Monday, Monday

For the past two Mondays, while my student was working on her paintings, I worked on these two flower paintings.  I'm probably not finished with either.  I'm surprised that the flowers lived this long.
Lately, I've taken to working over old paintings, and the larger one of these two (with five kinds of flowers, 8x10") was painted over a study for a landscape.  It's on a canvas over board (cardboard) which I usually only use for studies.  I like my paint to stay on top of the surface and enjoy working on a well-gessoed surface or previously painted surfaces.  This painting has a nice amount of paint on it.

Five Flowers, 8x10", oil on board

Two Flowers, 6x6", oil on plywood panel

 Now this smaller one, 6x6", sucked up the paint like crazy.  It is a 1/4" plywood board, that I only prepared by spraying on water-based Kilz as an experiment.  It definitely needs more coats.  I like the rough texture of the board, and when painting over a sucky surface, the paint has a matt look that is soft and sometimes pretty.  Before working on it today I was going to put on a coat of Liquin and that would have sealed it enough so the paint would stay on top, but I didn't.

Tiger Lilies, 6x6", oil on plywood panel

Yesterday I finished my Tiger Lily small painting.  It's 6x6" on the same 1/4" plywood with the Kilz primer coat but it has lots of oil paint from working on it probably three or four different times.  It was started outside during the summer.

Spooky Tree for DPW Challenge

Scary Tree, DPW Challenge, $25, 5x7"

In the spirit of Halloween, I've painted this to support the Spooky Tree Challenge on DPW.
I was looking at my photos to find one I wanted to do for a long time of two trees intertwined with vines, but found this one and it looked scary so I did this one instead.

the bomb landed

Super super sadness, my favorite online art friend is dying.

Robert Genn

He writes a twice weekly newsletter that I look forward to reading all the time.  He just received word that he has about a year to live.  In his inimitable way, his newsletter this time is titled "The Bomb".

Please read him while you can.  What a void will be left.

Early morning daylily, 6x6

Morning Daylily, 6x6, oil on gessoed plywood board

Started to paint this one last summer and finished it yesterday.  It's always such a joy in the morning to go out into the garden to see "what's up".  I get so inspired and motivated when I see a new flower open up and know that it's only here for one day.  I have to admit that since it's now Autumn, that seems to have an effect on the way that I finished this one.  I have another unfinished painting that I'll work on as soon as I can find the photo, and it's a couple of Tiger Lilys.  I love those; they are so unusual, and this year I didn't have a big crop but managed to get some photos which I hope I can find.

Burano Window, 12x12"

Burano Window, 12x12, Oil on board

In Burano, Italy, an island in the Venice archipelago, they have very colorful houses with flowers in the windows.  Their fisherman husbands can see their houses from the water.  This was one of the two photos supplied by Dreama during my workshop in early October at Westford, MA.  Co-incidentally, I was in Burano about 5 days before Dreama was there this last September.  I'm going to look through my photos for another nice reference that I can paint.

Italian flowers on a wall 12x12

Italian Flowers on a Wall with Grapes 12x12

This painting was one of two paintings that everyone in Dreama's group painted during her workshop in Westford, MA.  We each had a photo of the subject and tried to interpret it in her technique using a transparent underpainting.  If you went to her blog you would see how some others in the group interpreted the photo.  Tomorrow I'll post the other painting of the window in Burano with flowers.

Orange Day Lily Finished

Orange Day Lily, 6x6", Oil on board

I'm happy with this one, it was a quick painting done in plein air during the summer of 2013 in my backyard.  I have many varieties of day lilies. This is your typical wild day lily that spreads fairly quickly and is tall.  Someone once told me that I like orange, and until then, I didn't realize that I use a lot or orange in my living spaces, businesses, clothes, and now paint.

Orange Daylily 6x6"

Orange Daylily, 6 6", oil on board

I painted this one when it was in bloom this summer and have to touch it up a bit and then I'll post it to the Daily Paint Works web site.  I love that site.  I especially like the color combination here on this painting, the background greens are just what I wanted.  I think it was because of a dark underpainting.  It will also be on my sales site:  Mary's Art Shop.

