Lilies in a Vase "Twisted Lilies"

 

"Twisted Lilies"
ckm 2013
16"x20" oil on linen

Vase of lilies from my garden this summer, quite a challenging mass of twisting flowers to work on.

Garrapata Cove

Garrapata Cove
12"x12" oil on canvas
Catherine K. Moore

 

 



This is a repost with the video link added.

I had been meaning to post this a while ago but just got around to it.  This is part of Garrapata State Park facing the highway in the afternoon.  It is a bit of an odd composition, and actually one I was taught not to do because the eye gets drawn right up the center and gets stopped.  This was remedied (or not) by the peculiar rock formation and a lot of trickery with contrast.  The water was a huge quandary being rough and finally smooth a couple of times over until smooth was the better answer.  So there it is, Garrapata State Park.

"Dizzy" Lily

It's that time of year again...the lillies are blooming again!  This painting has some "Dizzy" lillies with a tipped dahlia and some white roses.  This is a combined plein air work then finished indoors.  The moving sunlight at the particular angle I chose required a lot of setup movement and right before losing the sun I snapped a photo to finish from.  What working from life with a flower like an Oriental Lily does, is really allow some of the character of the flower to show. 

I buy my lily bulbs from Breck's Bulbs and plant them up in the fall.  Last fall I added in more "Dizzy", "Simplon", "Lombardia", and more "Stargazer" bulbs.  They all need staking and must be kept away from cats who cannot be around their pollen.  They provide a lot more beauty than trouble growing: no insects or snails seem to bother them even.

The painting is on a 12"x16" linen covered board from Dick Blick.  I chose not to tone the canvas.  The roses were intentionally ignored this time to draw attention to the other flowers.  I'm already onto the next, I collected a large clear glass vase full of the lillies to paint!

Dizzy Lily
12"x16" oil on linen covered board
ckm 2013

Sunflowers in a Blue Vase

Now how could these bold orange-yellow sunflowers in a blue vase not be painted?  Sure, it's a little loud, but there's no getting around that.  I had to take an unintended rest break in the midst of working on this, so several weeks passed after beginning.  Enjoy!

Sunflowers in a Blue Vase
ckm 2013

Roses 6

 

 

This is a 12" x 16" oil on a canvas I stretched, primed, and toned with yellow ochre.  The yellow ochre had provided a good color reference point on the previous paintings so I tried using it again, but really it was not a benefit this time.  What was helpful was a new stack of gray palette paper.  This was great for telling the values against a neutral gray.  I do have a large glass sheet with gray paper under it but have been a creature of habit with the white palette paper for years out of convenience. 

The bouquet from my yard got a boost from some Mother's Day roses which are tucked in on the right of the painting.  I had to fairly carefully pull out the petals on the store bought ones to get the looser effect like the home grown ones, but it worked out easily enough but may have made them go bye faster.  Enjoy!

Roses5 Daily Painting

Lots of rose painting this week.  This painting is on an 11" x 14" cotton canvas. Toning the canvas yellow ochre for the last two paintings made a big difference particularly for the white roses.  The pink roses are still causing problems in the light, particularly some hot pink ones in light and shadow (dappled light).  

Roses 3 & 4 Daily Paintings

The first rose painting was done outdoors from life in midday:

 And the second was painted in the afternoon:

Here is a video of the second:http://youtu.be/mPUC1Em6UTA

Roses 2 Daily Painting

A second daily painting of roses, this one with the time lapse.  These were photographed outside and worked from the photo with having the flowers in the window.  The first round of rose blooms is nearly over so there will be maybe one or two more paintings possible.  Enjoy!

Roses daily painting

This is a daily painting from today on an 11"x14" linen on board.  Luckily there has been a great crop of roses this year to keep working from.  Hopefully after several attempts I will be able to set something down rapidly that works on the first try. 

Ducks

This is the duck painting my brother requested.  Ideally I'd have simply bought a nice Alexander Koester painting but he wanted me to make one so I have.  In order to paint these I referenced many of Koester's works and kept them with me while I worked.  What was fascinating about his ducks was that the European Poultry Society had also looked at his paintings, along with many other artists' work, and they could identify the types of ducks.  Apparently duck 'collecting' was a fairly popular hobby among the wealthy and new varieties ended up on canvas.  While my work comes no where near Koester's gorgeous work, there is something very pleasant about painting water and ducks and it makes perfect sense how he could have painted so many ducks.  Enjoy, and paint a duck!

Painting a Cow

This was a rapid painting done today of a cow I had photographed south of Santa Cruz.  This is the first cow I've painted, so it's really pretty interesting to get a good look at one. 

The light was warm in the late day and the cow is such a lovely caramel color.  I pushed up the impressionistic colors in this work and found that a bit of a challenge with maintaining the form.  Overall I was just trying to maintain warm plane and cold plane, cold shadow to keep it together.  The neighboring cow was deleted and replaced with some receding ground.  I still owe my brother a duck painting, hopefully the cow is progress towards that duck.  Enjoy!

Roses in a Blue Vase

Roses in a Blue Vase
ckm 2013

 

Probably needed to turn the tv off over the last two weeks, these roses all went weird and nothing like they were supposed to.  I owe my brother a painting of a duck, so that has got to get worked on...
Happy Painting!

Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Blossom

Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Blossom
12"x16" oil on linen on board
ckm 2013

 

 



Several years ago there was a short time when my city ran out of money to replant street trees and so I bought this Kwanzan Flowering Cherry tree to replace the street tree out front.  The blossoms come out right at about the same time as the leaves and they are carnation type flowers.  The water in the glass ended up being more interesting to me while working having an abstract swirling quality.  These cherry blossoms with the multiple petals are a neat challenge, so I went for more of a loose look working out the lights and darks.  Hope you enjoy and look for this kind of cherry tree, while it bears no fruit the flowers are a real joy.

Cherry Blossoms Sketch

Oh these are tricky little in between sized flowers, so they will need to be done again in a couple of weeks when the Kwanzan flowering cherry blooms. 

"Spring Fever" Daffodils Oil Painting

 

 

"Spring Fever"
16"x20" oil on canvas
2013 ckm

Here is a 16"x20" oil on canvas of daffodils from my garden this past week.  For some reason yellow turned out trickier to work with than red as in the amaryllis or the poinsettias but that may be more of a function of how these flowers are shaped with multiple curving surfaces and ruffly edges to try to capture.  Happy Spring!

Plein Air Coastal Painting

This was painted both on location and in my studio with a good deal of studio editing.  The weather at the beach this day was high surf and strong winds.  I hadn't been out doing plein air in a long time and was not dressed warmly enough or had enough protection from the pelting sand.  When loading up to leave the canvas got blown into me and had already accumulated some sand into the paint.  The video shows how the painting changed from arriving indoors.  Ideally most of the questions would have been answered on site as the approaching sunset changed the lighting considerably and could not be captured in the photo I took.  This was a good learning experience!

Seascape

This is a seascape after Jack Wilkinson Smith's much larger painting.  Just wanted to share this.

Going out for some Plein Air

I was explaining to my brother how plein air painting is the fancy name for heading outdoors to paint, and how I hadn't been doing this for a while preferring to make decisions with less nature pressure.  So over the weekend I headed down past Carmel since the weather had cleared up, but was still cold.  What was the surprise was that there were enormous waves and really strong winds which would toss sand up in my work despite the fact that I set up behind a 15' high boulder in the sand for protection.  Needless to say my shorts were not enough, and I only managed about an hour and a half before needing to call it a day.  However, it was one of those days which make the paintings of the California coast that really show it's glory.  Between the waves were gorgeous changing colors of aqua water, some with yellow highlights, some with the sand showing through, smashing on the rocks and all the foam turning violet as the sun set and turned the coastline a warm peachy tan.  I am working on my painting, a small 11"x14" now, with some ideas on how to be more comfortable in such harsh winds next time, but it was worth every minute.  No painting to share yet, it's coming.

Garlic Bulb Painting

6"x6" oil on linen on board oil painting of garlic.  I like the color of the thin semi-transparent skin of the garlic and this particular bulb had a lot of rosy colors in it.  Mine was placed on a black shelf, side lit in the afternoon with an extra 'daylight' bulb and a sample of pink mottled wallpaper propped up to be the background. 

Valentine's Day Roses

  

 



Today, for Valentine's Day, I tried to work out a section of Franz Bischoff's "Roses in a Tall Glass" painting from 1917.  I have been carrying around a couple of books on his work for months appreciating his colors and china painting and today finally set about mixing colors from this particular painting to make a small, 6"x6" oil painting on a linen covered board.  Happy Valentine's Day!

2 sketches

 

 

 

 

 

I bought a few linen covered boards to work on and wanted to sketch up my plastic skull with some clementine slices as a reminder that time does run out.  The poppies were just bought for my garden and while potted up I photographed them backlit in the afternoon and from the video it's pretty clear that there were several decisions made in the process.  The idea is to do a large size version of a similar design and this was to be a base sketch to test out the plan. 

 

 

 

 



Orchids "Dancing Angels" painting

 

 

Seems I dove into this one without thinking the hazards out fully.  White orchids were pretty straight forward, but the spotted ones were something new.  Here's how I tried them, for anyone reading this who is painting or just curious:  as the video shows I worked on forming the base shape of the fuscia spotted orchids relying on the color between the spots to form the shape, next I added in the variety of fuscia (alizarin mixed with either cobalt or ultramarine, some cad. red, some thalo red rose, and up to titanium white) spots, then took a sable brush and blended (not in video) lightly here and there to soften the spots, then back in with the background color, and lining and shaping again, pretty much just around and around.  It has, to me, a shaky feeling about it, between the value changes colliding, the wide spread composition, and all those little dots, and so the angels are dancing.  Enjoy!

Fire and Ice

 

 

Time lapse video

Backlit flowers.  Showing the translucency.  Looking at reflected light.  Decisions about background color and value.  For some reason the reds became more challenging than the poinsettias were, likely because of the backlighting and shadows.  Again on the trail of realism.  Terrible photo of the finished painting, sorry about the glare.

The Sennelier linen was so nice to work on, absolutely buttery feel to the paint on the smooth surface.  This could have been achieved on cotton with gesso and sanding, but right out of the wrapper it was perfect.