New Orleans

Summer in New Orleans - whew! I can handle hot, but not this humidity. NOLA is a really neat mix and we have a little something for everyone on this family trip.  We've been in the bayou and visited the aquarium and insectarium and done a lot of walking and sight-seeing. 

 

V....Vaughan is also in town. Honestly, we planned these trips with no knowledge that the other was coming at the same time!

We should be able to meet up tomorrow after my family and I trek the zoo and the garden district - and I want to visit one of the cemeteries. 

V and I are exploring some ideas about artwork/show collaboration based on our travels. And I wouldn't mind exploring the idea of us teaching a joint workshop here (not in the summer). Between the two of us we'd cover landscapes, city and figurative work in one workshop. It's an idea. I have a lot of those. What I don't have is time and energy. 

It's this heat - and heavy Cajun food. 

Travel Palette

I found this little wooden box and art kit at hobby lobby and thought it would make a nice small travel palette. 

It's about 8x10 and only an inch or so tall. I find that I don't want or need a large  elaborate set up to paint on location. 

I removed the watercolor and plastic palette and brushes that came attached to the box with what i thought was more than enough glue. 

And had to work a little to remove that adhesive. Actually, my oms worked pretty well. 

Then I used some of the sludge from my jars where I let my old oms settle to sort of prime the new palette. 

Voila! A handy palette to carry in a small bag with some walnut oil and a few brushes. I can hold a panel in my hand while I paint. No need for a panel holder and its certainly much more subtle and convenient for working in a coffee shop, for example.

  

Thanks to V....Vaughan for the inspiration. Her father in law made her some similar palettes which I have long envied. 

Some folks are offering similar designs to hers now too I see. But this was a really affordable solution. $20 for the art kit and maybe I will put those watercolors to use one day too.

City - Work in Progress

16x20 
work in progress
 
I thought I'd share my work in progress here. Three stages of a city scene I worked on Friday night. It is not yet complete but close to it. I had the evening to myself while my daughter was at an evening camp and my husband went to Texas World Speedway to do some racing!

Here he is getting ready for his laps today. The team raced the car for 7 hours both Saturday and Sunday. It was the ChumpCar "Habanero Hoon". Hubster's first such event. What a great team - I got to go and meet them and watch. Much fun - except for the 100° temps.

Wading In

8x8 oil on panel
$375 
Email me

Did some paint sketches today to play and loosen up a little. I'm working on paintings for a show (more on that later) and feel a little pressure to be perfect - and sometimes that means tight and serious. Sometimes its so good to squint, paint fast, mass in, suggest and leave things unrefined. I highly recommend it in fact.

Saturday is the last day this month that we will offer lessons on sketching at Joel's Coffee House in NW Austin. Do come and join me and V....Vaughan for some practice with painted or pencil sketches. 9 a.m. start, $20 and we can provide supplies and chocolate, coffee and tea!

Blue Belle

8x8 oil on panel
$375 
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I was frustrated with this one for awhile. I loved the figure, her shape, the polka dots, and the blue tube she was holding - but it was all so much blue. After some fussing, I scraped off the background and then scraped my palette. The palette knife then had a variety of the subject's colors on it so I scraped it over my painting and really began to like the effect. Its something different. Enjoy!

Shades of Summer

8x8 oil on panel
$375 + s/h
Email me

Ah summer - I had to get to the beach at least in my mind! We will try to hit the Texas coast sometime this summer. But I will miss the Florida gulf beaches a lot. The water there is so beautiful.

Round Robin

Today we met for sketching and painting with a small group at Joel's Coffee shop in north Austin. We each worked on our own things for a bit and then decided to paint birds to help support V....Vaughan's wonderful Birdseed Project. 

V's mother is in an assisted living facility and V has discovered how much joy birdwatching brings to the residents and guests of such places. She has begun an amazing project to help buy birdseed and feeders to attract the birds to nurture nature and people. I know from sitting in my own backyard how much fun the little birds can be. What a blessing they would be to those who are more or less "homebound."

Please consider making a contribution to the Birdseed Project. Your tax deductible gift provides feeders and seed, and maybe a NEW BIRDSEED PROJECT to a home near you! Click to donate to

Threefold Cord Ministries. Mention Birdseed Project on the ENVELOPE.

