Hup, Two, Three, Four - Daily painting #8

"Hup, Two, Three, Four" 6x6 Original Oil Painting on Canvas click here to Purchase

In keeping with the anti-rain and gray skies, I had some more fun with lemons today. These guys are looking a bit disorganized,but give them a couple more seconds and they will fall into line.

I really love all these colors together. After looking at it closer, I realized this was a split complimentary scheme. This is often a very pleasing color scheme for a viewer. The primary and most pure color os a yellow/yellow orange. I then used a red violet and a blue violet in less saturated hues. The blue violet was the color that I desaturated the most, as it is the most dissimilar from yellow. By using the split complements rather than the true complement, violet, the piece is more harmonious. You have to be careful with a straight complimentary scheme. Putting two completely opposite colors together can be really jarring to the viewer.

- Posted from my iPad

Sunshine and Lemons #8

"Sunshine and Lemons" 6x6 Original Oil Painting on Canvas click here to Purchase

Ungh. Rainy season. This girl can only take so many gray, rainy days before she starts getting a little stir crazy. To combat against the blues, i decided to have a bright, happy yellow daily painting today. Freshly sliced lemons on a beautiful mustard yellow foreground.

I'm amazed at how interesting it is to work with different colors. I find it tough to believe how much orange is in a lemons and how much yellow is in an orange when you are painting it. When you actually stop and look at the real color, not just the one that you mind labels it, you start seeing such a wonderful world of color.


- Posted from my iPad

First A (ish)

"Make Lemonade" 12x16 Oil on Canvas

This was my first A!  Well, A-, but heck, I'll take it.  I'm still catching up on some posts of paintings that I've done over the past few weeks.  I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We certainly missed all the family, but we had a swell time with our friends.  Two fried turkeys, one roasted, tons of food, pool time, beer, good times were had all around.  

A Pear Dilemma

Yet another school project.  For that, I apologize.  They just aren't quite as much fun, but they are really valuable learning experiences.

Want to know something kind of fun about this painting?  I used no green.  We were only allowed to use five colors - Titanium White, Ivory Black, Terra Rosa (which is a muted red), Yellow Ochre and Cadmium Yellow Light.   The apple is green because cadmium yellow light turns a beautiful green when you darken it with black.

I was kind of unhappy with my last painting, so I redid it.  Both these 11x14 paintings seem to be taking me somewhere around 4-5 hours each, which is about what the class said it would take.  But when I wind up doing more than 1 in a week, it kind of eats into the time I have set aside for my daily paintings.  My biggest problem with the other painting was using a tomato.    Because of using only the five colors, the tomato could have never been brighter than Terra Rosa, which at best can reach a terra cotta kind of red.  There was no way I could have gotten close to the color I was looking for.  I was also trying to paint a pear that was half red, half yellow.  No matter what I tried to do, I couldn't quite get it to look right.  So I changed that out for a fully yellow pear and a green apple.  Much happier with this.