Steeples instead of Churches

Today my sister, Beth, and I traveled to St. Mary's bookstore and gift shop in downtown Nashville. Beth want s to get a First Communion gift for her granddaughter, Emma.  While there we noticed a display of painting on one column of the store. All the paintings were of steeples.  And we thought why try to paint an entire church building?  Instead let's start with just the steeple.

Remember this painting I started a week or so ago.  I can look at it and know it's my church - Hillsboro United Methodist Church in Leiper's Fork, TN.  I roughed in the basic shapes but then was not sure how to proceed.  So I stopped.  So we are thinking of doing just the steeple with enough of one side to make sure the identity of the church is clear.  

Two new paintings - green angel and white hydrangea

Two new paintings finished - one yesterday and one today.  I'm not particularly happy with either one. 

First the hydrangea.  I tried to follow a Nancy Medina video as closely as possible. Even with following a video to do it, it doesn't look very good. I think I will give up on flowers for awhile. I don't know why they stump me so. I want to be able to paint them well - but so far I don't feel I've done a good job at all.  This hydrangea is one of my least favorite paintings. However I DID learn something about how the darker underpainting with transparent colors make the lighter opaque colors really pop.  I had done the painting yesterday and disliked it so much, I scraped the paint off and started over today.   

 

Now the green angel:   I LOVE the green background - the colors and the textures.  The wings and dress are done with "Brilliant Yellow" rather than white, and I like the softening it gives them. However I see some clumps that I didn't even notice yesterday when I painted it.  

 

Blue Angel

I started working on an angel a couple days ago and only succeeded in getting a background done.  So today I got it back out and did the angel.  It literally took only a few minutes.  Now that I look at it, though, I'm thinking I need to add more dark blue to the bottom and top left.  So I will do that later and then add the finished photo.

This one was simple because the wings and dress are straight strokes of the brush.  The only detail work is her hair, and since it is a back view, there was no worry about facial details.

I went back to my studio to look at the painting and in person, the blue is plenty dark enough.  So I will let it be.  I like the free feelings of the painting.

 

Another Barn Painting

I DO enjoy country scenes.  This is a painting I started yesterday and finished today. I tried not to get too bogged down with details, and I guess the fact that I finished it in a 24-hour period is a testament to the fact that I didn't worry too much with details.   This is the "almost" finished photo.  I added yellow flowers to the bushes next to the barn - and I think that added some interest.  Done and done.

Here is the finished photo.  I think the added flowers make it prettier.

 

Painting with my Sister, Beth

My sister, Beth is visiting from Georgia, and we have been doing some painting.  I will let her share her own paintings - and I will share what I've worked on.

I looked at the paintings that I had begun but hadn't finished, and I found one that I had just blocked it, but I didn't like it; so I had set it aside and it had been in my unfinished pile for a month or two.  Since I wasn't inspired to start anything new, I thought I would just mess around with that one.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a photo of it before I started.  As I worked on it, slowly I became more excited about it.  I worked on the background, then the pot, then the flowers, and then the leaves.  Before I knew it, it was beginning to be something I liked.

12 x 12, oil on gessoboard

I really like the texture I get when I use the side of a flat brush to add paint to the canvas.  I've done that on several paintings lately, and the look of it appeals to me.   When I woke up this morning, I went upstairs to work on the painting a little more.  When I had finished last night, I noticed that there were two places that were not covered with paint.  So I went back over that this morning, and then worked on the flowers and leaves a little more, too.

I wanted to paint my goldendoodle, Cabbie.  I looked at her and took a photo of her, and painted the following.  Once I got the basic shape done, I didn't know what to do next.  So I set it aside.

 

Earlier I had wanted to paint our church.  So I got a photo of the church and sketched the following - filling in the base colors.  However, once I got to this point, I wasn't sure what to do next!  I don't want to even try to make a realistic painting of the church; rather, I want to paint an "impression" of it.  Hmmm - I put this aside and will deal with it another time.  And THAT is when I went back to the first painting above and finished that.  I knew what to do to finish that one!