Nova Scotia VPO Completed

Enjoyed very much day tripping around Nova Scotia. Would love to have this wee place with a view of the water. This is done on a 6 x 9 inch 140 lb Strathmore cold press paper. I actually turned the sheet to the backside, which surprisingly to me, did effect how the watercolors laid. Accidental experiment, but interesting. I did take a fine line ink marker to this when I finished the painting. Needed to stand out from the water a bit more than it did. I am liking my watercolors and oils more than my attempts at colored pencil (I think I mentioned this before). Doesn't mean I'm giving up the idea of those pencils though. They are perfect for the anal detail oriented me. I also like the trees and bushes I've been accomplishing. Always one of my most feared things to paint, but they seem to work fairly well to my eyes when I've finished them.

Nothing currently pending to do, but I do have that ancient piece I started so long ago. Also have some other ideas rattling around in my head. I may give up Different Strokes (I think I am thankful she hasn't posted my contribution) though. The next one is wide open for me to offend someone and that I most certainly do not want to do. I do have a job interview tomorrow (nothing in my skills, experience, and knowledge bracket, but beggars cannot be choosers!), and if I get that, my time will be much curtailed. That is ok too, though. We really could use the money. My school loans have kicked back in, despite being deferred for the past two years. Another $350/mo. out the door. Let's hope I can at least earn that much by working.

I guess I'll close for now. Feeling a tad bit blue today and I also must send Bill Guffy my VPO submission. Hope you all have a great day!

Airport Travelers

Original name for a piece, eh? Ah well...Floundering through a fog of wondering why I keep trying with my art. After mailing Julie's croft off the other day, I was looking at it on this blog when it SLAMMED into me what the heck was really wrong with the piece. Glaringly obvious and an example of how I get too bogged in details (not just with paintings) to see the big picture. Those hills behind the croft should have extended on behind the house and out the other side. Of course, here I am trying to capture the photo and that side of the croft wasn't really showing. So did I paint what I saw? Yes. Did I take into account my placement versus that of the photo? No!! Julie I am so sorry. If you'd like me to do it again, please do let me know.

Self-bashing on that piece aside, I finished my Different Strokes challenge piece. I was thinking I was doing pretty darned well and decided to do this one in colored pencils. I thought the geometric floor would lend itself well to the colored pencils. I was wrong - for my abilities. I should have stuck to watercolors. I suppose that is the medium I am most usually halfway pleased with what I've done. I really suck as an artist and I am rather ashamed to post things here and there. I've mentioned before how I always hope I learn from my pieces or that someone else might learn from them at the very most, and at the very least, feel better about their own abilities after looking at my own.

Anyway, I decided that I needed to pop this piece more and so I took a fine line ink marker to it. It did help alot, I found. I'm not yet ready to give up on colored pencils (check out the colored pencil artists' works on both Wet Canvas (link on side) and Leslie Hawes' blog (linked in an earlier blog entry) if you want to see masterful use of colored pencils. I'm not sure what my issues are, but I have 'em.

So...here is my Different Strokes piece.

Scotland Croft

I've finished the Munro family croft located in Scotland. One of my lovely blogging buddies requested that I do a piece for her and she sent me two great photos from which to choose and to work. I chose to do her family croft because...well, maybe because I have Scot blood in these old veins and I envy her knowledge of her family roots. I am quite proud of my Scot heritage, brought to the front and center of my thoughts by the books of Diana Gabaldon. Speaking of which, I am having a more difficult time getting into this latest book in her series. I think the problem is that it has been 3 years since the last new title release in this series! I've forgotten some of the details referred to in the newest book. Sigh...(and yes, I am also Irish, English, and German too! LOLOL I mention it because I occasionally talk about this throughout the blogdom.)

Anyway, hopefully Julie will not mind if I share her photo and my inspiration first. Isn't it wonderful to have this type of photographic history in your family?



