Washington D.C. Temple Study (in progress)

Salt Lake Temple (in progress)

Daily Painting #9

#9 Grapefruit
7 x 5

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Salt Lake Temple (in progress)

Mark (in progress)

At Sea (in progress)

Fall Refinery (in progress)

Daily Painting #8

#8 - Fan
4 x 2.5
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Washington D.C. Temple Study (in progress)

Today's progress was very unsatisfying. I rubbed off 90% of the paint I applied. Two steps forward and one step back.

Salt Lake Temple (in progress)

Just the beginning, obviously.

Washington D.C. Temple Study (in progress)

Mountainside

Mountainside
14 x 18
sold

Daily Painting #7

#7 - Green Apple
3x3

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Fall Refinery (in progress)

Daily Painting #6

#6 - Jewelry Mat
5x2.5
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Mountainside (in progress)

Daily Painting #5

#5 - Pink Roses
2 x 7
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Mountainside (in progress)

Goal: finish this painting by Christmas.

Daily Painting #4

#4 - Rose
5 x 2.5

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Daily Painting #3

#3 - Apple
3 x 3

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Daily Painting #2

#2 - Lemon
4 x 4
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Mountainside (in progress)

Blue Plateau

Blue Plateau
12 x 12
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Daily Painting #1

#1 - Winter Junk Yard

5.5 x 7.5
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Looking at other artist's blogs, I found a lot of my fellow artists are doing a "daily painting". These are quick small paintings that they finish in less than a day. There were a lot of really neat paintings and it inspired me to begin my own set of daily paintings.

Blue Plateau (in progress)

I am so close to being done with this wintry wonderland. So much as I complain about being cold, I miss driving past scenes like this and waking up to a glimmering city. Maybe I'll keep painting winter scenes to fill the void.

Tree of Life #2

Tree of Life #2
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The miracle of the ear opens to us the world of sound. The vibrations are caught and funneled down our ear canals, moving our ear drum and vibrating the tiniest bones in our body. One of these minuscule bones, the stapes, in turn vibrates against the oval window of the cochlea. The cochlea is filled with a fluid which moves in response to the sound vibrations. Small hairs line the cochlea and sway with the movement of the fluid. It is finally these hairs that convert the sound into electric signals to be sent to the brain.

We experience so much of life through our ears, and what joy that brings.
Some of my favorite things to hear:
-Mark's voice
-Rain
-Thunder (Unless it's in the middle of the night, then it moves down the list)
-The morning birds
-Music
-The cackling of a dying fire
This painting of the cochlea (cross-section) celebrates the life of sound.

What are your favorite sounds?

Tree of Life #2 (in progress)

As I mentioned before, I am beginning to work again on my Trees of Life series. This one is not complete, but is getting pretty close. I have not yet decided how much blue to crop; I bounce back and forth between not cropping any and cropping 1/3 to 1/2 of it.
Any guesses on where you can find this tree in your body?

Blue Plateau (in progress)

I have been complaining about the cold here. I go around my house in a hat and gloves, and I'm hoping for slippers for Christmas. I am very glad that I have a heater for the studio, it is such a waste to heat up the whole house just to get that one room warm during the day. So, I'm not cold when I'm painting, but sit down to the computer...my fingers are like ice. My car said it was 55 degrees when I went to the grocery store. To me that felt really cold. Now, I grew up in Utah - snowy, sub-freezing Decembers. How did I get to be so wimpy? Still, I hope there is snow when we go to Utah for Christmas :)

Mountainside (in progress)

I'm really glad that I have a live-in critic, and we both came to the conclusion that I needed to start filling in the foliage and the foreground. The flat green space made the whole painting flat and just odd, really. So I started working on fixing that.

French Ultramarine

Another color I use all the time is French Ultramarine. Its healthy (now known adverse effects anyway), its transparent, its lightfast (ASTM rating I). I won't go into such a long technical explanation this time. French Ultramarine is a synthetic pigment which mimics the natural ultramarine pigment made from lapis lazuli. The pigment is a complex silicate of sodium and aluminum which also contains sulfur. However, since the synthetic particles are more uniform and smaller than the natural particles the synthetic ultramarine is less vivid. The synthetic pigment was created in 1830 after discovering the ingredients (and the French "National Society for the Encouragement of Industry" offering a prize to develop it). The main drive was the cost of the lapis lazuli. Bringing down the price allowed "every-day" artists access to ultramarine blue. Good thing too, I go through it like crazy!

Mountainside (in progress)

The rock formations are starting to form! Also, excellent news, I got a heater for my studio today so my fingers won't be freezing all day. It has been pretty chilly up there for the last couple days.

Mountainside (in progress)

Poolside II (in progress)

Poolside II (in progress)

Burnt Sienna

I have always wanted to know more about the paints that I use daily and was more than slightly disappointed that the topic was generally ignored during my formal studies. I did have one teacher give a helpful couple of lectures on paints and pigments, but I still feel there is so much to learn about the materials I use in my oil painting. So I have decided to perform some research on my own and catalog my findings here for others who are curious. Naturally, I decided to start with materials that I use frequently, then pan out from there. I sort of randomly chose Burnt Sienna to start off, but that could be influenced by the large levels of burnt sienna that I used today...

