Fruit Paintings: Part 3

Pear

And lastly a tomato and a pear.  I think I like these two the best out of the six.  I am varnishing them right now and should have all of these 8×10’s listed in my shop sometime this week.  It has been a fun break from the precision of all of that ink work.

After that, I think I’ll go back to a little drawing of three calves that I started way back last fall before the Christmas rush started.

Tomato

Fruit Paintings Part 2

Strawberries

Next up was strawberries and an apple.  These are all 8×10’s.  I like the smaller size as it is not too intimidating for me at this point.  I really need to take an acrylic class again, just to get some tips on manipulating the paint.  I have problems dealing with the thickness of the paint and using the drying speed retardant.

In any case, I was pretty happy with the way these turned out. Once again I raided my refrigerator for inspiration and came up with these.  And the nice thing is, when I’m done, I can eat the scenery props.  Which I did.  LOL

Granny Smith apple

Fruit paintings

Avocado

After two months of line work, I felt I needed to do something very different for a little while.  Since I plan to do about a half a dozen of these, I felt that posting most of the preliminary work would be a bit tedious, so I will stick with a close to finished photo.

I went to the refrigerator and took a look at what was in there.  First up turns out to be an avocado and oranges.  I wanted to do something more free form and these are part of the results  after 3-4 painting sessions each.  I think I will look at them all again when the the whole batch is essentially done to make final adjustments before I list them in my etsy store.  As it turns out I will have two reds, two greens, and two orangish one.  It should make a nice variety of color for kitchen art.  Maybe I should add in something blue, too.  Blue berries?  I’ll have to buy some which will make John happy.

Oranges

Commission Number 3

Brown house

Somehow I forgot to take the pencil up and inked photos of this commission with all if the work piling up  after it, so right on to the colored version.  As the buyer said, it’s a brown house.  The green shutters add a spot of color as do the flowers.  I had to rearrange the landscaping a bit to not hide the window, but she had some pretty flowers round the front.

I’m mostly finished with the last commission.  I want to get it out soon so that it makes it for Christmas.

Playing hooky

New aceos

I must admit to playing hooky over the last week.  The weather has been warming up and while I had to dodge some rain, I was able to do my “fall cleanup” for a few days.  The flower beds are ready for spring weeding and as soon as it dries up some, I’ll be out there pulling grass, dandelions, and other assorted weeds that have already sprung up.  The redbuds are fully blooming and the dogwoods are coming on.  My red dogwood survived the winter cold and the deer with most of the flowers intact. so I am happy about that.  The daffodils are almost done though.  I have been picking them to put in the kitchen, but they haven’t lasted over long.  It is still early to buy any flowers for planting, but I’m getting the urge to.  We are having a high deer fence put around our garden this spring because we are tired of the deer, raccoons, rabbits, possums, etc. eating up everything including the fruit trees.  I might as well just been giving the wildlife the money the last few years.  LOL

I did spend some time making some new aceo/gift tags.  I have my next project in mind, but I have to do some photo research before I can start.  Here’s a peek at the aceos.  I’ll be listing some of them in the next few days.

Success

Aceo blanks 2

The latest sheet of watercolor for the aeco/gift tags backgrounds turned out fine. I don’t know if it was the different soaking brush, the different colored paper, or a combination of the two, but the colors lay down nicely and I am pleased with the results. Perhaps I was somehow scarring up the paper with the other brush or removing some surface finish, but this time around there was no precipitation of the paint.  I now have way too many blanks, but they do make an easy project for a fill in. I will probably list a few of these this week.  Valentine’s Day is coming up for the heart ones and I also don’t have a lot of blue things in my shop.  The worst part is taking all of the photos.  I end up sifting through about 12 photos to get the three I need for each listing.  It is necessary, but time consuming. Then I’ll have to figure out a real project to work on.

Happy New Year to all

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and a great start to the new year.  I spent some time with family and friends and just relaxed after a hectic few months with commission work.

I sold quite a few the aceos listed in my shop last year and decided to make a few new ones.  It has been a bit more of a chore than I expected.  I kind of tossed off the original set that I made without thinking much about the process and have come to regret my lack of attention.  I have been unable to replicate that first big sheet for the blanks.  I have been having a problem with the watercolor precipitating out somewhat so the paint doesn’t dry smoothly and evenly.  I have run two sheets and not been overly happy with them.  I used two different brands of watercolors and while one was better than the other, I still had problems.  I think I will try one more time, using a smaller brush to soak the paper.  Maybe the bristles have been scarring the paper someway that I can’t see.  I wish I could remember what I did the first time.  It’s the downside of spontaneity I guess.  And the passage of three years since I made the first set.

New aceos

Here are a few that I have managed to eke out in the last few days.