CAT FOR AUCTION AND PLEIN AIR PAINTING IN BOTETOURT

 

Hey Friends,  Found a few more pieces for Ebay in the studio.  This is called "Ms. Kitty and Her Aquarium".  We all know how much cats love to watch fish go by.  CLICK HERE for details in EBAY.

 

Today Linda and I had the great pleasure of painting at the Pleasant Grove Farm in Botetourt.  Mrs. Whitney Feldmann and her husband graciously opened their beautiful home and property for about 12 painters from the local area to capture the many beautiful views.  Above Mrs. Feldmann even hung some laundry on the lines just for me!  I told her how much I loved to paint laundry drying on the line.  You so seldom see this anymore.  What a generous lady.

 

Here is Linda in the shade of any old maple.  Mr. Feldmann said it was planted in 1955.  He had quite a few stories to pass on.  Their gorgeous home was built in 1830"s if I remember correctly.

 

This is the view that Linda was trying to get on the canvas before lunch.  She will have to tweek it before giving to Whitney for the BIG auction in Sept.

Can you see the cows?

 

And here is me!  Starting a third one.  I usually just do "Starts" when plein airing and finish later from memory or photos.

I will decide which to give to the auction after they are finished.

I have not looked yet but assume you can find out more about the auction in Sept by going to www.blueridgelandconservancy.org

 

We had a wonderful day and hope to go back soon.

Thank you Mr. & Mrs. Feldmann.

 

Happy Trails

Day 23 in Leslie Saeta's Challenge

 Hey Friends, Another stamped image, using just 2 different sized hand carved stamps.  I started with the purple stained tissue paper and gelled it to the canvas.  This created little ridges ( it's almost impossible to get tissue paper on smooth) which made me think of seaweed.  So there you have the fish swimming through the seaweed in a purple ocean.  No, I don't drink or do drugs.  Some things are meant to be. 

 Here is a sloppy close up, sorry, to tired to fool with photoshop.  I will put this in my Etsy shop.
Happy Trails
Travel Well

Day 22 of Leslie Saeta's Challenge

Hey Friends,  I must be honest,  this piece of work has not been shown before BUT I didn't paint it yesterday.  I made this about a month ago.  There now you can chastise me.  I made a post here on my blog sometime ago, I will attempt to link to it so you can see that I made the stamps for all of these critters.  I did enjoy carving the stamps and thoroughly enjoyed creating a design to fit them into.  So please leave a comment, tell me what you really think of this.
You can also check some close-ups in my Etsy shop.   Click Here.
Happy Trails
Travel Well

Making an Image Bigger

 
Hey Friends,  I've been playing with blogger again.  I can't seem to do exactly what I want.  I wanted to make the images I post here larger.  I have been going by instructions from Karen Marqulais ........
I did find the area where I made the side bar more narrow so bigger photos could fit (actually I THINK I did this correctly-I haven't published this post yet so it may not work for me)
So I think I've succedded.
The top img is a close up of a commission I'm working on.  Bottom img is my initial start.  I'm not finished but I like it a lot and hope the couple like it too.

Happy Trails
Travel Well

Commission Work

Hey Friends,  Just showing you what I'm working on at the moment.  A wonderful couple has commissioned me to paint a fun piece for their lake house bathroom.
Above are some items to inspire me.  If anyone knows me well, then they know my favorite themes are tropical.   I would paint palms all day if anyone wanted them.  The bathroom walls are the color on the paint can, AQUA, my favorite color of all.
Obviously fish is the main subject.  And bubbles.  Lots of bubbles.  Should be fun !!

Tonight is the First Fridays Art Crawl in downtown Roanoke.  I'm hoping to go and hoping it doesn't rain.  The sky has not done anything but rain for days and days, maybe weeks.  Water, Water everywhere.
We shall see.  I especially want to see the NEW gallery called "Wonderland" on Campbell.  I'll give a report tomorrow.   See you all downtown !

Happy Trails
Travel Well

More Stamping

 Hey Friends,  Still having fun making stamps and attempting to use them creatively !  Above are the same fish from the last post.   That's a jelly fish in the top left and the small seahorse in lower right.

 You can barely see it but I've got another fish drawn on the big piece of rubbery pink stuff - at the very top.  And a different fish already cut out at the bottom.  This would be a perfect photo to use those little arrows you see other people put on their blogs.  Anyway, that bit of green you see on the left is tape around an octopus' head.  I was going to use a stencil or mask type cut-out for the Octo instead of making such a huge stamp.  Didn't work so well so I just used masking fluid  to keep the Octo clean while I put washes of ink on the whole ampersand board.  Love this surface too, reminds me of Terra-Skin.

So here is the upper most section of this painting.  I only put a few of the jellyfish strings/tentacle's on the stamp because they are so tiny.  But I like it as is.  I used two sizes of pencil rubber holders for the suction cups on the Octopus along with smudging and a watery brush.   Such fun.  Hope to finish it today !

The Double Line Painters will be meeting at 2nd Helpings tomorrow, Thursday.   So come out and visit with us and have a fabulous lunch in the Cafe.!

Happy Trails
Travel Well