 

Below are paintings my mother and I did today!  I couldn't resist the lovely fat Robin and wanted to try to abstract him a little into the background. My mom hasn't worked in oils in ages, but seemed to get the knack back in a short time with her little sparrow. To make a purchase, and therefore contribute birdseed to V's project, email me!

Round Robin
8x8 oil on panel
artist: Robin Cheers

Spare Sparrow
8x8 oil on panel
artists: Opal Cheers

Sketching 101

sketch from photo - working out composition and light/shadow patterns

sketch from life with graphite wash

sketch before painting "en plein air"

Whether you are working from life or from photo reference, sketching is a wonderful way to improve your "vision." I find that if I take a little time to work out my composition and value pattern with even the simplest sketch, I am better able to express myself in painting. Its easy to be overwhelmed by all the information before us. We see in 3D, but have to render in 2D. As a scene changes, or when we need to edit, its wonderful to be able to refer to your first impression caught in a sketch and keep yourself on course.

Come and sketch with me and V.... Vaughan at Joel's Coffee House in Austin on Saturdays in June (except the 29th). Bring your supplies, or use ours, we offer instruction, demos and hopefully inspire you too with some delicious coffee and truffles (or hot chocolate in my case.) Cost just $20.

Summer Hours

What to share? What to talk about? Well, I am painting some. Trying to work a little larger mostly. So those take more time. Its nice to live with things a little while too so I can be sure they are right before sending them out. 

We're enjoying our summer vacation. But its not all play - well - with painting it really is (or should be).
I've teamed up with V....Vaughan to lead some sketching workshops on Saturdays in June. If you are nearby do come and join us. We can talk about and teach what YOU like about sketching for painting purposes. Either  making preliminary paint sketches or value studies or mapping out your composition. You can work out many things with sketches before starting on your canvas.

Join us at Joel's Coffee House in Austin. We get amped up on delicious gourmet chocolates, excellent coffees and teas or frozen drinks first and then work for a few hours.
 

On Saturday, June 15 and June 22 we'll do it again! You can join us with your sketch supplies, or USE OURS! We will each do a short demo. Cost is $20

 

On its way to Carmel this week is this fun painting featuring a rather stern man painted by Cezanne - "Antoine Dominique Sauveur Aubert, The Artist's Uncle, as a monk" 1866 (from The Met)

 Hoodies

18x20 oil on linen

Ask Edward Montgomery Fine Art about this painting.

With the Wyndhams

14x14 oil on linen

Been in a museum mood lately. It seems a good subject to paint a little larger. I keep hearing I should paint bigger but I worry that my subjects are rather intimate sorts of settings that won't lend themselves to large works. Who wants a giant chef in a busy kitchen on their wall? But I am scaling up to give several of my galleries more options. I do think I have a contemporary feel at least, and want to push that more so I can maybe hang these larger pieces on cradled panels and not frame them.

In this piece, I painted over a bad start that I had scraped and I used some palette knife just to add a little texture and move color around the background especially. I used my fingers some too.

I sometimes wonder if its cheating to use famous pieces of art in my own art. If people like the artist featured, for example, John Singer Sargent, then they have to like my painting. But, what I most like is to paint people admiring the masters, and doing what I love to do myself.

Skimming Along

10x10 oil on panel
$500 + s/h
contact me

A slightly larger beach scene that I created for a commission. These were all done with reference photos I had. Frequently, I will pull parts of photos together to build a composition. The boys were from different scenes and the boat another. If you work from photos you need to be able to reference them, not copy them. So even the most unpromising looking image can spark an idea or offer me something. I will frequently do pencil sketches first to lay out an idea and then look for reference material. I have thousands of digital  photos and I have them sorted by subject in folders. Its all backed up on Mozy.com. My husband couldn't believe it when he saw that I have something like 27GB of photos.

Beach Play

8x8 oil on panel
$225 + s/h

Another painted sketch for a large commission. One which didn't ever get painted unfortunately. Maybe someone out there in blogland would like to see one of these on a large scale? I'd love to paint a huge beach scene like this!

These were based on photos I took on Emerald Isle in NC. Its a lovely island community near Swansboro and Tidewater Gallery. It was very residential too which was quite special I thought. I hope to visit again.

