Super Sunday Sale

Midtown Gallery

1912 Broadway

Nashville, TN

Wildflowers I

oil on board

6 x 6

available at http://www.midtowngallery.com/

Looking outdoors at my back yard right now looks nothing like the images I am creating inside. Still trying to keep my spirits up during the winter doldrums, I am painting a series of wildflowers on hillsides and also marshes with "happy clouds". The small square format is perfect for these scenes. The hillsides are based on my Tuscany travels where I have painted. The marshes are images from different locales around Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. One thing I tell my students is to choose your subject in a landscape. Is it the ground or is it the sky? Don't divide your composition by painting the horizon line right in the middle and developing details in both areas. This is a fun (two) series for me and I love the wide floater frames I am using on them. The new paintings are available at Midtown Gallery in Nashville where I am now represented. Midtown Gallery is located on Broadway near Vanderbilt University. I used to be in Local Color Gallery in the same location a few years ago and am very excited to be back showing in the Nashville area. I hope you will drop by Midtown and see my paintings. For Super Bowl Sunday, Gary Tisdale the owner does something pretty unique: he has a Super Art Sale from 1:00 - 4:00 pm. It's a great time to get new works for your collection at great prices. Tell Gary you know me!

Also, I am now a part of Daily Painters of Georgia and you can follow our blog: http://www.dailypaintersofgeorgia.blogspot.com/ I am hoping it will motivate me to shoot, edit, and post my paintings more often. I wish I could say that I don't mind that part of the art trade, but I dread it. So I usually wait until I have several new paintings to shoot before I set things up. This will be an experiment to see if I can do this!

Have a Super Sunday no matter whose team wins today!

Durinda

Paint the whole world on an 8 x 10

You know who you are! You go outside with your paints and easel and BAM! Everywhere you look it is beautiful. Great light, great sky, glowing colors... it looks so good you just want to paint it all! But wait! You have to put it on an 8 x 10! What's a painter to do?

First, what attracts you most? What do you really want to paint? The sky? The trees? The grass? The water? The alligator? (no, really!) With your idea in mind, use a viewfinder, even cheaper, use your fingers and make a viewfinder, a keyhole, if you will and look JUST at the area you want to paint. Forget the lovely flowers on your left or the white bird- an egret?- that keeps strutting in front of you sticking his neck WAY out. Go away, distraction! The light will change in less than 2 hours and you have to get to work!

Make a sketch if you can, of just the large shapes. OK- you are going to put that on your canvas. Draw with charcoal or thinned paint. Go for the big blocks of local color. Here's your mantra for the day: SQUINT! Reduce the landscape into large masses of values and color. Get the essence, not the entirety ( I made that up!) Sure, it looks simple. The guy behind you is thinking, "I can do that". Yes, he can. That's why he is watching you and not painting himself. He "thinks" he can. He hasn't tried it.

Wow- that part took almost an hour. You still have to make it look like a landscape. Put in your lights. Put in your darkest darks. Hmmm, all you have to do now is tweek the midtones and then a few highlights- a tiny dab of sunlight here and there.

Time is growing short. The light has started creeping onto areas that were dark before. The shadows are much shorter. You are getting warm. A bee lands in your paint. Of course, he is in your most expensive imported white paint. You can paint around him. Naw, better flick him out. He looks like a ghost bee now on the ground. Maybe he can rub off the paint in the grass. Why did he want to dive in it in the first place??

You hear a rustling behind you. The looker is back. "Hmmm," he says,"I can see what you are painting now. Not bad." Thanks, you mumble, scraping off your palette. Note to self: in a little more than 2 hours, I painted "my world". Here's my world and welcome to it....