Category — Art

This radish is inspired by a photo of one I pulled out of my garden. Very pretty, but I didn’t really like how they tasted so I’m not growing them this year.

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I am now half way through the winter figure drawing session at the Durham Arts Center so I thought I would post some of the sketches from the last two sessions. Still very much enjoying myself. I acquired some new pencils with some birthday gift money I received and I had fun working with those. I am also finding that I enjoy working with two types of charcoal: willow and compressed. It’s an easy way to get different values as you might notice in the session four sketches.

Before I move on to the sketches, here are some daffodils from my back yard the other day. They seem to come up around my birthday every year, which is a nice treat. However they always seem to get a cold shock and  whither quickly. I like the focus in this photo on just one flower thanks to my amazing 50mm prime lens I got for xmas.

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I brought my camera on the Buckquarter Creek Trail last week. My intention was to find the two trees my mom and I saw in October that she wanted a photo of. I could not find them. All I have to say is: you try going into the woods and finding the same trees twice!

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Yesterday was my birthday. I took the day off from work to read Discover magazine and paint. It’s funny that I’ve never painted a cardinal before considering how much I like them. This guy is peeking into the picture to say “hi”. This will not be my last cardinal I’m sure.

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The other week I felt inspired to paint some pistachios. Not sure if I’m done with the painting yet, but it’s been a while, so I thought I would post my progress. If I work on them some more, I will probably post the revision. But I didn’t really intend this 5×7 to be a drawn out process. Pistachios have an amazing range of color and at the time, the sun was hitting them in an interesting way. [Read more →]

In April of 2009 I visited Washington DC and luckily bumped into a great orchid exhibit (although I can’t remember which museum we were in). I wanted to do a few art pieces for xmas gifts and waited too long to let the oil paint dry so I decided to do some ink drawings of some of the orchid photos I have on hand.

Each received a light watercolor wash for color and the ink was applied on top. I have also included the photos that served as inspiration.

The Art

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I am finally done with the frog. Earlier versions are documented in this earlier post. It still doesn’t have a name though. This is one of those paintings that I just need to declare finished so I don’t work on it until the end of time. I added some spots, and then I got rid of them. I added a glaze in the background, and then I rubbed it out. The main difference is some added highlights and shadows…plus the tree that the frog is sitting on: that’s improved.

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This holiday season some lucky people will be getting a holiday card from Robert and I with a hand illustrated North Carolina flower on it. I really needed to decompress today. I feel like I am constantly working and it makes me agitated and irritated. So I decided to do some drawing because I don’t always feel like cleaning up paint. I drew the below flower freehand in pen and ink. When I am sketching before I paint, I tend to spend time on proportions with a ruler and light pencil, but I just didn’t have the patience today.

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