sunflowers. 

One of the things I worked with is the use of a really dark purple, then deadening it with raw umber to make the shape roll back to appear rounded and going over the top of that to indicate the sunflower.  The round one in the center nearer the bottom of the painting illustrates this.  Then the interesting negative spaces needed amping up because the leaf colors were too close in value to the sky.  It is such a scattering of sunflowers that the composition is pretty irregular which is the way they grew.

Little birds came and feasted on these seed heads, quite a nice treat!

The Piper's Sunflower

The Piper's Sunflower

This painting had a different approach than usual. It is 11" x 14" oil on canvas and the subject is the popular sunflower. This one I would sit and look at waiting at my son's bagpipe lesson and just love this oversized drooping seed head with side lighting late in the day. What was different was the raw sienna underpainting and then the rub-out with the cloth. The video link below shows the process. I did use real turpentine, hence the gloves, plus the window was open and fans running to avoid the fumes. The underpainting was quite nice, especially where the rubbed out portions were because the pigment gets caught in the canvas texture. For medium I used Liquin's Impasto for fun which gets the paint fluffy like butter and sugar when you're making chocolate chip cookie dough, and adds some final texture. The blue background is the thickest I've made in quite a while.

Seems everyone has to make a sunflower painting at least once. 

Roses

Roses

A 12"x16" oil on canvas to record these pretty flowers.

These are most of the second bloom from the Jackson and Perkins roses I planted this spring.  The white roses are "Moondance" and the pink ones are "April in Paris" which are much more rose perfumed.    In referencing old rose paintings from Franz Bischoff, it looks like he planted different curling varieties, some looked like David Austen roses, others were shaped like "Pope John Paul" where the petals make an angular fold.  Bischoff's ceramics (must see these!) are drippingly gorgeous and brought back memories of my mother's china dish painting and kiln, which she had been taught to do years ago in the South.

Here is

Golden Gate Bridge

 

I'm going to let this one sit and dry for a bit.  This is a 16"x20" oil on canvas.  I was out in the fog this past weekend both Saturday and Sunday watching a soccer tournament.  It was quite windy and I really could not stay long and wait for the fog to lift, so I ended up climbing over a strange building which the Presidio probably used to store ammo in and looked to have the footprint of a large cannon with all the bolts still sticking up in a circle.  The roof was made of concrete and since there wasn't a sign indicating it was condemned, I climbed over it and got this view.  Thinking how marvelous to have such a close view, I didn't stop to think how really bad my reference photos would turn out or that the bridge's struts would require the loathesome liner brush and a maul stick to paint.  And everything is dried out and dead, so all the foreground foliage had to be imagined alive and green in spring.  There are two paintings here:  the 'International Orange' bridge against the mauve and peachy hills with the cool water and the foreground painting of the cool gray-blue and red (pickle weed it looks like) scrub brush in the foreground.  Together it's a lot to take in, but I suppose that reflects the dynamism of San Francisco!  Imagine a clanging trolley car, or the fog horn, and crowds of people walking and driving across this icon. 

White Lily and Bright Lily

Bright Lily

White Lily

Lilies



 

 

A couple of years ago I tried planting Oriental lily bulbs in my garden and had pretty good (meaning easy to grow) success with them.  I have about 5 varieties now which bloom over a three month period and I regularly go out to photograph them at different times of the day.  The "White Lily" had a nice back lighting effect in the later afternoon and the "Bright Lily" really has the bold color notched up with a vibrant background.

Green Wave

 

This is a second painting of what will be a series of 4 in 16" x 20" oil on canvas of the same area near Davenport, CA.  Each painting has a similar color scheme but something different is attended to.  This painting is about the green wave and having a close up large rock which is like a curtain to look past while standing on just dry sand which is darker than sand further up the beach. 

My reference photos of this beach area leave out the pretty drift wood fire one couple had lit to sit by and the other little groups out to watch the sun go down and the high tide and waves roll in.  In the evening there are sometimes foggy sections which cover the beaches and then some open sections with good light and sunset, these move from day to day so it is almost like finding a good fishing spot to find a good sunset and lighting.   

Quiet Cove South of Davenport, CA

A Quiet Cove South of Davenport, CA

South of Davenport, CA there is a cove which was lightly foggy and nearing sunset which made the light quite soft.  There are 3 more paintings I want to make from this same area at the same time in the evening, one is already started.  Enjoy!

Taro and Koi Painting

I had just a little time going through the Kula Botanical garden and snapped this picture of these beautiful leaves.  I believe they are taro plants from which the taro root comes from.  They really are in the colors shown:  both blue with purple and plain green leaves.   The koi fish was added in by imagination from another series of photographs of the koi pond.  Luckily a mom and a little boy had fish food so there were many poses of the koi fish to take photographs from.  Enjoy!

King Protea Oil Study

This is an oil study of a King Protea flower from the Kula Botanical Gardens in Kula, Maui.  These are terrific and unusual flowers, they do grow in California (some are at UC Santa Cruz in Northern California) and are South African in origin.

Blog Launch - Paia Coast Painting off to new home

Paia Coast, Maui.