Linen

Linen
6" x 8"
oil on canvas board

I was in a bit of a hurry to get this one posted, and I am afraid the colors aren't living up to reality. As it turns out, I really like this one, so I am putting it aside as another possibility for the Whistle Pik show in December.

I got my website set up and thanks to Fine Art Studios Online, it is beautiful!

Years ago I made the mistake of building my own website. It was a nightmare. I love the set-up on this one, and it is so easy to update!

Check out my fabulous new website: sarawintersart.com

The Metisse - WIP, almost there...

The progress photo of the Metisse as promised. Not long now- just the water and reflections and maybe a little tweaking here and there...

I was a nervous about the composition at first because the boat is pretty close to dead center. I like it right now, we'll see if I still like it when the painting is complete.

WIP - Squamish Yacht Club

I am excited about his painting. I can hardly wait to start filling it in!

I love Squamish, BC. The water has this odd pale whitish-green color. The one little marina in the town is quaint, and somewhat sparse. Good for reference photos- not so incredibly busy.

The hubby said something last night about wanting to go climbing there again. I certainly hope so! I would like to try my hand at painting some boats on location.

Zorbit II

Zorbit II
8" x 10"
oil on canvas board

So here are the two paintings of the same boat. Separated by 3 years, of course. Hm. The older one looks more like a sketch than a finished painting. Man I love progress! I'll have to paint the boat again in another 3 years and see the difference.

The back end of the boat is my favorite bit. The variations in white were exciting to see. I am pretty sure I didn't even see those colors in that white last time. Funny how blind I was to something that seems so obvious now.

WIP - Zorbit II

I had to stop and take a picture. This is the really fun part, where the water starts tying together and looking like water!

WIP - Zorbit II

Ah, the Zorbit.

I took a photo of this boat in Squamish, British Columbia a couple of years and painted a picture of it when I got home to the studio. I really enjoyed that painting, and I am enjoying it this time as well!

The difference between the two will be in the detail and the colors, I think. I see more in the photo this time around. I love all the colors in the white. I am looking forward to seeing pictures of the two side by side for a comparison.

This one is an 8" x 10" so it should be finished very very soon. I started drawing it in last night and started filling it in this afternoon. Lovely thing about small paintings- they are completed quickly.

WIP - reflections

Moving along.... slowly.... I've been a bit more sleep deprived than normal over the past couple of days, so I have been hesitant to paint much while my judgment is impaired.

I like this painting.

The boat in the foreground has been giving me trouble, though. Hmmm...I see another issue I didn't notice before. The blue band on the side of the boat is wavy. Slightly, but it shouldn't be that way. Should be more or less straight. Glad I saw that. Now I can change it.

I really like how the background mess turned out. It is just a bunch of irregular shapes, but they take the chaos out of that part of the painting. If you look back to my other recent boats at a dock painting, Port Townsend Boats, you can see how I fudged the background. Looks sloppy. I thought it was fine at the time. Wow! That was just 6 months ago. I love seeing improvement. Hurray for progress!

I think I am going to have to do Port Townsend Boats again. Maybe larger this time, and with more meat on it!

Sometimes I wonder if painting is like riding a bicycle. You may feel shaky after not coming in contact with it for a while, but you never really forget how it is done. Before I went on my baby sabbatical I was coming to a point where I felt comfortable making the brushstrokes and placing the colors where I wanted them. Then I stopped painting for what felt like an eternity. Now I paint, and it feels like my hands and eyes are waking up. Remembering something forgotten.

Its nice. Its like waking up from a wonderful dream and remembering some of the luscious little details.

WIP - reflections

Egad! I feel like I'm just barely creeping along on this painting. Any minute now I will look up and it will be finished.

Looking back, I realize that my photos show the colors in this painting a little differently. Well, a lot differently. Someday I'll figure out how to get consistent results.

This has been a very challenging painting so far. All the subtle differences in colors between the lights and darks, the objects above water and their reflections, and within each shape itself. And all the detail! Or implied detail in this case.

I think I'll work on some smaller pieces after I finish this one- a little instant gratification. Maybe a bit of whimsy.

Dry Spell

Dry Spell
16" x 20"
Oil on Canvas

Woo-Hoo! Finished. I am proud of this one. I like looking at it. There are all kinds of subtle variations in the colors on the boat. They sort of come up in the photo. If you click on the photo, you can see the picture better.

I went back to the photos shadow placement... mostly. I dropped the bottommost shadow down a bit on the right hand side. It was almost parallel to the bottom of the canvas. Yech.

I was madly in love with this painting while working on it last night. I was thinking about keeping it for myself forever and ever. Then I finished it. I still love it. Funny thing though, when something is complete I sort of lose the desire to keep it around. My knitting is usually the same way.