Sunset Stroll

8x8 oil on panel
$225 + s/h

Last year I did some painted sketches for a possible commission. The idea was to capture a family, with young boys specifically, on the beach. I have several of these available still so thought I'd share them here.

Sunny Stroll - Revised

20x16 oil on linen

Ask Tidewater Gallery about this painting.


I just shipped this painting to Tidewater Gallery in Swansboro, NC. It was painted in 2010 and had been in my gallery in Carmel for awhile. Once back here in my studio, there were certain things bugging me about it and needing fixed. So I revised it. * Gasp*  It was the first time I dared to (or bothered to) change an older work. Mostly I think its better to just paint a new one. But this was a good composition and the figures were well done and interesting... the other stuff just needed some tweaks.

I didn't like the foreground mostly and wanted to vary the rather strident orange tones. But then my changes escalated and I moved all around the figures making adjustments! Can you see all the changes? I've highlighted the big ones below and you can compare the two images. Then there were little changes like making her nose a little smaller, bluing up the sky and punching up the highlights on her shirt and his shorts to really make them pop. Its ok to use pure white paint! But, it can be cool, so add just the slightest touch of cad yellow or surround white with yellow (or another warm) to make it stand out as a "hot spot".

Just Desserts

18x18 oil on panel 
Ask Gardner Colby Galleries about this painting

The Slice of Life show opened last Thursday at Gardner Colby and I had a lovely email this weekend telling me about an article written about my work in the show. The article focused on the aerial perspective that I use in some of my paintings. I am really flattered to have sparked people's interest, especially Tom Hall, Arts & Exhibits Correspondent
of Southwest Florida. :-)
Click here to read the article.  

Exit Row

24x18

oil on 2" cradled panel

Ask Gardner Colby Galleries about this painting

Afternoon

24x18

oil on 2" cradled panel

Ask Gardner Colby Galleries about this painting

I am so clever with titles. Not. Anyway - this is a larger bird's eye scene than I have ever done before. I love to paint these scenes as they are so simple and almost abstract. Its always fun to play with shadows. I think though that they have taught me how to fill in large empty spaces in interesting ways. With subtle shifts in temperature and color and by varying brushwork, the empty fields are not boring. Its also taught me to make interesting greys.

This week is spring break in central Texas and I sure wish I was able to visit Naples, FL for the opening this week. If you are in the area, go and tell me how this show is. I'd love to see all these artists work in person, and see their subjects. Would be very inspirational.

Saucier

11x14 oil on linen
Ask Gardner Colby Galleries about this painting

Click on this one to see it larger. I could have gone on and covered more canvas and added more details but I decided to stop. I loved it at this point - loose, fresh and gestural. This is more of what I want to do and I just have to be bold enough to do it. Hopefully, the gallery and their patrons will approve!

Maestro

12x9 oil on panel  

Ask Gardner Colby Galleries about this painting

"Slice of Life" opens March 14th. The theme couldn't be more right for me. Its what I like to paint best - those moments in life that seem less than extraordinary, but are what the stuff of life is made of. Life here is finally taking a turn for the better. My husband is going back to work soon. My parents are making plans to move to the Austin area finally. Spring is in the air and I feel my heart lifting as these weighty matters come to resolution. Not to get too personal, but I feel very blessed that these last months have made our family stronger and closer when the difficulties could have produced very different results. I'm really proud of my husband. And my daughter.


My work is now turning to kitchen and domestic scenes. Its all relative. :-) 

Yesterday I met my lovely friend V....Vaughan and we painted while we visited in a very welcoming and cozy coffee shop in northwest Austin - Joel's. Its also the home of Austin Truffle Company and nothing will get you through a crazy time like excellent mocha truffles (and friendship.) I did the two studies above from photos while we enjoyed our hot chocolate, tea and truffles. Will be working them into larger works soon.

Conductor

Conductor
8x6 oil on panel
$175 + s/h - sold

Houston Symphony
20x24 oil on panel
Commissioned by the Houston Symphony League

Above is my final painting for the Houston Symphony celebrating the last year their conductor, Hans Graf, will lead them. I have had such fun painting scenes from this event. Now I need to get backstage at the Austin symphony, or maybe the opera. How fun would that be?