Beach Inspired Abstract III

Tangles in the Sky - Tracy Feldman, 14 x 11" watercolor,
pen, and acrylic on canvas

This is the third in my series of beach-inspired abstracts.  I love seeing people fly kites above the sea on a sunny day.

The  independent little kites in Tangles in the Sky are inspired those kites; but in my imagining of them, they are soaring on their own, enjoying the day as they see fit.  

 Like with Zentangles Down to the Beach, my addition of Zentangles as an element in the sun -- as well as on the kites communicates adds a surreal element to the scene -- as does my choice not to include the kite strings.

I hope you enjoy this piece,  and look forward to hearing what you think.  Like with the other small paintings I show on this site, you will be able to buy this piece for a bargain at auction on from my gallery on the paintworks.com website.  If it doesn't sell on auction there, it will go on the "small works page of my website -- where it will sell for my normal asking price.

Green Bowl with Fruit: Starting to paint again after show

Green Bowl with Fruit, 8 x 10 still life
Watercolor on Canvas

Getting ready for my show and the Lancaster ArtWalk last week while hosting guests was so time consuming that I didn't post -- or even paint.  Yesterday, I realized that I needed to start painting again.  We had run out of fruit, and I found that this is the time of year that Costco starts carrying persimmons.  I love their orange color and their shiny surface (as well as their taste), so when I saw them, I realized I wanted to get them -- for painting and for eating.  So, this painting was created.

Once again, I've worked in watercolor on canvas, and I love the vibrancy of the colors -- particularly after I sprayed the surface with clear acrylic to preserve it.  The acrylic spray acts as glass does for watercolors on paper; when you place the painting under that shiny surface, the work gets another, wonderful dimension. 

If you are interested in buying this piece, you can go to my gallery on Dailypaintworks.com and bid on it.  I included a number of pieces (that didn't sell at auction) in the show, and several of them sold.  I had started their bid price at noticeably lower than I priced them at the show because there wasn't going to be any bidding on them at the show, and I framed some of them.  It inspired me to keep producing works for the auction because now I know that even if they don't sell there, they provide some good entry-level priced works to help me build my collector base.  That's what all the "How to Sell Your Art" books say is a good idea.  So, once again, I'm offering this little work at a starting bid of $35.00.

Working from Life

Vegetables in Sun - wide,
Oil pastel on canvas board, 17.7 x 9.7"

The three paintings in this blog were all done from life.  In the past,  I've not generally worked that way.  I usually work from photos.  I've often felt a little guilty (a little less than) for doing this.  Why?  Because most people I've talked to -- artists and non-artists alike -- assume that paintings made from life are better, more-dynamic, than those that use photos as a resource.

Vegetables in Sun - tall,
Oil Pastel on canvas board, 12.3 x 16.5"

When I look back on my early works, I have to admit that some of  my paintings had a stiffness about them.  This was because, like a lot of beginning painters, I assumed that my paintings got better the more slavishly they duplicated their photo resource. While I've let go of that mistaken approach, I still often rely a lot on photo references because freezing an image at a moment in time preserves the way the light and shadow influence the shape, color, and depth of field. Working outside in the sun complicates that because natural sunlight changes all the time.  However, over the years, I've loosened up the way I use photos.  Now,  I am happy to edit the images and composition (in my own head and the final painting) to create the visual story that I want to tell.  In fact, it isn't uncommon for me to go so far as using elements from several photos in a single work.

      Vegetables in the Sun -  wide, and Vegetables in the Sun -  tall, are two works I created on a single piece of canvas board, and  that I later cut up to create the final pieces.  I worked in oil pastels and set up each still life on my porch using some of my favorite late-summer vegetables from Lancaster County farms.  I played with dramatically changing the point of view and the composition to add an unexpected element  to the works.  I have to admit that rushing to capture the light does add a dynamism to the way I laid down the image.  I love that -- particularly the more-realized Vegetables in the sun - wide.

Which Came First ....?,
watercolor and acrylic on canvas, 8 x 10"

    The final work I have here is a more-standard still life, set up under studio lights.  It's a topic I normally wouldn't do, but I was working to complete a Daily Paintworks Challenge  about painting a broken egg.  I have decided that one way to get back into painting is to do more of these challenges.  I chose the broken egg challenge because I knew it would really test me -- since I had no idea how I was going to do it.  It took me a couple of days to come up with the idea of breaking an egg on an image of a chicken so I could call the work Which Came First ...?  This work was my second attempt to complete the challenge because painting egg shells is ... challenging.  If you look at the original watercolor of the chicken, you'll notice I simplified and darkened the tail a lot so as not to compete with the main subject of the painting -- the broken egg.

       You can go to my gallery on Daily Paintworks.com to participate in the Auctions for the two larger works (bidding starts at $35 because they are larger, and will be priced higher after the auction), or you can pay $15 for the challenge painting.

    Enjoy!

   

Daily Painting -- Oh, You Nut ... hatch

Oh, You Nut ... hatch
Watercolor on canvas
10 x 8"

 Late this winter, I took a number of pictures while on a day out in Lancaster County, and I posted them on this blog and on my Facebook page.  I asked people what they wanted me to paint some day.  I got a number of responses about what people liked, and then promptly got too involved doing business-related things on the web to remember to do that.  Yesterday, I was thinking, "What to paint today?", and I remembered my commitment.  So I looked over the pictures people said that they liked, and this is the result.

This picture is of a white breasted nuthatch hanging from a pine limb at the Lancaster County Central Park. I love watching these natural acrobats zip up and down, and around and around a tree. They're easily distinguished from other small birds because they hang upside down as they quickly circumnavigate the tree to unearth bugs underneath the bark.  I think this behavior of acrobatically arching away from the tree is their way of getting a general look around.

Shuts Enviromental Library
Lancaster County Central Park

For people who are interested in how I make compositional decisions when I paint -- particularly starting with photo references, I've provided the two photo references I used to create this piece.  I'll share the process I went through with this little painting.

I looked over what people said they liked and thought would make interesting paintings.  I also considered comments they offered.  A couple of people liked the pictures of the nuthatch, but when looking at it, I agreed with one comment that said the background was dull.  If you look at the photo of the nuthatch below, you'll see what I mean. The colors are dull and their values too close to that of the bird to be as eye catching as I wanted.

Original of nuthatch

   I quickly realized that a logical alternative background   would be one located within the Lancaster County Central Park where this nuthatch shot was actually taken.

I chose the long view of the park's environmental library (pictured above) as the new background because it was interesting, but also distant enough to remain secondary to the nuthatch in the painting.  If you notice, I chose to paint building and its surroundings in softer focus, and with paler hues than the original to keep viewers focused on the bird.  I also slightly altered where the little evergreen branch was in the foreground, and placed my signature in a way that visually linked the tree limb and the little branch.  In so doing, I provided a visual path down the limb, along my signature, up the branch to the nuthatch.

I'd welcome any comments or suggestions about this -- or future work. If you want to look into purchasing this piece, go to my gallery page on Dailypaintworks.com