Deadlines tomorrow

Two deadlines tomorrow.  One is to have the portrait ready for being photographed for the September Portrait Show at Newburyport Art Association's Portraits of Newburyport.  The other one is that 2 8x8" paintings for the Newburyport Art Association's 8x8" Cubed show have to go to receiving.  Guess what?  I'm ready.

Portrait for NAA September show (this is not the official photo)

Two 8x8s for the current show (Better photos tomorrow)

I need names for these paintings.  The swan family lives out behind my house, and the geraniums where on the porch where I took a workshop with Lori Putnum in upperstate NY.

Good News!

Daily News, Newburyport newspaper article

I was busy today with lots of phone calls and emails.  How sweet it is.  The game is afoot.

Since this is truly an adventure, I'll be posting the progress on my adventures blog: Go here for adventures blog.
and on the Facebook page for the project.

In the news!

Well, almost, the correspondent came to my house and studio/gallery and interviewed me.  She was here for an hour and hopefully the story will help promote my People Painting Prople project.  She had the idea, and I totally concur, that we should extend the deadline until the end of October, so that enough people can participate to make the project large enough and more people to participate.  The article can also help me to find more locations that will allow painters to come in and paint the model.  Now the next thing is that they will schedule a photographer to come in the take pictures, oh my.
On another front, I'm doing a complete redo of someone's house, and I've been happily shopping for all kinds of flooring, paint, and furniture.  The cleaning crew went in this week and got everything ready for the contractor to paint, etc.  I found a great nice wood bed with headboard and footboard at Salvation Army that I'm painting-- I've found chalk paint, and love the texture and finish of it, but the colors seem limited. While I was there, there was a wonderful table and chairs with gorgeous real leather seats in mint condition, and guess what, I hesitated and today it was gone. I also found at various stores on sale or clearance the linens to make up the bed like the luxury hotel's do.  I'm in my element, I love this stuff.

Here's a photo of my subject at the Paint Out Day at Gloucester last Saturday.

It was the day after the hurricanes around the east coast, so we were all hanging on to our easels.  One lady's blew over three times!  I got very flattering comments from Betty Lou Schlemm and Ken Knowles during the critique.

Another 8x8" for Nbpt and another "DPW PIC"!

I got a start yesterday on my second 8x8" for the Newburyport 8 Cubed show.  It will be geraniums with the American flag.  Here is the block-in.

Block-in for Geraniums with Flag, 8x8" 

I also painted in my garden and was struck by the gorgeous color of an orange lily I have there, but with the limited palette of RYB it just didn't do it.  I'll need to punch it up a bit with some more serious colors!  I like using the limited colors but for flowers it sometimes doesn't have enough intensity in the secondary colors.

Wahooo............

I got picked again for the Daily Paintworks Pic.  I love these.  

Lori Putnum Workshop, June 2014, NY demo

This was the demo on the morning of the first day.

Notan block-in with wipe off

Composition

Darks

Middle values

Lights

Lori - I was fascinated by the little sunny shapes coming through her hat.

I'm finally getting the method of finding the middle value on my palette and on my painting.  I have had a glass palette for a long time and now I'm going to the wood palette for the middle value and no glare.  I got used to the glare and didn't realize the effect it was having on my eyes.  I did have a middle value on the glass palette and never took advantage of it.  I also have a plexiglass palette that has less glare but it's not easy to clean since its scratched up.

The lost month-June-Putnum

Mary Pyche with Lori Putnum in Canandaigua, NY

The reason June was 'lost' was not that I wasn't painting, it's because I wasn't posting.  The marketing aspect of art is a challenge for me.  I try to be disciplined, but sometimes I lapse.  In order to post regularly, I like to have something to show, like a finished painting.  I have a lot of unfinished paintings in the works right now.  The one I just posted, needs a tiny tweak, so I'll post that one again, maybe today--The Swan Family. 
I also have not been on my computer much lately and now I can't remember half my passwords.  I guess that can be a good thing, as we are supposed to change them periodically.
So related to this photo above, I was very fortunate to be able to attend a workshop with Lori Putnum.  My Italy trip friend, Sandi, and I signed on early (back in January I think) for Lori's Canandaigua NY workshop.  The town was very nice and quaint and there are many good places to paint.  It is the location of an annual Plein Air Paint Out event.  Sandi and I arrived the day before and were able to see the show attached to the Paint Out and enjoy the refreshments under the big tent at the Sonnenberg Gardens Mansion.  We also had fair weather.  The first day was perfect, the second and third day were overcast and a few sprinkles.  Luckily, the hostess' front porch was large enough to keep us covered during demos, critiques and talks.  Lori, featured in numerous issues of American Art Collector Magazine, and most recently, Plein Air Magazine, is recognized as one of the finest American Impressionists of our time. She has been chosen as an Artist Faculty member for the Annual Plein Air Convention, hosted by Plein Air Magazine, for the past two years. was an excellent teacher and did pay good attention to all attendees.  What were the take-aways?  For me, I enjoyed using a primary palette again and enjoyed her color selection of Napththol Red (M.Graham & Co.).  I used the new Gamblin solvent-free gel medium and LOVE IT.  Mostly it was her way of explaining using the medium value to guage all my color choices against.  I like it because it is logical and organized.
I will post some progression pictures of her first demo in tomorrow's blog.