I had a friend a long time ago that made fantastic sculptures out of clay. She kept them all in her living room and priced them so high no one in their right mind would buy them. She told me that she was afraid to let them go because she thought they were the best things she had ever done and ever will do.

Sadly, she seemed to be right. She hadn't made anything that good for a while before I met her, and she didn't produce a thing in the years I knew her.

I think an artist who hoards their own work puts a stop to their own progress. If a person sits and stares at the glories and mistakes made in the past, how can they possibly hope to move foreward?

I don't know if my desire to get rid of completed work is from a desire to move on or a fear of becoming like so many of my fellow artists, hoarding what will inevitably be our "greatest" and only works.

This sucker is going on Etsy.

Check it out! I found the sketch I made on location. A little different view point... Looks rather cartoony, eh?

I really enjoyed that trip. I got to sketch a lot and got a load of reference photos. I am ashamed to remember the meltdown I had two minutes into a rainforesty hike.... The mosqitos were horrid and it was hot and humid.

I hope to behave better next time.

WIP - boat - The Fixer Upper

I had to stop last night and take a picture before I started on the foreground. The colors are a little off... the blues are grayed down a bit. I forgot to change some of the settings on the camera and ended up with this. Oh well.

WIP - Boat

This is a couple of painting sessions' worth of paint. I am liking the progress. It is exciting to see the places I need to adjust. I feel like I'm getting somewhere when I get to that point. For example, I knew there was something fishy about the front of the boat- behind the scaffolding. The shape needs to cut in at a very slight curve, rather than bulge out a little the way it does. And the shadows in the foreground...

I am seriously debating on whether or not I should put the shadows on the foreground back the way they are in the photo. I like how these work as far as composition goes, but I've been wondering if my tampering with the direction of these shadows will confuse the light source all together. I think it does, because when I look at this painting there is a little ball of confusion bouncing around in my mind trying to fix on something specific.

I know people say you can do whatever you want in a painting, artistic license and all, but really you can't - that is, if you want to make the painting plausible. I mean, the lighting is like the soul of a painting in some ways. Or one of the basic rules in physics. If you try to bend the rules, things just don't work.

Ever look at a painting and something looks a little wrong but you can't really say why? Odds are someone fudged the lighting in one spot and did not adjust everything else to fit. Like I did with the foreground shadows. Tsk-tsk!

I didn't realize when I drew the painting out how much of a problem that would be, but it has been bugging me. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but the closer I get to that part of the painting, the more irritating those shadows become. Honestly, I don't think I would have fully realized that the problem lay in those shadows if I hadn't started writing about it today.

I gotta tell ya, this blog has been one of the best tools I have ever had! I enjoy posting my work and writing about it, so I find myself painting more so I can post more. I enjoy having a record of what I have done and when it was painted, and just writing about what I am doing helps me solve any issues I come across.

Hurray for the blog!

WIP - Boat

A swath of mountains in the background.

The boat and foreground look like a paper cut-out.

WIP - Boat

The sky is finished. Now I get to move on to other parts. I think the mountains and hills will be next.

Brad asked me if I started on a red canvas because the photo had reddish hints.... Brad is observant. I, sadly, did not notice the reddish bit in the sky before he pointed it out.

I just got lucky- total accident. I love the way the red shines through in the sky adding a hint of warm to all the cool. I would like to say in a full-chested, self confident sort of way that I planned that from the start, but I would be lying. I just wanted to paint on red. I like red.

WIP - Boat

I thought it would be fun to post the progress of this painting. I usually try to avoid so much detail, but I didn't think this boat would look like much without it.

Besides, I got a little carried away while drawing it on the canvas. It would be a shame to cover up all those wonderful little lines.

I am having a little trouble getting the color on the photo right. My camera sees all the red and tries to put a warm spin on my blue-white sky back there. Things like that really make me appreciate how spectacular human sight is. Machines are wonderful, but sometimes they just don't capture some of the subtleties in color.

My mom took me to Whistle Pik Galleries in Fredericksburg last week and there was a painting in there that just blew my mind.... Well, there were quite a few that blew my mind, but one of my all time favorites was by Robert Moore called "Essence." Wow! Let me say it again- WOW! That painting is spectacular, but the photos are nothing to the real thing hanging on the wall. I would have brought it home with me if I could.

Robert Moore, according to the salesman at the gallery, is color blind. I don't know to what degree. Oh! And he is ambidextrous and paints with a brush in each hand- both working at the same time. I paint with a brush in each hand, but one is always stationary... unless I happen to drop it.

Another fantastic artist at Whistle Pik is Cheri Christensen- her work glows! The lighting is spectacular. We were told that she will wait in a field all day long until the light or position of her subject is just right before taking her reference photo. Two of my favorites of her paintings are "Magpie on the Roof" and "Full House."

Check out the links- they are well worth a visit.