Below is my rendering of the croft. As I usually find problems with all of my work, I'm not really sure what to comment on. I will say that the part I most expected to have difficulty doing turned out to be one of my favorite parts of this painting: the thatched roof. I think I missed the proportion on the width of the croft, put the chimney in the wrong spot and didn't quite hit the mark on the yard. Still and yet, it is yet another that shows my particular "style" - if one can go so far as to call my juvenile offerings as having a style. LOLOL Anyway, without further ado:



The croft painting is watercolor on 140 lb. cold pressed Strathmore paper (9 x 12). The tartan (Julie's familial tartan) is colored pencil (Prismacolors thanks to my blogging buddy Nicole's largesse) on 140 lb. cold pressed Arches paper (12 x 17). The black border was done first with watercolors, then I had to go over it with a huge black permanent marker to get a more even tone.

Julie (check out her blog), I hope to get this in the mail either today or tomorrow. I have to find a box to ship it in as I do not want to roll it.

My next piece is the Different Strokes challenge (which I have started) and of course, the Virtual Paintout challenge. I've already decided on a street view (well, I narrowed it down to two at least), so hopefully there will be new pieces soon. In the meantime, I find myself hoping that by taking the art instruction program I have in my queue of things to do, that I'll surmount my issues with my pieces. At least to some small degree. I suddenly had a thought! I wonder if having an astigmatism is the fault of my skewed works????? (Let me go with that one!) LOLOLOL

Nature's Surprises

I currently have two paintings going and a third on the drawing board (i.e., I am figuring out what scene to paint for the Virtual Paintout). The one I am almost finished with is for my friend Julie. It is a painting of her family's croft in Scotland. I hope to have it completely finished and ready to mail in a couple of days. I've started the Different Strokes challenge and it surely IS a challenge. One of the three hardest things for me (the figures) is done, 1 is half done, and the third I haven't begun yet. I always set things aside if I lose my mojo so I don't screw it up out of trying to finish quickly. I have time.

Anyway, I thought I would share a couple of photos of visitors to my home in the past month or so. (I am not sure if I shared this first photo before or not...) First of all, there is an open field behind my house. When mowing the yard one day, my husband stopped and ran in to get me (I grabbed the camera first!) and this is what we saw back there! Turkey buzzards! Must have been 30 or 40 of them up there. They stayed around for a week or two but seem to have since moved to cozier digs.



On that very same day, same trek outside, my husband also showed me this interesting visitor. Someone told me this was a sign of good luck. Let us hope so. We could use some of that precious commodity! Our visiting praying mantis:



And last but not least, our most recent visitors. These two couples live down the hill behind the field behind our house. They have been visiting the partk for several days and made their way to our yard. We have lots of wild ones of this species, but they are dark brown and not quite as large as these fine specimens. Aren't they a most beautiful color?? Apparently they belong to the daughters of that particular home and they are "pets." They do like to be fed and prefer bread to oats! Our neighborly turkeys:









I hope to try drawing one of those turkey heads or two or four and do it in colored pencils. Leslie Hawes has way inspired me! Leslie has two blogs and is a colored pencil artist. If you click her name, you will see the inspiration for my desire to do these turkeys! This particular blog (after you see the posted entry from clicking her name, click on the title of her blog itself to be brought to her latest entry) finds Leslie showing us step-by-step how she does her colored pencil work. Very useful indeed. Her second blog shows her daily works. One of my favorite artists and next on my list for purchasing, methinks. She works magic with those colored pencils and she has quite an eye for color itself.

T'is all out of me for the day! Hope you all have a great week! I'll post again when I finish Julie's familial croft painting. Thank you for asking me to do this, Julie. I am way beyond honored!

Van Gogh Forgery...er...Copy

Hah! As if! Boy! This was a harder challenge than I had anticipated! I rather saw Van Gogh's brush strokes as being fairly easy to emulate! I did not bargain for my usual lack of patience to be thrown into the mix. I do not usually work in oil paints either, though more because I do not have any real experience with them than for any other reason. Of course, Van Gogh's work screamed at me that I needed to use oil paints. They sure take a long time to dry! And of course, there is the blending of the colors when you do not want them to blend. Some places with this, I did want that blending, others not so much.

