Strappo abstract painting on glass

8" x 10" acrylic painting on glass, strappo technique

I was going to peel the painting off the glass and paste it onto paper, but I kind of liked the look of it on glass--although it was hard to get a good picture of it with the reflections.

Sketches from Life Drawing Studio

I went to the Maitland Art Center Sketch Club on Thursday night last week for the first time. It's a life drawing studio (no instruction) with a model and lasts for approx. 2 1/2 hours. It was a good, if tiring, experience as I hadn't drawn from life in quite a while and it was particularly exhausting using a part of my brain which apparently was very rusty. I saw some other artists I had met in Patrick's class and Kaye's class and met some new ones, including Bill Orr. He knew Andre Smith, the founder of the Maitland Art Center, and told me that the room we were painting in used to be his studio. He was very encouraging and says he comes to the open studio frequently. I think I'll check it out again for the great practice and experience and the price can't be beat--$10 a session.

New Still Life Painting with Peacock Feathers

Still life with peacock feathers, 16" x 12" oil on canvas

I wish the photo would have turned out better, but I guess it gets the idea across. I'm going to try and finish up a self-portrait tomorrow and clean up my art room--not necessarily in that order.

Tiling and reorganzing chaos

Hall

We finally finished with the tiling/re-tiling and it looks fantastic! It took almost three weeks and was quite a disruption, but now that the dust has settled I feel it was worth it. Jose and his wife did a great job and worked very hard. We did two bedrooms, two bathrooms, the hall and the kitchen. With a dog and two house cats roaming around (and one outside cat that someone dumped), 100% tile is the only way to go. After organizing everything that was displaced, I'm now attempting to organize my art room so I can actually do some painting. I tend to get distracted with life in general (and the computer in particular), so I'm putting up a white board to write myself notes on instead of all those little yellow stickies that seem to disappear almost as fast as I scribble on them. I've been fearful of trying to show any of my work, but feel perhaps I could try some baby steps and show a painting in the Maitland Library with Kaye Calloway's class this December (hope I can find something presentable.)
Bedroom
Kitchen

Great new blog to follow

Great news to find out one of my favorite artists, Patrick McGrath Muniz, now has a blog. We sure miss his art and teaching here in Orlando, but at least we'll have his blog in order to keep up with him.

New Still Life Painting

Bean pot with squash and bottle, 20" x 16" oil painting on canvas

Not sure if I'm totally done with this, since I have a propensity to work, rework and overwork. But somehow I feel I need another little glaze on the pot and perhaps some more work on shadows.

New abstract painting

Abstract painting, oil on 11" x 14" canvas

Needed to relax after working on a still-life painting of a bean pot and squash, so I used the left-over paint on my palette for this abstract. I like the look of the red under-painting showing through and kind of wished I had used a bigger canvas. Definitely think I'll go for some more red tinting on future dabblings.