Apple Kettle Book and Chain

This is for Feb 2012 Rookie Painter challenge. It's oil on 10x14 canvas panel.

There were two choices for this month's challenge (ref). The one with the blue cloth stood out to me because of the bright color contrast. I also liked the triangular set up of the still life items and the gold chain that broke up the rigidness of the other items. However, I thought the kettle against a light background made the kettle too overpowering compared to the other items. So I made the background to have similar tone and value of the kettle to make it less stand out.

As I had limited time to do this painting, with all the kids and other things I need to attend to, I did this in about four hours. I know there were things I could have tweaked, like the tea kettle handle bar, but I thought the painting as is had already expressed what I was trying to do. So I left it as is: the art of imperfection.

Family at Cavoli Beach

This is my second submission to this month's Virtual Paintout challenge, Elba Italy. It's oil on 10x10 canvas panel.

Not too far from where I found the scene for my first painting, I saw this family standing very close to the Google camera (ref) with good sun light. Since I'd done many landscape paintings recently, and I'd not really painted human bodies before, this was worth trying. It was actually a family of five. I dropped two of the kids just trying to keep a not so simple painting more manageable. I also drop all the crowd, chairs, umbrellas in the background, and painted a simple beach instead.

One difficulty with this painting was that the Google Map picture was not very clear, especially with human faces and also the man on the right, as they were all distorted. So I had to made up the faces, and the body (ok, I actually looked up Calvin Klein ad photos to get some idea since the mom and dad in the photo looked like Calvin Klein models). My palette for skin in this painting included flesh tone, naples yellow, cadmium orange, burnt sienna, olive green, madder, ultramarine violet, burnt umber, violet grey, and white.

A Ride with Talisker

This is a commissioned work. It's oil on 9x12 canvas panel.

Kellie and Paul had asked me to do a painting for their two poodles, Bailey and Talisker. Kellie sent me many photos they took since they moved to LA. This one with Talisker riding in a car catching the wind caught my eyes. It's got such a care free feel to it. I also wanted to do something for the Paws For Charity Art Book Project (ref), so I decided to first do this smaller work, trying to capture this carefree feel.

Couple at Cavoli Beach

This is for Virtual Paintout, February 2012 Elba Italy challenge. It's oil on 10x10 canvas panel.

I've never been to this part of Italy before, the Tuscan Archipelago, so I started my virtual visit by dropping the Google Map yellow man randomly along the south coast of the island. The yellow man took me to a beach somewhere around Cavoli. There were a lot of nice beach scenes, including this one (ref), plus we're still in the middle of winter, and my hands and feet were still ice cold from the cold temperature, so there was great appeal in a painting beach scene (wishful thinking).

This scene caught my eyes because of the strong light contrast. It also reminded me of beach scene paintings by one of our favorite artists, Karin Jurick, whose use of color is so brilliant, and her brush strokes are so precise. I simplified the scene a great deal as the beach was full of people and I really just wanted to paint this couple. The man's balding hair and fuller figure plus the woman's inflatable bed give the painting an unusual twist.

Sea Sky Beach

This is a commissioned work, it's oil on 30x40" stretched canvas.

Britta and Gabe wanted a painting in their living room that captured the colors of their ocean view, plus big sky and sandy beach. To go with the clean line style of their living room decor, the painting needed to be simple, to the point and clutter free. Britta has an architecture background, and likes paintings by Ralston Crawford. With these parameters, I went back to my drawing board.

I looked up paintings by Ralston Crawford for ideas. Many of his paintings had a clear vanishing point, whether it be seen explicitly on canvas, implied on canvas, or implied off canvas. So I knew one of the elements I needed to have was to have some kind of vanishing point or clear perspective element. In addition, Britta had spent many of her childhood summers on Martha's Vineyard, where we visited every year as well. So this also gave me an idea: there's a long stretch of beach, called State Beach, running between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. So I started to sketch out and did a few small prototypes.

One thing I realized in this horizontal arrangement was that with the ocean on the right and beach on left, the painting didn't feel too balanced. I added in a small stretch of road on the left in a bluish grey, trying to balance out the ocean on the right. The white strip on the road also echoed the white line suggestion of wave crashing onshore.

The few protypes I did included this one, beach with texture, sky with cloud, with house, trees, vertical arrangement... At the end we decided the simple horizontal arrangement was the best.

Similar to my prior commissioned works and painting sales, in lieu of paying me anything, Britta and Gabe made a charity contribution, in this instance, to the UNICEF. Thank you very much and enjoy your painting.

Colorado Snowy Woodland

This is my second submission to January 2012 Virtual Paintout, Summit County Colorado challenge. It's oil on 10x14 canvas panel.

While I was "virtually" skiing and site-seeing in Summit County, Colorado, besides the many skier scenes, one of which I had just painted, there were also many beautiful snowy woodland scenes, many of which reminded me of paintings by John F. Carlson who wrote one of the must-reads in landscape painting, "Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting". I wished the illustrations in his book were in color. A search on the internet yielded some of Carlson's paintings in color, although not every single painting shown in the book. I decided to do this snowy woodland scene (ref) in the spirit of Carlson.

I first prepared my canvas panel with an acrylic base on mixture of red oxide and yellow orchre. I also had to adjust my palette, as Carlson's color, especially shadows tend to of colder and greyer than what I usually use. I added in colors such as Prussian Blue and van Dyke Brown. I also followed Carlson's recommendation on order of values: lightest being the ground, then sky, then background, and then foreground. I also kept some parts loosely painted so that the ground color of red would show through to add more interest.

Downhill Junior

This is for Virtual Paintout January, 2012 Colorado challenge. It's oil on 12x16.

This month's Colorado challenge is quite unique: the Google camera was actually attached to a snow mobile, and Google street pictures were taken on ski slopes! I couldn't pass up such a fun opportunity to "ski" virtually while sipping hot tea by my computer! Very cool.

Somewhere not too far from where the ski lift drop-off, I saw this little guy going downhill, in parallel skis! (ref) (as opposed to kiddie wedges we usually see with kids going down the hill) In fact, I think he has better posture than me! In any case, I thought it would make a fun composition, with his bright red jacket, bright snow, shadows from the trees, far away mountain.

Starting with a white canvas, I first painted cold dark trees and the mountain in the background. Sunny snow is white mixed with cadmium yellow. Tree shadows are white with violet grey and blue grey. I used palette knife for the tree trunks, and tree leaves were combinations of burnt sienna, burnt umbre, cadmium yellow, sap green etc. For the kid's jacket I used my left over vermilion, cadmium red, alizarin, ultramarine violet from the strawberries painting I did a few days ago. To make the bottom part of the painting, with the snow, shadows and the kid, less disjointed from upper half, with the trees and mountain, I decided to put in a few rays of sun peeping through from the trees to tie the two parts together.