Burnt Sienna is a staple color. During my first year (give or take) of painting, burnt sienna was one of only three colors in my palette - along with French Ultramarine Blue and Yellow Ochre. I still use more of it than any other reds or browns (combined). I love the warm reddish-brown hue. It is classified as an Earth pigment which pretty much is self-explanatory; sienna is a clay rich in iron oxides, specifically ferric oxides, that was originally mined from the earth near Siena, Italy - hence the name. Natural sienna is actually yellowish brown and referred to as "Raw Sienna". In order to get the warm reddish brown, the raw sienna is, well, burned. Although, that isn't totally accurate. The sienna is actually calcinated. Calcination is much closer to roasting than burning. (I understand opting not to call the resulting pigment "Calcinated Sienna", but I wish they had gone with "Roasted Sienna"...maybe its just too close to Christmas...) The calcination drives off some of the combined water from the raw sienna which results in a color change. Raw sienna powder is heated to at least the thermal decomposition temperature of ferric hydrate. The ferric hydrate converts to ferric oxide and releases water. (Sorry for the technical details, I used to be a chemistry major...) If you have ever described Burnt Sienna as "rusty", you are right on; Ferric oxide actually is rust (well at least the most common form of rust).
So that is how burnt sienna is made, on to properties before I write a full essay tonight.
As with other Earth pigments, burnt sienna is very stable with a ASTM lightfastness rating of I (The American Society of Testing Materials rating scheme goes from I-V, I being the longest lasting and most lightfast, V being the most unstable). That just means that the color doesn't fade or deteriorate over time. Burnt sienna ranges from transparent to semi-transparent. It is often used as a glaze or wash because of the low opacity. Similarly, burnt sienna has a low tinting affect - when mixing with other colors it doesn't have a strong impact. It is kind of a "weak" color - easily over-powered - but I guess it makes up for it in endurance. Plus, contrary to popular thought, not all oil painting materials contain hazardous toxins; burnt sienna is quite safe - another reason I love using it!

Poolside II (in progress)

Twelve by Twelve

This coming week is the last week of the Twelve by Twelve show at the Betz Gallery in downtown Houston. Although I haven't sold anything, I have learned quite a bit. I learned I need to do more research before applying to shows. Even though I got into the show, my work was very out of place. I was one of maybe 2 or 3 realistic landscape artists, and my art was more expensive than most. The biggest consequence was that the clientele was all wrong. So next time I apply to a show, I will be more careful in scouting it out first.

Poolside II (in progress)

Poolside II (in progress)

It can be hard to paint over large portions of canvas that I have previously painted, especially if that section works well by itself, but not within the whole. Fortunately, the latter part is not the case in this painting. Tomorrow, I will need to repaint the deck a slightly darker color. Although, I like the faint yellow that is there right now, I need the chairs to stand out more- specifically the highlights on the chair need to be brighter than the deck. So nerve-wracking or not, expect a new deck tomorrow.

Poolside II (in progress)

Besides painting, something I need to work on is taking better pictures of my work. It was a really overcast and dreary day here so there wasn't much natural light in my studio. Photography is something I have struggled with anyway. Any suggestions on photographing artwork?

Poolside II (in progress)

Do I ever get sick of working on the same projects for days or weeks? Yes, which means that project usually find its way to my drying rack and stays there (great examples: portraits of Amy and Mark). In this way, I can be almost a slave to my emotional connection to a painting. This isn't really a good thing for me as an artist. Isn't making art about expressing yourself and how you are feeling? We should love each painting, right? Well, yes...and no. My art is an expression of me, of beautiful things or places that lifted my spirit, and overall, I love creating each piece. But, painting is a struggle. Sometimes I really don't love the piece I am working on. It's not working, the colors aren't right, the angles just won't line up, this is not what was in my head... But that is the way anything satisfying is - we have to figure out the problems, overcome the frustrations, put in the time...before we can feel the accomplishment and really love our work. There is a stigma that painting is fun. Well, it is... but, it is also work. And it sure feels good to step back and have that very troublesome painting (and colors, angles...) work.
And no, this painting is not yet finished nor is yet the subject of any real frustrations - just problems to fix.

Resurrecting the Trees of Life

Tree of Life #1
36 x 36
Sold

A year ago, well more than that actually (time really flies sometimes) I finished this painting as part of a series, The Trees of Life. As of now, it is still the only painting in that series. After some good advice and pulling out my old sketches, I am re-inspired to finish. I don't know if I am the only artist that does that (starts one idea, then another and another, then finally goes back and finishes). Anyone else do that?
This series sprouted out of taking anatomy and painting classes simultaneously. I have always loved the mixture of complexity and simplicity in the body, the grace of the figure, and the incredible functionality of how it all works together. The human body is just beautiful. I was really excited while examining the dissections and diagrams by the surprising number of "trees" that exist within the physical body. It wasn't long before I was sketching and painting them. This 36" x 36" painting was the only finished large scale drawing that emerged, mostly because I graduated, moved, and got distracted by other projects. It is time to finish.

Kudos to anyone who can figure out what "tree" each painting represents.

Poolside II (in progress)

Poolside II (in progress)

Blue Plateau (in progress)

Poolside II (in progress)