I had a hard time choosing one of three of Vincent's paintings that I really like! One is called Two Cypresses painted in Saint-Remy in 1889 (sky and clouds are especially fabulous in this piece); a second is called Wheat Field with Cypresses, also painted in Saint-Remy in 1889 (the colors overall and the sky! Sigh!!!!); and my third love is Olive Orchard (again 1889 out of Saint-Remy; in this one I just loved the trees themselves and again the sky). Ultimately I chose to do Two Cypresses because I was really intrigued by the colors in the sky and clouds.

So...Without further ado, I give you Van Gogh's version:



And of course, my end product. (Not nearly as pretty, but definitely an exercise I want to do again, probably with each of the other two that I mentioned above.) Oh yes; this is oil on 8 x 10 masonite. So sorry for the light reflections on the still wet oil (yikes!)...

On Art and Van Gogh

"But I have to keep on going my own way. If I don't do anything, if I don't study, if I don't search - then I am lost. Then God help me!" - Vincent Van Gogh

In preparation for the Following the Masters Challenge, I have been doing some research on Vincent Van Gogh. I came across the above quote and identified so very strongly with it that I had to share it. I am a true student, school, life, art...It keeps me getting up each and every day. My mom told me that when I was a little girl I drove her nuts asking questions. As an adult, even as late as in my early 40's, I have been told at jobs that I "ask too many questions." I have to know, I have to understand at the most basic levels and then build from there. The hardest lesson I had to learn - ever - was in taking algebra. As much as I needed to know WHY something was done in a certain way, it wasn't until I accepted that it just IS, was I able to understand it and do well in it.

At any rate, back to Van Gogh. I've never been a big fan of his art work. Did you know he was only 37 when he passed away? One of his friends, Rappard, once told Van Gogh, "You'll no doubt agree with me that such a piece of work is not to be taken seriously. Thank goodness you are capable of more than this." The piece he was criticizing was called "Potato Eaters," and oddly enough one of my own favorites of Van Gogh's works.


Van Gogh handled charcoal, pen and ink masterfully! Some of his earliest drawings are just superb to my mind. Then I see the paintings and I see work as poor as my own, by and large. Of course, this is all in the eye of the beholder. (Apparently, Van Gogh's paintings were not acclaimed until after his death!)


Imagine my shock to see that Van Gogh practiced different styles to his work. One piece that he mentions giving him trouble was The Loom. The equipment itself caused him grief. I see a combination of past style and future style leaning towards a bit of Impressionism with the wall behind the man operating the loom.


In this painting of Montmartre, I see the crooked street lights and I wonder...


Of course, I do not consider myself even close to the talents of Van Gogh. That said, I wonder if that is just because he is famous for his art work. When looking at the catalog of his works and see some of the pieces, I get the feeling that he spent quite a bit of time simply splashing paint around to see what would happen. In other words, there isn't necessarily a lot of serious painting going on at times. Maybe frustration, maybe a form of expressing his emotions, maybe even simple practice and a playing with of styles. He plays with impressionism, with pointillism (sorry if I've butchered the spelling of that one). I'm not sure I even know what pointillism is, but I intend to check it out. I read in this book that it has to do with dots of paint, which is exactly what I thought it was, but I will still look up the methods. Curiosity sake and all of that.

Another of my favorite pieces done by Van Gogh is called Peasant Man and Woman Planting Potatoes. Not sure why this piece moves me, but it does indeed.


Throw in some of Van Gogh's portraits and I am once again put off of his work. There is something off, not quite right (as in my own self-portrait). For instance, Woman at a Table in the "Cafe du Tambourin." Look how skewed both eyes and eyebrows are. The hairstyle? I thought she might be wearing a hat but the book calls it a hairstyle...


Then there is the Portrait of Pere Tanguy; note again the placement of the eyes. Just something off, methinks. Way too wideset.