Two Sunflowers (improved)

Thursday I worked on the "Two Sunflower" painting as I wanted to make changes to the leaves and background.  I'm more pleased with it now.  It leans more towards the realistic--the leaves having more form.

This painting is still in progress, it's a window in Burano, Italy, that was painted in the workshop with Dreama Tolle Perry recently.

I'll be working on this one today.

Two Sunflowers

Two Sunflowers, oil on stretched canvas, 10x20", $250

These dynamic colored sunflowers catch my eye every time I walk by them.  Rich, juicy paint and a serpentine somewhat abstract background design in earthy colors help the yellows to pop. 

Four in Four Challenge Completed

Mary Pyche, 12x12", oil on canvas, For Grandpa. $150

This was my submission to Carol's 4 in 4 Challenge.  I painted one a day for four days.  That wasn't the challenge however, it was to paint an object on three colors of paper four different times.  My photo is dark, maybe I'll go in and try to lighten it.  I fussed over the first one, taking photos, cropping them, printing them out and painting from one of them.  Then I noticed that the colors were more vivid in real life as opposed to the printed photo, so I painted the other three from life.

The price is $150 and you can reach me by email:  mypche@comcast.net

It is painted on canvas and will be affixed to gatorboard or masonite, your choice. 

I haven't been submitting to DPW for a long time now and have to spend some time improving my site and getting my PayPal going, etc.

Two in Four

Yesterday I painted the second tea cup of the Four in Four challenge on Daily Paint Works.  It is very different from the first one, color-wise,  and the colored papers are the same ones.  I'm curious to see what will happen with the next one.  Different times of the day contribute to the changes in colors with natural lighting, so maybe that's it. 

This morning I'm working with my student and will be painting on my tall sunflower painting, working on getting the background, which is somewhat abstract, to work out.  I'm trying for lots of colors.

Carol's Four in Four

dailypaintworks--the-four-in-four-challenge

I was motivated to do Carol Marine's Four in Four challenge yesterday and got started with the first of four paintings.  The first one is almost done.  I take so long to get ready, working on the arrangement of the set up, taking photos, cropping them, studying them to see what the angles are and what happens with the colors as the shadows cross the different colored paper that the subject is standing on, the lighting effects, natural or spot lit, etc.  BTW, I'm doing a white tea cup on three colored pieces of paper (the three pieces of colored paper with one item on it is the challenge).  The three colored pieces of paper also takes time to decide on.  I started with two greens and pink, and then settled on yellow, orange and pink with mostly natural lighting.  I painted from the cropped photo and then realized that the colors are much more vibrant from the still life arrangement, that's why I'm not finished, I'll punch up the colors. 

Bradford MA, today's model

After working with Dreama's wild and crazy colors, actually her colors are not crazy but I guess mine are for now, this study was a little Halloweenish.  I'd guess that we spend close to 2 hours on our studies and we meet every other Saturday morning.

The photo is more yellowish that it really is and I played with editing the color without success.

Still Dreama-ing

I'm still mesmerized with Dreama's process and have been reviewing it in my mind all day.  Unfortunately I won't be able to work on those paintings until late tomorrow because I have a portrait session with model in the morning but I will try this technique there on the portrait.  I'll report my results for sure.

Here are the two paintings that we did during the workshop with Dreama.  The routine was that she would talk us through the first third of the process and then we would go to our easels and paint up to that point.  Then a second talk and demo through the second phase and again we go back to our easels.  After lunch the final phase.  Actually I'm not sure about where lunch fell in, but lunch was provided and it was tasty fresh and wonderful each day.

The key to the procedure is to use only transparent paint on the first layer, not necessarily a notan but to be planning for the next layer and how this under painting would work it's way up through the second layer which uses your full palette.  Importantly a 50/50 mix of turp and linseed oil is the medium for the first layer and then as little medium as necessary for the second layer, preferably only paint.  It is meant to be an alla prima application, wet into wet.  If heavier application of paint is desired then more oil (as is usually the case, fat over lean) would be used.  In this way the paint will dry properly from the outside in.

Unfinished Mary Pyche painting, I'll be increasing the intensity and key.

Unfinished Mary Pyche painting, I'll be making adjustments to the design.

