Parallel Parking

 

CELBRATION STORY

 This painting is a little different from most of my others. It has a little more of a graphic feel to it. One of the artists of the past that I admire the most is Henri Matisse. The thing I love most about his work is his use of pattern. I enjoyed adding pattern to the vases in this painting to add interest.

PERFECT TIME

 I haven’t posted in quite a while.Painting and solo and group shows have taken up a lot of my time. Plus Life in general. I do enjoy taking a little time to talk about a single painting though. Along with flowers I do love chairs. The combination is perfect. Wouldn’t you love to come home to a basket of beautiful flowers waiting for you in your favorite chair? A perfect time

Where Will You Go?

 I do florals more than landscapes; but my landscapes often have some florals in them! This landscape has  some mystery because of the path that disappears into the darkness. No one knows exactly where it goes- it  is up to the viewer’s imagination.The path leads the viewer into the picture plane and all around it. The colors chose add to the calm feeling of the painting.

Carlotta

 Sometimes the title for a painting comes to me after a painting is finished. As soon as I fnished this; the name Carlotta popped in my head. She is a character in a book series by Linda Barnes about a private investigator who solves various crimes. She is a colorful redhead who invokes the kind of colors present in this painting. The neutrals are only present in the greens and background, allowing the flowers to pop!

Kindness

 I chose bright , light colors for this painting with very few darks. I was trying for an upbeat , happy feeling for the painting. Everytime I use aqua in a painting that seems to be the outcome; I don’t know why. I guess because it is a kind of blue but with a little kick to it by adding the green. Kind of like a fun day at the beach. I would like to audit a good color theory class some day. Not for a grade; just to absorb some of the knowledge. There are so many things to learn; so little time!

SPRING UPDATE

 
 I haven’t posted in a while. I misunderstood that the blog was going to be discontinued. It was just the mailing list. In the meantime I have still been painting every day. Last week my Instagram account ( @libbybob) was hacked by a bitcoin hacker making it seem that I was asking people to invest in bitcoin. I am trying to resolve this but in the meantime I have opened a new account named @was_libbybob

So please follow me on that account; no bitcoin allowed!

WILD MEADOW

 This is a closeup of a flower meadow.The dark background adds depth; making the viewer wonder what else is behind the flowers in the front. The colors pop because of the neutral greens with the surprising yellows.

Parallel Parking

 I did not have to parallel park for my driving test and I avoid it when possible. I drive around the block for 20 minutes or park 3 blocks away also to avoid it. These bottle vases remind me of that parking situation!

Lost in the Garden

 I do floral compositions more than landscapes but do enjoy landscapes as a change of pace. This landscape combines my love of flowers with the outdoors. The flowers draw the viewer in toward the buildings as the blooms get smaller as they recede.

Summer Romance

 Viewers often ask if I draw my subject before I paint. I usually take a brush and a thinned color from my palette to block in the placement of the basic shapes. If I was a beginning painter I might do a lot of preliminary sketches but I have been painting for so long I have a pretty good idea for placement and scale. Since I am using oil; I can also just wipe it off if I don’t like it. I find that I have a fresher painting if I don’t have a tight drawing that I am trying to follow.

Likewise

 These vases had a kind of 1950’s vibe to them ; what you might have had flowers brought to you in the hospital as you recovered  from some kind of surgery  or maybe a baby being born. They may have sat on the window sill for a week because as you know back then hospital stays were at least that long. Now you go in for heart surgery in the morning and they send you home in the afternoon.  Not that modern medicine is so great— all about the money!

Daily Story

 My favorite part of this painting is the white flowers. They are the star of the show and spice up the neutral colors of the flower arrangement. Without the white the lovely purples and blues wouldn’t sing as beautifully. A lesson to all of us that we need each other!

One More Silver Dollar

 The title may seem strange to you but titles just come to me sometime out of the blue.A lyric from the song Midnight Rider popped in my head for some reason. My favorite thing about this painting are the way these colors harmonize with each other. It could be an accident but maybe years of experience play into it. That said, I have many day of painting where I wipe off many paintings and start over. It is never easy!

Good Idea

 Colors that an artist chooses tend to convey the message of a painting.This painting doesn't have the most brilliant colors available but certainly not a New England feel. I would expect this to be from an island home or some tropical destination. There are neutrals, but just enough necessary for the eye to rest.

