Painting- done I think

I think after eleven hours of painting yesterday it is done. There is always the possibility I will tweak thinks here and there. I had to force myself to stop last night at midnight, I was touching up lights and darks on the leaves on the tree on the right to give them a little more contrast. I probably could have spent another hour touching them up here and there.

A little blue

I only had a short amount of time to paint yesterday so I didn't get as far as I would have liked. Hopefully today I will get the rest of the flowers painted and begin the grass.

The flowers are starting to bloom

I have finished painting the greenery and am now painting the flowers. I am only using red, yellow, white and blue for the flowers since that is the limits of the flower colors in the hunting paintings. I have chosen to make the white flowers tinted a little pink just so they are not a stark white. So far I have worked through red and yellow, next I will start on blue.

After I finish the flowers I will start painting in the grass.

Ricë Freeman-Zachery featured Nina and another talented girl named Sarah, about the same age, on her blog over the weekend.

SOFA and Ellen

Friday morning I went to two wonderful textile themed lectures at SOFA. The first one Fiber Art: Expressions & Aesthetics, Part I: fiber artists Marcia Docter, C. Pazia Mannella, Carol B. Shinn and Barbara Lee Smith share their ideas and inspirations.

Barbara Lee Smith

Carol Shinn

The second was Fiber Art: Expressions and Aesthetics, Part II: Fiber artists Jon Eric Riis, Geoffrey Gorman, Marilyn Pappas and Kate Cusack share their ideas and inspirations.

Both Lectures were wonderful, seeing each artist's work, hearing about their process and inspirations was fascinating.

Here's Geoffrey Gorman in Jane Sauer's booth with his fabulous found object sculptures. I love how animated his animals seem, I feel like they could get up and run away.

There is always so much to see, I wish I could list all the amazing art and artists to see at this show. A few pieces that caught my eye were the stitched sculptures by Anne Lemanski and these glass orbs with stitched filaments and glass tendrils by Cathy Strokowsky. I only had my iphone with me which does not take great pictures in low light, so I didn't take many photos.

After coming home from SOFA I took Abby out for a walk.  Being a nice day,  I was anxious to get her out to enjoy it before the cold sets in and it is too cold for her to go out on walks. As I turned the corner I saw a crowd on the sidewalk across from an SUV that said the Ellen Degeneres Show on the side hooked up to a trailer with a magazine stand on top. I hung out a few minutes to see what was going on and started up a conversation with a production designer named Larry who told me he built the magazine stand and gave me the low down on what was supposed to happen.

This is Ellen driving away with the magazine stand full of the latest O magazine that she is featured in.

Abby started to get cold standing outside as the wind kicked up in the shade, so I popped her in my coat to keep her warm. Luckily she stayed quiet and didn't start barking at anything.

Here's Ellen getting out of the SUV after going around the block.

Nina called me on the phone, so I looked up and she was looking over the balcony. The photo on the right is her view of me standing on the street below, while Abby gets some attention from a bystander.

Nina got this shot of Ellen from up on the balcony.

Not much different and I'm going to SOFA

It doesn't look much different and I won't have chance to paint because I am going to SOFA today. I love this show, it is always so inspiring. This morning I am going to two textile lectures, I'll tell ya more later, my ride is on the way.

This is my kind of gardening

The only green on my thumbs is from paint. I love plants, I am just not very good at keeping them alive. Except for cacti and succulents, I do really well with those, but unfortunately I don't live in California anymore.

A little touch of gold

I outlined the yellow scroll design with metallic gold paint, to give it that classic gilded touch.

Now I begin the plants, it will probably take me a few days to paint all the flowers and grasses. The plants will be in a variety of greens from the green I have painted first to strong yellow greens like in the leaves of the trees.

The plants I have started painting first are made with emerald green and white. It looks really blue  against the bright yellow-green background, but that color is true to the hunting paintings.

Getting there

I painted hairs on the deer to look more like the deer in the hunting paintings, it also has the benefit of looking stylistically more different from the smooth painting style of the little deer. I also darkened up the shade side of the antlers to give them a little more definition.

When I work I usually leave my paper cartoon under my fabric and slide plastic underneath the fabric to create a barrier to the paper. Dry cleaning bags work great because they are thin soft plastic, easily smoothed out and less like likely to show creases.

The filigree scroll pattern was painted with an ocher brown transparent paint diluted with a lot of textile medium (colorless extender) that made a nice soft creamy yellow color.

It probably looks like I am getting close to being finished but I still have a lot of painting to do. I need to add gold to the scroll work to give it definition and I still have all the flowers and grasses to paint on the ground.

60's deer painted

I painted the little deer using opaque paints with white because I wanted him to feel more like a solid object, since those figurines were always made of glass or plastic. I also wanted it to have a brighter cheerier look than the more serious painting referenced background so it is painted using a warmer more colorful brown.

Base painting for large deer

Saturday night I managed to get the big deer painted. I used a transparent brown textile paint and used varying amounts of textile medium (Jacquard; colorless extender) to lighten the color. I plan on painting brush stroke hairs over the majority of the deer similar to the way the animals are painted in the hunting paintings, but I will probably tackle the little deer first and come back to details after.