Crisscross Applesauce

This is of my son practicing his crisscross applesauce sitting at the beach.

Art in Action Silent Auction

Last night I painted live at Art in Action's Silent Auction. The auction was held at Honeywest, a local restaurant here in Burlington.

Painting live was quite a challenge but a lot of fun. I was backed into a corner, so I could not stand back from my work at intervals as I usually would. As the night went on this room was packed, but I was happy with my composition so I resisted adding more people in to it. I worked quickly, simplified, edited the space and came out with an interesting painting.

Thank you to everyone that came out (including the posse from my street); you made the night a lot of fun and a great success.

Flowers

I will be in Stratford, Ontario at the Art in the Park this saturday (along as the weather cooperates). If you are in the area, come and say hello.

Mother's Day Bouquet

This is a painting of the bouquet I received on Mother's Day from my Mother-In-Law. It is still looking great, so I my paint another rendition of it.

Lemons and Irises

These are irises from my garden. I was going for a simple, almost graphic composition in this one.

A Bottle of fuzion

I painted this on friday but it was too rainy and windy to take a photo of it until now. This is a bottle of wine that comes from Argentina called fuzion. I am no expert when it comes to wine, but I quite enjoyed this one.

Iris #4(blue underpainting)

This is the last painting, same palette but with an ultramarine blue underpainting. My favourite switches daily. What I have discovered is the monochromatic paintings (3 and 4) and the first painting (not sure how you would classify it) have a calm mood and energy. The second painting where I used a complementary colour scheme (yellow and violet) has an upbeat energy.

Have you got a favourite?

Iris #3 (violet underpainting)

Number three - this time with a violet underpainting. I noticed that I am getting looser with each painting as I get more comfortable/confident depicting the same still life set up.

Iris #2 (yellow underpainting)

Here is my second iris painting - same set up, same palette, but with a yellow underpainting. I think the yellow gives this one a different energy than the previous one.

Iris #1 (green underpainting)

The irises in my garden are out and they look amazing. I am going to experiment a bit with them by setting up the same still life for a few paintings but switch the underpainting colour I use on each one. My palette will remain the same, but I will see how the different ground colour influences or changes each piece. This is the first one - I used a muddy green as the ground - you can see it peaking through in the painting.

Hydrangeas

I am hoping to grow some of these in my garden this year, I just love them.

Palette Knife Portraits - Slideshow

Here is a slideshow of some of my recent palette knife portraits. The first and last portrait shown is of a friend - Haydain Neale of Jacksoul who passed away late last year. The music is by Jacksoul.