Peace

 Several years ago we visited England. We started in Manchester, visited London and ended up in the Cotswolds. It was a picture book version of old England. The thatched roof cottages, sheep in the meadows and high tea and scones with clotted cream.This idyllic view reminds me of the magical time we had on our trip.

Blue Table

 I have painted sunflowers many times before . This is a different view; it is a back view and shows the flowers backlit. One way to make a statement in art is to think outside the box. It might be by using different colors or a different point of view. 

Summer Backyard

 Although it is the middle of winter; I choose a summer landscape to display. A few years ago I started doing a series of meadows or fields of flowers. The point of view is what a person or animal would see at eye level of the plants and flowers close up and also at perspective. This view is very close up as if a rabbit is looking through the flowers. Maybe the next painting may show the viewer!

Agreeable

 I like choosing multiple objects in a composition. It works well to vary the size of the objects to make the painting more interesting. Another good rule of a painting is to choose an odd number instead of an even number. The even number of things seems to divide the space up into two areas  and moves the eye out of the painting.

Top of the Ticket

 Composition in a landscape usually relies on some kind of perspective. There is most often a view that shows distance;foreground, middle ground and background. This landscape adds another element which is light and shadow.  Hopefully I was able to show the effect of sunshine hitting the meadow.

For the Beauty

I don’t do landscapes as often as flowers. You will notice that I often sneak in flowers in my landscapes. I am hopeless! I totally left reality when choosing color for this painting; well not bright purple and orange. I want to feel a little excitement when looking at a painting. Otherwise why go to the trouble of painting it. When I first started painting I was just glad to get something down that looked like what I was seeing. I now want to push it farther.

Red Tree

It is always important to have a center of interest in a painting. An easy way to make that happen is to make that center of interest different from other areas of the painting. Since a summer or spring landscape has a lot of green in it; a pop of red is unexpected,
. This guarantees an immediate attention getter, a position that is not dead center in the composition is important too.

Life Instructions

In 1987 I went to Matisse Retrospective at the museum of Modern Art in NYC. It was a huge  show featuring many of his works that had been hidden away from the public due to the Nazis. It was an overwhelming experience. His works are primarily interesting to me because of his use of pattern;often mixing 2 or 3 in one painting. I had finished this painting earlier but it lacked something. It was good enough but a little boring. I added some pattern to it that gave it some life, taking a little instruction from Henri Matisse.

Remember Me

I tend to paint florals more than landscapes but the same principles apply in both subjects. My one objection to landscapes in summer is that there is so much green that they can tend to be boring. In this landscape I tweaked the colors to make the painting more interesting. You may not find these exact colors in nature but they make for a more pleasing painting.

Game On

In a 2 dimensional painting texture usually has to be implied. Some artists use oil paint thickly
which adds a texture of its own. I choose to try to create texture by the use of value and brush strokes. in this painting there is a variety of texture. Smooth texture is in the blue cloth in the foreground which contrasts with the rough nubby texture of the basket. The flower petals would feel smooth to the touch but the way they are tightly layered would give them a ruffly feel If touched.

White Emperor Tulips

This painting has gone through a few versions.Each one has sat on a shelf and stared at me for a few days. I did not really like those versions very much; not really a dislike just not very interesting. I realized it needed something more. It had a background that was a pretty shade of blue but was too close in value to the leaves. There was not enough contrast in the painting. So I decided the dark background would work better and it did. Drama always wins!

Midnight Fiesta

The title of a painting just comes to me often with no effort. When I finished this one I immediately was reminded of the colorful clothing of the members of a mariachi band. The painting is saved from being too colorful by the neutral textured vase and the dark background but still has enough color to be quite lvely.

One Steo Ahead

There was a book written several years ago titled Love in the Time of Cholera. Well , painting now seems to be Art in the time of Corona. Some artists are  saying they are having a difficult time getting started painting right now. They feel unsettled and uneasy.I feel that too but I find that painting eases those feeling. Two hours of painting allows me to escape all the worries of the world for a time. Good Therapy!

Blues Club

I had done an earlier version of this painting. It was fine but something about it wasn’t quite right
to me.It took me a long time to figure it out. It was the background ; which I had painted a golden color. I realized what it needed was a little more drama so I gave it a dark background and it made all the difference. It spoke to me; I finally listened.

Make a Deal

There are many color schemes to choose from for a painting. For this one I started with a primary colr scheme and added onto that.Because of all the bright colors I felt that a soft neutral was important in the foreground. Another bright color would have really jangled the nerves of the viewer. The soft beige of the table is just right to make the bright colors pop.