Van Gogh's own self-portrait I also find a bit disturbing, somehow.


Yet his Fisherman with a Sou'wester just is amazingly wonderful.



Ultimately, Van Gogh painted and drew with various styles, some of which I like, some which I really find off-putting. I suppose that is the way of art though, isn't it? I find that it really disturbs me to read of the art connoiseurs and their in-depth interpretations and analyzations of any art work. I think quite often they attach symbolism and meaning to pieces that were never the intent of the artist. Not to say that an artist doesn't play with his work or his viewers because I am certain that they do. But to have a painting imbued with meaning that more than likely wasn't there to begin with, at least not by intent, just bugs me. For me art has to speak to me, move me in some way. It plays to my emotions, not my analytical thinking processes. I follow many artist's blogs (a new passion that came about over the past few months) and I see works quite a bit more exquisite than Van Gogh's pieces. Others as wonky in their way as I find some of Van Gogh's works. I find them all interesting and beautifully, even those somewhat skewed visions (except my own, alas). I find them interesting because they are seen with a different eye than my own, executed by a hand that connects head to fingers different than most others. I learn and grow, watch and listen and enjoy. I've been self teaching art history (and I do so have a love for the Renaissance pieces) and am finding works that I love across all historical art periods. I am beginning my own small collection of art works from art that speaks to me, personally, whether through artist friend's blogs, through eBay, and even my own piling up stash of completed pieces. Mine will undoubtedly never see the light of day as they are stashed in a 33 gal. black plastic trash bag. But they are mine and I love them because I did them and I've come to see the charm in them all. Eventually it happens for me. Not great masterpieces, mind you, but charming nonetheless. I've come to find that I prefer the blogs I follow to even art fairs. There is something machine like about art fairs...unless I can make that emotional connection with a piece or an artist, I just find that I do not enjoy it as much. And that is that...my convoluted take on art.

So what have I learned? A few new words to look up, including impressionism (not a new word, but still want to look it up), pointillism (again not a new word but one I want to understand), pastoso (?); and ultimately? I LOVE LOVE LOVE Van Gogh. I see the growth, the experimentation, the not always facile use of paint and brush, the reaching, trying, and love of art. He worked in various mediums (The State Lottery Office painting is a watercolor!) I think he and I would have got on quite well. I also love his red hair and somewhat ascetic looks! I leave you with another of one of my favorite Van Gogh paintings: The State Lottery Office.

Roe Valley Country Park, Londonderry, Ireland.

Well, obviously I finished painting this piece for my husband's friend's wife (say that 5x fast!). I started out all excited about the piece; it looked fabulous with just the tree trunks painted in! LOL I mayhaps overworked this piece. It was such a lush green forest, peaty, dark, earthy brown, bits of moss growing on the rocky tops of the bridge and on the brick front. Had no clue how to paint the water so it looked transparent. It was clear, clean, cool water running over a shallow 'spot' in the ground, also in that rich, peaty soil. Sigh...How do I always go so wrong??? The steps were there in the original photograph. The only thing I changed was to add the stream running out behind the bridge into the forest. I don't recall seeing it in the photo itself, though maybe a bit of something that may have been a culvert top in the background just peeking over the top of the bridge.

The photo was one that I found by simply doing a search for Londonderry, Ireland. Google maps did not bring up any site views for me, so not one to be daunted (more than one way to skin a rat), I searched through hundreds of Londonderry photos until I found one that wreaks of nature. Something I truly love. For some reason, I could feel my hair kinking and wiring up as I gazed upon the greenness of the scene. But what does one think of when thinking of the Irish? The green, baby! And I don't mean $$$$. Of course, that is unless I also think of the green clad leprechaun and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow... Anyway, let me see if I can add a link for the photo! I hope it is ok to paint from an image that I see on the web. I am not selling the piece at all and have no clue how to reach the photographer. I am guessing the photographer is Allen Gleave. Allen, should you find my blog, I hope this is ok with you. The photo is gorgeous!