Argh! I didn't paint today. But I did do a lot of thinking about my painting, and researching what other direct painters are doing. I am so impressed with the artists who can really keep up with the "one painting a day" discipline. And I am in love with the way a simple composition of fruit or a few carefully chosen objects can convey so much.

My challenge: I tried to paint three white objects. Okay, white is the scary non-color that has to be addressed so I figured I would jump in and try it. What a mess. Waste of paint. In a moment of what-the-heck, I also did my white-on-white using a palette knife. In our last class we used a palette knife which I remember as being impossible from the time I first tried it in high school art class.  My daughter thought I had painted rolls of toilet paper@! Yup. that's what it is. I'm going to use that canvas as my palette, and just lift the paint off to create another painting.

I will not give up!! Values. I just need to be more attentive to the values. I went to Home Goods and actually bought  a couple of white pieces (cheap) with better shapes. Not so much like toilet paper rolls. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I'm going to try again, but with a paint brush not the palette knife.

Alla Prima painting

We began our Alla Prima adventure with a limited palette: titanium white, burnt umber, and ultramarine blue.

The rub-out picture of the apple felt like fancy finger painting, dabbing away the paint with paper towels. It was pretty frustrating at the time, so I was happily surprised when it came out actually looking like an apple! This is not a very good photo, since the edge of the canvas is visible making that slanted white line.

Values, values, values! With such a limited palette, we were forced to concentrate on just getting the relationship between the values mapped out.

And so I begin

This is the place to view my progress as an artist. I am taking a class from Anne Saitzyk at Art Center at Night. I absolutely love it and plan to take more classes there when this one is complete.

My goal is to share with others, to get feedback, and to challenge myself to paint, paint, PAINT!