 Here is the community effort painting (the paint-a-round or Musical Painting) which I won't change a thing on and by which I will always remember this great group of painters and the experiences of the past few days.

8x8" Sunflower by Musical Painting

Tomorrow--portrait session, I wonder how this process will work then?

Waking up from Dreama

Sadly our workshop is over today and it ended with a bang.  A talk about promotion in the morning, a demo by Dreama's husband of the Square to ring up sales, and a paint-a-round (which was great fun and very insightful), lunch, and the afternoon of painting our own photo rounded up the last day.  We had so much fun and had such a great group of fellow painters that it made the workshop extra nice.  It would have been nice to have one more day to work out the problems we faced when we were adrift on our own trying to apply this new technique, but otherwise it was perfect.

These pictures are of the paint-a-round paintings.  We start at our own easel and then travel around to about 8 other easels to paint on each for 5-10 minutes.  The big surprise is how nice they all ended up!

Dreama, Day 2

Painting in progress

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A very successful day for everyone.  What a difference a day makes.  It's delightful to work with such luscious color.  At the end of the day I enjoyed visiting with everyone else to see their work.  It was very exciting.  I hope we get to put them all together and take a picture.

Today will be more business oriented with talks on promoting one's work, also there will be a paint-around and then in the afternoon we work from our own photo to do a painting.  This proved to be more difficult for me to do than I thought--choosing a photo to work with lots of colors.  I guess the lesson I need to learn is simplicity.  Well, among many others!

Dreama's workshop

So this is a dream come true, attending Dreama's workshop this week.  Started today and goes for two more days.  Since it fits into my painting adventures category, I have posted the first day's story there.:   Mary Pyche's Painting Adventures

Parish Center for the Arts, Westford, MA.

Dreama in action

Sunflowers, painting in class

Elaine's unfinished painting

My unfinished painting

I enjoyed talking photos today of the beautiful giant sunflowers I bought to paint in my lesson today with Elaine.  We had a great time with them and got a good start.  By next week I fear these flowers will only be a memory, or we will have to paint almost dead versions.  Who knows?  It was interesting though that even cut flowers follow the sun and change their look every few minutes.

Demo today by Marc Hayden at Buttonwoods, Haverhill

This exceptionally good portraitist, Mark Hayden of Bradford, MA, a member of the Copley Society, Boston, who has evaded doing a demo in the past, will be painting today at 2 p.m. for his first time in front of an audience according to him and members of the Haverhill Art Association.  I plan to attend and watch and listen.  David Curtis is another wonderful north shore artist who is a very popular   instructor for whom I had to wait for a long time to see him do a demo.  It is always a good experience for me to watch how really good artists proceed with a painting.
I also like to watch videos of artists painting or discussing their work.  Yesterday I found this great link to a video of Charlie Movalli talking about a particularly well-designed painting.  The thing I like about Charles and his work, is the construction of the design and composition and the lights and darks as punctuated in his video.  His direct and energetic style is another aspect that I love in his work.  Charlie Movalli "Light and Dark"

Back from Italy and getting back on track.

Firstly, I blogged about the Italy trip here:  Italy Trip 2013 - Modigliani

I haven't been very good at keeping up with my computer stuff lately, we all need a break from things from time to time.  It's been a long time (4 months ago) since I worked on the "George the Bardender" painting that wanted to finish as part of this year's goals.  What happened was that I got hung up on the face portion of the 5 foot tall painting.  Since the face alone was the size of an 8x10 painting, I wanted to improve my portrait skills, or at least, get back to where I was many years ago when I was doing portraits more often.  To that end, I took a detour.  I've been going to the Haverhill Art Association portrait days, second and fourth Saturdays of the month, and working with Mark Hayden (once a week).  He's a Copley Master specializing in portrait work, the style of portrait work that I admire.  I have revived my love of portrait work and find that I look forward to it and enjoy it.  Since there isn't much left of this year (3 months) I guess I had better get back on track and see what can be done with "George".

Another aspect of this year's work, is the teaching aspect.  My student is coming along very well and is diligent and likes the routine of coming once a week and painting but doesn't work on her own.  I'd like to have a couple other lessons join her on Monday mornings, and need to work on that. 

