Small Abstracts

I've also been working on a series of abstracts.  This is a small painting called Lunar.  It's about 3inches by 3 inches and has 4 colors.  From Daniel Smith there's carbazole puple, rhodonite red, and permanent yellow deep.  Then, from Maimeri Blu, I believe, burnt umber.  It was an experiment to see how the pure color would go down and mix.    The paper is Arches 300 lb cold press.  I was especially happy with the way the bleeds across the colors worked.

The Kitchen Table Series

Last January, I started trying to produce one painting a month.  After a year of not painting, one painting a month seemed like a noble goal.  Logically, I recognize that to become a better painter, I should be painting just about every day.  There are a few other things that I think I should do, but that is a separate post.

As 2012 comes to a close, and I look back over the art I produced, I can see some themes emerged without any planning on my part.  (I mentioned things I should do to improve as a painter?  Planning would be nice.)  Most of my work I did sitting at my kitchen table, alla prima, very quickly.  I'm calling these paintings the "Kitchen Table Series."  Typically, they are small still lifes.  Here's a recent example, called "Pear, Orange, & Vase."  There are several common themes among these paintings.

--I'm always sitting in the same position at my table, so the light is always coming from my left.

--I do the paintings alla prima.

--I use whatever I have on hand.

--They are typically very fast.  One to two hours.

This is a theme I plan to carry over into 2013, to build into a series.