The Facebook Three Paintings in Five Day Challenge, Day One

If your are not Facebook friends with a lot of artists, you may not know of the Three Paintings in Five Day Challenge that has been taking place since the first of the year.  It’s amazing how an idea can become viral, but on the plus side it has been wonderful to see so much art from artist friends flooding the ethers.

The idea is to postthree of your own paintings in five days and then challenge an artist to do the same on each of the five days.  Then they do the same challenging other artists and so on and so on.  I’ll be curious to see how long these continue in my News Feed!

I was nominated by good friend and wonderful watercolor painter Carrie Waller, if you haven’t seen her work you must.  I finished the challenge last week but for those of you whom I am not friends with on Facebook, I thought I would post here on the blog what I did on Facebook.

Joss Sticks, Oil on Panel, 11" x 14", 28 cm x 35.5 cm, Collection of the Artist

Day One…

I’m starting out with a few oils. These were inspired by my time living in Hong Kong. The two temple paintings have actual worshipping papers in the background. The market painting is of one of my favorite vendors in the wet market in SoHo, a mother and daughter that sold only bananas and peanuts. I challenged all my Florida Watercolor Society friends who hadn't been challenged yet.

Banana and Peanut Vendor, 12" x 9", 30.5 cm x 23 cm, Collection of the Artist

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Opening Reception for "Pick Your Passion" 127 SoBo Gallery, Winter Garden, Florida

It was a great opening reception last Thursday, well attended by about 100 people. Thanks to everyone who came and supported the gallery and me!  It has been very exciting and an honor to be featured, and especially to see my larger watercolor paintings framed and hung together!

I will also also be doing a workshop at the gallery October 16 & 17.  Teaching is something I have been interested in doing for quite some time and I'm really looking forward to it!  The workshop is called "Bold & Dynamic Watercolor."  I plan to talk about my techniques for creating my work as all as some general information about watercolor in general: papers, brushes, pigments, and ratio of pigment to water.  I will also cover how I go about designing my paintings, touching on design and composition. I welcome beginners and intermediate painters.   If you are interested click here for more information and here to sign up at the Winter Garden Art Association's web site.  If you don't live in the area, and would like to come, there is a quaint bed and breakfast inn, The Historic Edgewater Hotel, right downtown.  The hotel and the gallery are in the heart of the historic district of Winter Garden.

After all the excitement from the show, I have made some progress on the painting I am doing for Hope City Orlando to benefit victims of human trafficking.  I will post some more work in progress photos this week and maybe even the finished painting!

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Peel Street Guardian

On the South end of Peel Street, in Hong Kong,  is a tiny temple I would pass by on my way to Central when I walked from our apartment in the mid levels.  This little guardian lion was always covered in ashes from the joss sticks lit for offerings and prayers.   Since I passed by often I wanted to create a painting that would remind me, and be a momento of my daily life there.  To add interest I used Chinese worshipping papers in the upper left corner.

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My Web Site’s Limited Edition Prints & Note Cards Shop is Now Open!

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween and aren’t on too much of a sugar high today!

I am thrilled to finally announce that my Limited Edition Prints & Note Cards on-line store is finally open on my website!  I have been asked by many friends and collectors if I would offer prints of my work, to make having one of my pieces more affordable.  I spent the past summer researching various options to give everyone the best quality giclee prints that are as close to my originals as possible.  I am supporting a local business here in Orlando, who will scan, color correct and provide me a color proof of each painting, which I approve, before any prints are made.  Each print will be signed and numbered by me and will come with a letter of authenticity. I have a few prints available now and will add more this month, and as I create new works!  I am offering note cards too!  Keep checking back as there will be more prints and cards available. Prints and note cards  would make wonderful Christmas gifts!  All sales will go through Pay Pal, and will be shipped directly to you!   And better yet, all prices include shipping! You can start shopping now!

I will be announcing a couple of give aways this month, so stay tuned!  You can subscribe to my blog via the Subscribe section on the side bar,  Subscribe to my Monthly Newsletter, or like my Facebook Fan Page to stay in the loop.

Thanks to everyone for your continued support of my work! I very much appreciate it!! And now, on to eating more chocolate. :-)

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John Singer Sargent's Dorothy, Portrait Study

When I visited the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, I often saw artists copying some of the masters' works. There is a program where you can sign up and request to do this on certain days in the museum.  I heard the Orsay even provided the easels, and they have the ledgers from when the artists currently hanging in the Orsay signed in to do copy studies at the Louvre.   This is one thing I regret not looking into and doing when I lived there.

When I returned home I took a portrait painting class in oils.  The assignment was to do a study of apainting by John Singer Sargent.  I was very excited to do this study of his painting Dorothy because I rarely paint portraits, this one would be a good exercise in painting whites, and an opportunity to really study Sargent’s brushwork.  If you have never done a “copy” study, I would highly recommend it.  Here is the link to Sargent’s Dorothy which is at the Dallas Museum of Art.

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Banana and Peanut Seller

Keeping with the banana theme, this time an oil.  This sweet older lady and her daughter sold only bananas and peanuts in the shell at a corner stall in the Soho area of Hong Kong.  She weighed your bananas on an old fashioned counter weight scale. One of my favorite past times while living in Hong Kong was wondering the many outdoor markets. The colors and all the fantastic asian fruits and vegetables were such an inspiration.  However, the seafood and meat sections were not for the squeamish!

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Lori Putnam Demo

I was very fortunate to attend a demo given by plein air painter Lori Putnam during the Women Painters of the Southeast Annual Exhibit opening festivities.  Lori is an extremely dedicated and hard working artist and her passion for painting shows in her work.  She is also one of the nicest and most sincere artists you could ever hope to meet.  During the demo she painted a painting from a plein air sketch she had done on a recent “painting snow” trip to Wisconsin with Dawn Whitelaw,  and she also had many inspiring words of wisdom about being and artist and how she got started on her journey.  (Note:  She had the photo to her right on a screen just for us to see the scene she was painting.  During the demo, she referred to her actual plein air sketch, to create a bigger work.)

There were 2 take aways I have been pondering in my mind since the demo.  One is to think about the purpose of your painting before you get started.  Are you wanting to emphasize form, light and shadow, light and dark patterns, line, color?  The painting she did in the demo is a relative value painting.  Essentially just 3 values and how you make them relate to one another.  There is a lot to think about during the painting process and hopefully part of that process will be intuitive  but, to start with a plan of what you are going for instead of just haphazardly starting to paint resonated with me.

Lori was also the judge for awards for the show, which I can imagine must be a daunting task with so many great paintings to choose from for a select few.  She said while viewing all of the work she was "looking for paintings that had not been painted from ego, but from the soul."   I have heard this same idea, not exactly in these words,  from other judges too.  If we try and paint from that place where as Lori says, “soul” or our personality is reflected in our work and we feel we have achieved that it in the work we show, maybe the judges will feel it too.  Something to think about.

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