Studio Oil from Plein Air Watercolor

Sunday afternoon and I have missed several days of daily paintings. I believe I will go back to spending those hours creating something worthy of exhibiting and/or selling. It was fun and probably a good thing but it is hard to produce every day with other things going on in my life. I will come back to my blog on occasion and let you see what I am doing. I'll post paintings and some procedure photos on new projects.

My workshops start in May and run, one a month, through October, the season in the mountains. Check my web site for schedule, www.sandragatesart.com.


Carolina Hemlocks (oil) Plein Air

Until later...



Good afternoon,

Painted bananas this morning. Not very ambitious but did take time and is my daily painting for today. It is hard to plan a good composition that involves lots of thought and planning when the painting must be completed within that day. A simple subject is needed. However, it is always the PROCESS and it has been good to be so disciplined to paint every day; each a learning experience. Learned today, matching yellows is pretty hard...

Till tomorrow,

Honey Bear and Biscuit...Yum

Good afternoon,

Well, this is pretty bad; too tight and the honey bear fought me all the way. Looks like he is about to eat my biscuit. I was teaching this morning  and thought the watercolor would be faster with time left. Not so! I'll include it in today's one day painting since it did take my painting time today.

This afternoon will be spent preparing spaghetti sauce for a gathering of about 23 people later this week so no time left.

Off I go...

"After Carol Marine"

Good evening.,

My little painting today had to be cut short; probably could have gone much further with it but I do like the colors. I had a small 6x8 SourceTek board that I had started a painting of two purple onions that was never finished quite a while back. Much of the previous painting colors are evident. The blue is actually the shadows of the onions, turned upside down, (Upside down seems to be working for me...should I start painting standing on my head. grin) and the table top was the previous background. I had a three hour class at the local community college teaching me about Windows 8 on my new computer today that cut my painting time.

The title, "After Carol Marine", is inspired by a YouTube video by Carol Marine. She does daily paintings, beautifully done, using a palette knife. Mine was done with brushes only this tine. Her subject is often cups. Check her out. She does workshops too.,

Well, need to feed my dog and husband,
Goodbye for  now,

Note:  The post for Sunday was actually posted about 11:00. Had to figure out how to change the time/date on this new computer (don't know what country/time zone it was in) but though I do get up quite early sometimes, I did not finish that day's painting by 8 or so.

"A Spoon Full of Sugar..."

Good morning,

This painting was done this morning. I thought of the title before I started the painting. I was looking at this pretty pottery sugar bowl that I have from the 80's. The cream pitcher was broken but I still hold on to this and use it often. It has memories of our other mountain house, only about 800 sf but such fun to escape to from the rush of Charlotte. I had the chance to spend a couple of years going there to paint during a period that I left the business world.

But, back to the painting...I picked up the spoon to add to the set up and then thought of the title. This is a small oil painting. I use Vasari, in the colors I can afford and Winsor Newton. In Vasari I have french ultramarine, cad. yellow light, cad. red light, , cad. lemon and a color, called Shale, that is a wonderful brown with purple tones that is great for darks in a landscape. If you have a chance to get some of the VASARI colors, please do. They are expensive but great to paint with. I did add WN Cobalt to the paints I used and some WN orange in the FU to make the darker blue for the shadows and a touch of yellow ochre in the off-white of the table top. It was painted on a cut sheet of an old canvasette tablet that I had and have been using for these each day paintings. I like the little painting and wish I had remember the instructions to my students to use good materials; you don't know when you will get a "masterpiece".

Until tomorrow, maybe.

Today I painted this small floral, working from a watercolor I  painted for a demonstration for one of my watercolor workshops. The effect looks like a watercolor with the soft edges although it was painted in oils. In the photo it appears there is a green leaf right in the center of the painting. Painting a small (+) x in the center of the format before beginning your sketch,whether in the field or studio, reminds you to avoid this error. The original looks OK. I am not a very good  photographer.

When I figure out how, I am going to add more information to my profile so you will know more about me. I am a better painter than a compute person.

I will tell you that I am an artist living in the Western North Carolina mountains where I have my studio. I teach workshops in watercolor and oils during the summer months, one session a month, May through October. I will be posting my 2013 schedule on my web site in the next few days.

This is my first entry to my blog, so here goes. I got interested in having a blog when my painter friend, Susan, told me about a "30 paintings in 30 days" challenge starting in January 2013. I did not start in January until January 10 so I had missed 10 days. In an effort to catch up I painted two paintings on 1/10.

1/11/13

1/10/13

1/10/13




Then on 1/11/13, two more.

1/11/13


The figure painting above came about in an unusual way. I wanted to paint a scene with figures but the planned painting did not go as I wanted and I wiped it all out. The next morning I saw the resulting canvas up side down and saw figures in the rubbed out areas, particularly the main figure of the woman. This painting was fun as it told me where to go next as I continued to find figures/shapes. This is something that usually happens later in a painting. You will be looking at the subject you are painting in the beginning then at some point the painting begins to tell you where to go next.

After the two days of trying to catch up on the challenge I decided to just go from here since I will never "catch up". I will just do one as I can.