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Random Quote
If you told me to write a love song tonight, I'd have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that's a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want.
-- Stephen Sondheim
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Blog Posts for "sketch"
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I painted the 3" version of the soon-to-be-painted 16" x 20" Poolside work I plan next.  Again, rough values, no small brushes or detail. To give you an impression of the size of these, here are the two sketches I've done of this one next to a dime.  They're small. And fun, actually. I'm surprised by the satisfaction I get in painting these rough thumbnails of what is to be a larger work. I learned with this sketch that lighter is better. The warm areas feel balanced to me. The cool of the blue, the warmth of the wooden fence in the background. The sunlight on the woman herself and in the palm fronds. You can't see it in these smaller versions, but she is eating up the sunshine in the peace found by a backyard pool. I hope to capture that in the larger work. I'm satisfied with the palette I've chosen for this. Next step is to get over the chicken sensation I get before starting something new. Yep, starting a work always makes me jittery. But I ignore it, or it would never happen. I'm excited to see how it turns out. |
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Purple, Blue, Yellow, and White |
I spent ten minutes sketching our young maple in the backyard.  I don't know that I have it right, but I like this better, and it was fun to do. |
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It occurred to me the other day that my web site here can be construed as: Be At Canvas Heh - I kinda like that. I had so much fun painting my mom's Mother's Day card yesterday that I painted her husband's card today, for Father's Day.  He lives for golf. And for taking care of my mom, which makes him a great guy. I like this "paint a card on my lunchbreak" thing. It's fun. |
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Getting Ready for Mother's Day |
 In kind of a sentimental mood, I painted this for my mom's Mother's Day card during lunch today. I've been thinking a lot about my daughter, who leaves my nest this year, and I've been reminiscing about my own childhood. Understandably mushy stuff inside the card, of course. I love my mom. |
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In order from left to right, here are my attempts at painting a flower petal today. The actual photo of the petal is on the right.      I got closer as I went, with the last attempt being my first time using Arches paper (love it). But even in the last attempt, my yellow isn't deep enough and my shadows aren't rich enough. More brown - maybe even red. The edges, though, are much better - more realistic transition between colors. To paint edges, I've learned, I need room. All of my paintings thus far have been postcard-sized, roughly speaking. Time to get into the larger canvas. |
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My next painting is on hold for the moment because I want to try something new - I want to add an element to the picture. I need to get out at night and photograph the element, so in the meantime... I had to take the morning off to drive a friend to the hospital who needed a test done, so while I was in the waiting room, I sketched a bit. I brought this photo with me:  Cute, eh? Here's my waiting room draft:  Sketchwork is fine, but I'm eager to get the brushes wet... And my friend's test came out fine, so the day was good. |
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It's not often that I have a difficult day at work. But today started out with a heated discussion and then the morning slid from there. Lunch, which is my painting break, was a very, very welcome respite and started a nice turn-around for me. On lunch, I wanted to work more on folds of clothing and monochromatic shading, so I typed "woman coat" into Google images and for some reason, a picture of children came up. The girl in the picture was so delighted and happy that I wanted to absorb her mood. She felt like sunshine to me, so I tried yellow. I like the result. It fit her well.  You can click on her if you want to see the source photo. And from there on out, the day was great. Tonight, I should turn on the Graffiti portion of the site. Let's see how far I get. |
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I'm new at painting, so I'm backtracking to get some basics. Clothes... that's a good place to work. Folds of clothing escape me, so I started this at lunch and finished it this evening.  Does it look like a plaid shirt and an Army jacket? |
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While I try to figure out how to finish my last painting, I'm off to the next one. I won't wait a month between them this time. I own a book called The Victory Garden. It was a PBS show, and there's a beautiful book based upon it of gardeners and their gardens. Fantastic stuff... and I need to get better at drawing people and their clothing. So I picked the first picture in the book and did a value sketch of it today.  Here's the original:  So I want to take a different approach with this - more abstract and colors of my own choosing, rather than try to paint strictly what's there in the picture, as I have done.  We'll see how this turns out. |
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