Happy New Year!

For me the new year always brings so much promise, so much potential, so many opportunities to start something new.  Today I started a new sketchbook, that I hope to draw in every day of 2015.  I call it my coffee sketchbook because I will spend the time it takes me to drink my morning coffee sketching here...

day one

I've been reading about getting organized and focused and what it comes down to is committing a certain time each day to what it is you want to accomplish.  I drink coffee every morning, and usually read the paper or make a list of to-dos.  If I spend that same time sketching, warming up for a painting or just mindlessly doodling, I'll still have drawn something that day, even if I don't accomplish anything else.

The something else that I'd like to accomplish is painting everyday, and with any luck, selling my work, or at least exhibiting more.  To that end, I've signed up for Leslie Saeta's Thirty Pintings in Thirty Days Challenge.  Here is my first submission:

"everyday is like sunday"

9"x9"
watercolor

This is a painting of a friend's photo of her dog, that looks a lot like my dog, and I just couldn't resist.  I rushed into it too quickly and didn't get the drawing quite right so I think day 2 will be a redo of this very same picture...

clouds

5" x 5 1/2"

acrylic on panel

I've been having fun playing around with clouds.  I took a lot of reference photos of clouds while I was up in Cooperstown, NY this August and I am just now getting around to painting them.  The clouds are so amazing up in the mountains.  They seem to change every minute, or maybe that was just the weather while I was there.

Swiss Village Farm, Newport, RI

5" x 7"

acrylic on panel

This summer I was able to visit Swiss Village Farm during their annual Visitors Day, the one day a year when they allow the public onto the farm grounds.  The scenery was amazing and my reference photos don't do it justice, never mind my painting.  But I will keep trying...

coleus clipping

coleus clipping

6" x 6"

acrylic on panel

This little clipping has been sitting in my kitchen window since late summer.  It is actually a clipping from a clipping, of the pot of coleus from my front porch.  Talk about hardy!

I just love the chartruese of the leaves and the way the red splotches look painted on ( on the actual plant, here it is obviously, actually painted on...)  Since this guy is so resillient, I may have to do a few more paintings.

Back to the beach

8" x 8"

acrylic on panel

This is my youngest daughter by the water's edge at Sachuest Town Beach in Newport, RI. She absolutely loves the ocean and strides right in whenever we go to the beach, barely giving me time to apply sunscreen.  This was from a photo taken in July or August but we actually made it back to the beach as late the last weekend in September.  I took a ton of reference photos and can't wait to paint from them.

 I worked on this for longer than usual, and could probably keep going, fiddling with the water.  However, I decided to leave well enough alone and move on.  I really enjoyed the color scheme here, modeling it after a Joaquin Sorolla painting entitled "The Young Amphibians".

Zorn

Liam
5" x 7"
acrylic on gessoboard

This was an attempt at using the Anders Zorn palette that one of my  favorite painters, Sarah Sedwick, uses often.  However, I think my reference photo was a little washed out, and so I didnt have the opportunity to try and use the depth of color that she can get from this very limited palette. 

long time no see

20 minute pose
18" x 24"
vine charcoal on toned paper

Over the summer I did some figure drawing.  It was a nice change of pace from working from photos or still lifes. I enjoyed the shorter poses, even feeling 20 minute drawings were too long.  Given the opportunity to have the model stay in the same pose, most times I decided to start anew.  Call it impatience or lack of stamina, but I think I was just trying to capture a freshness and not overwork things.  Also I think there is something to be said for starting slowly and getting everything in the right place before you polish thing up.