Delicate Balance

6 x 6 oil on canvas

I posted these grapefruit last night from my evening light photo and here they are again in better morning light. These colors are much closer to how it really looks. I was dismayed to see that they looked more like onions than grapefruit from the way my camera blued and dulled down the yellow and orange undertones. I definitely have it on my to-do list that I will try to do my photographing in the morning. Also need to learn to Photoshop (so my colors are true to the original) and I am also building my new website. There is so much more to being an artist than just making stuff, darn it. Anyway, this painting was done with the objective of making each stroke of paint one separate color from the others. No blending allowed. I did my best to follow that but sometimes I forgot -- old habits die hard. Here are the other entries so far for this week's Daily Paintworks Challenge.

Delicate Balance

6 x 6 oil on canvas

I took on the Daily Paintworks Challenge to paint any subject with just one stroke at a time. The natural tendency is to smooth out and blend colors, which just makes them end up looking muddy. Here we have two Texas Ruby Red grapefruit with a pink grapefruit balanced on top. Carol Marine is the Pied Piper of one-stroke painting and I certainly need to take a page from her book. This was fun, I'll try to do more of these.

Yoga Time

5 x 7 oil on canvas (study)  SOLD

Several things came together to make me want to do this one today. First, yesterday I painted three sofas (very boring) and watched The Biggest Loser last night. Then I got a big kick out of a fun Rachel Renault painting this morning. Yesterday I also found photos of a clay sculpture I did in college of a figure with roughly this fluffy form so I based these women on looking at that. I have been doing a lot of small studies lately but not posting them; thought everyone might appreciate the break. :-)

Portrait of Madeline Olsen

17 x 13 oil on canvas, nfs

Better photo without so much glare. I don't want to risk losing those much-beloved blog comments the other post got so I'll just leave that one up for now. Not that I'm fishing for comments. This has a little in common with the Kelli Bland portrait with the blue hair highlights. You can't really teach an old dog new tricks. Anyway, what a joy to paint my daughter :-) Have a great day, peeps!

Portrait of Madeline

17 x 13 oil on canvas, nfs

This is my younger daughter. I painted her from a photo that gave her a bluish glow, which I really liked. This image has a lot of glare on the top so I may switch it out tomorrow for a better one. I have missed painting people on a larger canvas and with more color like this. Feels very satisfying.