Inspiration & a Peeled Orange Still Life

Peeled Orange – 6" x 6" Oil on Canvas Panel

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the book Taking The Leap and the author’s recommendation to keep a visual journal where daily you record a minimum of three design/art ideas. Well, nightly before going to bed I jot down three ideas, sometimes the ideas are just a list of bullet points, other times they end up being thumbnail sketches, or a mixture of both. It has been a fun exercise, both of patience and dedication, as sometimes I just want to go to sleep after a long day of work and extracurricular activities… However this little painting is the first direct result of keeping this journal.

I was stumped on what next to focus on, I have been working on larger more complicated paintings, and I need something simple but also a challenge. I also did not want to revisit a subject I have painted recently, so I started flipping through the journal and came across a series a thumbnail sketches that were of partially peeled lemons and oranges. I was inspired. And here is the result.

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Bowl of Lemons - Circular Composition within a Square

Bowl of Lemons – 6" x 6" Oil on Canvas Panel - SOLD

In this painting I was going for a pretty classic image, a bowl of fruit. Initially my goal was not to make such a symmetrical and compact composition, it came together that way. As I posted a few months ago, I really enjoy the “circle within a square” motif, with its sense of a beginning and an end while always staring over and never ending.

I just feel it is a stable and optimistic compositional format that looks forward while also being happy to stay in the present. Oh, I do not know if this is how others feel, it is just my impression every time I think about it and my way of explaining to myself, why it repeatedly crops up as a composition in my paintings… maybe others have a different opinion, this is just mine.

Thanks, Liz

Graphite Sketch of Slim

Graphite on Strathmore sketch paper

This past Monday I was listening to one of Danny Gregory’s Illustrated Life podcasts. He was interviewing artist Roz Stendahl. I was not familiar her, however as the podcast progressed I continued to learn more and gain more inspiration from what she shared with Danny Gregory. The thing that captured my imagination most was her “Daily Dots” project, which was a five year process of daily sketching her beautiful dog, Dot.

So that Monday night I began making a point of sketching my cat, Slim. She is a very special pet, friendly and quirky, and I care for her very much. This sketch is of her napping in one of her beds (she has three) at the dinning room window.

Two Bell Peppers Still Life

Two Red Bell Peppers – 6" x 8" Oil on Canvas Panel SOLD

Sometimes just as I am about to use a vegetable or fruit to prepare a meal, I realize how much I want to paint it. Typically, I arrive home around 7:30pm from work. This does not leave much time in the evening. So on the lucky occasions where my schedule allows me the opportunity to paint before dinner, I grab it! This is how this painting was created, right before cooking dinner as the bell peppers were the main vegetable ingredient in a stir-fry.

Apricots and Peaches Still Life

Apricots and Peaches Study – 6" x 8" Oil on Canvas Panel SOLD

This painting was painted as a means of testing out some ideas. I was investigating the effectiveness of using the salvaged tile as a backdrop along with a stack of white fiesta bowls. The color palette is a pleasing combination of peaches, oranges and creams with bright whites and blues as accents.

Apricots & Blue Bowls Still Life

Apricots with Blue Fiesta Bowls – 6" x 8" Oil on Canvas Panel SOLD

Fuzzy fruit are a joy to paint; they do not have the obvious highlights like smooth skin fruit. So in pairing the fruit with fiesta bowls that have lots of shine and highlights was a fun exercise in differences.

Peaches and Apricots Frieze Still Life

(in-progress painting, with my studio in the background)
Peaches and Apricots Frieze – 5 1/2” x 24” Linen on Panel

This weekend I began another Frieze painting. This still life includes fruit like the other frieze paintings have had, however to mix things up a bit I also am including a salvaged tile and an antique cigar box.

Below is a detail of the painting.

Red, White, and Blue 4th of July

Three Apples in a Row – 6” x 12” Oil on Canvas Panel

Happy Fourth of July! Here is my red, white, and blue contribution to this wonderful day.

In the spirit of being patriotic, last night Steve and I started watching the HBO movie John Adams. Wow, it is really a great mini-series. Love Laura Linney as Abigail, she is a wonderful actress, and Paul Giamatti plays a convincing John Adams.

A few years ago I attended the Gilbert Stuart exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. One of the last paintings hung in this exhibit was the 1826 portrait of John Adams as a very old man. The inquisitive look and the way his hand clasps the handle of a cane really captures the razor sharp intellect and integrity of John Adams. I believe this may be one of the best portraits I have ever been lucky enough to see in person.

Lemon with a Jar Still Life

Lemon with a Jar – 8" x 6" Oil on Canvas Panel SOLD

Last week I read Taking the Leapby Cay Lang, and in the introduction she encourages you to keep a visual diary. This is a little different than just keeping a sketchbook in that it is a means for discovering your mission as an artist, the inner voice that defines what inspires and drive you to create art.

Here is her description: “every night before you go to bed, write or sketch three ideas for your art in your journal. Don’t make a big production out of this. It doesn’t have to take an hour; sometimes five minutes is all you will feel like giving to it. The ideas don’t have to be good ones, and you don’t ever have to follow through on making them. You just have to imagine them and write them down, or make a sketch if you like. The point is to bring attention to your work, and to notice the ideas that occur. Within a short time, a week or two, a pattern will begin to emerge…. Pay close attention to these ideas. This is your heart speaking.” Pg. xvii

I feel the repetitive actions of painting and posting on this blog is helping me focus as an artist. Last year I happened to take a still life painting class and really fell in love with this genre. Since then I have been mainly painting still lifes, though I would not consider myself just a still life artist, as I also enjoy plein air and figurative work as well. However this painting just came into being from a random placement a few items set on the model stand while I was trying to get to an item that was behind the jar. From the random placement, I found something interesting, I liked the way the jar reflected and dissolved in front of the purple cloth, and then the yellow lemon also caught my interest. This painting was just the result of random actions, though to me it also has the quietness I love in paintings.

As of now, I am not sure if I have found my mission as an artist, however am learning that I truly enjoy the experience of finding a quite moment with simple items and recording them.

Still Life with Two Green Apples

Two Green Apples – 6" x 6" Oil on Canvas Panel

After painting the single apple, the composition was altered slightly to include two apples. The second apple was placed behind and to the side of the front apple so I could capture the extreme value difference of the shadow of the front apple and the highlighted area of the second apple. These transitions between light and shade were used with great affect in Dutch Still Life paintings, here is a great link to the Rijksmuseum, and the closest example I can find that depicts this specific method of perspective is the Still Life with Jug.