I've tried not to attend workshops this year, but the Italy trip was irresistible, and it was wonderful.  Even though I did do more paintings during the trip this year, there are things to learn about painting on these trips other than the painting itself.  Last year I had uploaded over a thousand photos onto my iPad, and had to spent  a lot of time backing them up.  This year I used several memory cards, one every few days, and didn't upload any except to my adventures blog.  www.pyche-art.blogspot.com. This is a change in my thought process.  The other workshop I'll do is coming up in mid-October and to that end I have purchased a few new tubes of paint and done a little experimenting.  My quest at furthering my understanding of color is the reason for attending as Dreama uses a more high-key palette of only transparent colors.

Another of my many (perhaps too many) plans for this year was to do large flower paintings in the hopes that I can display them next spring at my favorite local restaurant, The Rhythm Cafe in Merrimac, MA.  I did do a number of paintings of flowers in my garden this summer and took hundreds of photos.  I know that after my October workshop and when it gets cold outside I will retreat to my studio and put my nose to the grindstone, my shoulder to the wheel, etc.and incidentally listen to podcasts.

Making a new web site was another unfinished goal.  I got to the finish line, sort of speak, then I didn't like what I had done, and it took me about a month to do it, so that's on hold for now.  Perhaps that was what caused my lapse in working on the computer on my blogs.  I'd like to enhance my blogs somewhat as well by listing some blogs, websites, videos, that I recommend.

On other fronts, I've lost 30 lbs this year (and gained 6 back in Italy), did my morning walks almost every day (3 miles), enjoyed my experiences with coaching my skaters (roller) more and built up the skating club and artistic dance skating session and enhanced the program with a slightly different structure and made new music which looks like I'll also be going digital with it.  There was some stress about purchasing the land next door to our skating rink, and now converting it to a parking lot is next.  Our rink is owned and operated by my son, my husband, and myself.  www.skateland.com

I've written this lengthy report as a way to fill in the gap since I didn't report to it often lately. 

What do you see?

Henri Bergson - "The eyes only see what the mind is prepared to comprehend. "

Person in the Garden

Last Saturday I painted with David Curtis' group working on a person in the garden.  We did have a good time.

Last Saturday I attended David Curtis' Person in the Garden painting workshop in Gloucester so had the opportunity to visit both art associations.  It was a beautiful day and it seemed that these shows must be the best of this season.
I haven't been doing plein air lately and there is such a difference painting outdoors from the controlled environment of the studio.  The lighting is the biggest difference but the effect it has on your eyes and how the colors look on your canvas is also something that is hard to adjust to.  Because the light is constantly changing, the eyes are changing focus and the pallet looks different.
I concentrate so much on the work that I didn't even notice that my umbrella had fallen over and was no longer covering my pallet!
So David's biggest comment for everyone is that we were searching for the effect of light on the figure.  I believe everyone had a good day and was rescued by David's magic wand.

Flowers in the Garden

6x6, first flower painting 2013

Finally I started to paint my 'flowers in the garden' series.  I thoroughly enjoyed it I have to say.  I tried the clayboard by Ampersand and it really sucks--in a good way, ha!  The surface absorbs the paint like crazy but I like the effect.  While my painting student works I need to be busy so as to not hover over her too much, so my plan will be to work on these flower paintings.  I like bright color and usually you don't use it in regular landscaping paintings--lots and lots of greens instead.

What have I been doing?

Sorry all, I don't know why I haven't been posting but I have been busy painting and perhaps it was all the yard work one needs to do in the spring that has interrupted my blogging flow.
Everything that I've been working on, portraits, the bartender painting, the new web site, teaching painting, doing some plein air painting, has been cruising along at a good pace.  I just don't have anything finished enough to show it to anyone.  This year is flying along, my Italy trip is coming up fast, I guess I should post a photo of my yard, since that's the only thing that is up-to-snuff.
I am enjoying the portrait painting, and this coming Saturday I'll be painting a portrait or person in the garden at David Curtis' workshop in his yard.  David won the Popular Award for his new painting pictured here on the Northshore's NSAA website.