Happy Holidays!

I've been very neglectful of this blog, even though there's been so much art going on in my house. Things always get a little hectic before the holidays, and we've had the unexpected trial of dealing with a burst pipe that soaked the inside of our garage. As I'm rushing to prepare for a 2 week trip back east, I'd like to leave you with some photos of this Christmas chair. It was commissioned to be a Christmas present for a 7 year old boy in Reno. I love the throwback theme, even though it's not exactly PC. It was a little trickier than I expected to find reference pics for this project! You may remember seeing this chair mid-stripping in an earlier post.
I hope you all have a great Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter celebration!

The Sun is Cold.

The tradeoff for a sunny winter day in Seattle is the bitter drop in temperature. Watson and I braved the cold this morning to romp around at the Westcrest off-leash area- a trip that was more than worthwhile since one of his best girlfriends Lucia was there for him to play with. 
When I couldn't take the cold anymore, we headed back home for a day of painting in the warmth of home. I worked on my fifth small floral for the group that will be shipped to California mid-month. My goal is to have 6 paintings dry and framed, with more that will be dry enough to ship after the holidays. Today I was inspired to paint these yellow flowers with abstract filtered sunlight in the background.

Here it is in the early stage:

Quick break for coffee and to admire mums in the afternoon sun:

The finished product: 

Flower Power

Wow- Early October is the last time that I worked on an oil painting, well before our glorious trip to Maui. Since I returned to Seattle I've been so focused on printmaking, and I also felt a little burned out after the SeaMonster mural, as fun as it was. I'm lucky enough to have the opportunity to sell some small floral paintings at a gallery in Northern California (details to come once my work is on the walls!) so it's time to get back in the swing of things. I'm painting with the palette knife on 5"x7" canvas boards that I'll frame when the work is dry. Photographer and friend Doug Davenport has generously e-mailed me a ton of reference photos. For now I'm picking from the florals, but I can't wait to revisit the others soon to paint some of the incredible wildlife, landscapes, and waterscapes that he sent. After struggling with two florals, I finally feel like I've reached my stride with my third attempt- this red flower that I painted today:When I paint impastos, I try to paint everything at once with no drying time for the painting. If I try to rework it while it's drying, the paint often becomes crumbly in sections and turns into a big chunky mess. I have let a painting dry completely before working further (Montmartre and Ushidoshi are two successful examples of this) but the wet-on-wet smudges are what I really love about painting with the knife. It's tricky to do this without the paint color getting muddy. My trick is to wipe off the knife after every stroke to keep the colors pure. The paper towel ends up looking like a little work of art in itself! I just cropped a section of this photo to make a new banner for the Etsy store that features my canvas paintings:

March of the Penguins

I just printed this set of cards to post on Etsy once they dry. I've been printing the penguin on colorful paper and then attaching those cut-out prints to recycled card stock. I'm so into handmade papers lately! I wasn't that impressed with this particular card stock so I decided to test print a penguin on one using Winsor and Newton water-mixable oils in pthalo blue (red shade). I loved how it turned out so I printed a set of 4 using the remaining cards.

The SeaMonster Mural is FINISHED!

This is a difficult mural to photograph and I need to return to get some better pics. Even more reason why you should check it out in person! The McTuff Trio has been playing at the SeaMonster on Tuesday nights and there's never a cover charge. How can you pass that up?

SeaMonster Mural: Day 4

It takes me forever to paint animals, but it's worth the time. I love how this turtle came out.

Day 4

SeaMonster Mural: Day 3

Today was a slow day for me. I was a little tired after staying up too late last night. I decided to place in the non-fish creatures and struggled a little in the placement. I redrew the turtle three times before I was happy with it! I figured out a few subtle changes I want to do to the very back coral, but I'm saving that type of work for Friday, when the major elements will be finished. I also wasn't really sure how I wanted to paint the coral. It seems so complicated but through experimentation I'm figuring out some simple ways to do it that should come in handy on future jobs. Thank god for the sea sponge! It's pretty funny to use a tool from the sea to paint the sea.

Day 3