Flamingo's nearly "blocked" in!

The flamingo is nearly blocked in with color...except for around the eye and the legs.  I need for paint to dry to get closer in those areas.  The feet (if that's what you call them on a flamingo, I'm not sure), need to get larger, but I like to start small and work larger.  Some sand will be pushed up against the left foot to make it appear more in the sand.  The strangest thing about this photograph was it was taken around 3:45 pm, and there is the strangest lack of shadows!  I may have to fake some in.  I have enough photographs of flamingos to see how they cast a shadow!

Look at the left side of the photograph below, about half way down.   Note the extreme difference in color of the award winning photograph I took of another flamingo on the opposite side of the state of Florida.  That flamingo's color was such a gorgeous vivid orangey pink!  Flamingo's colors change according to age and how much shrimp they eat.  

Here is as it looks a little bit enhanced with the computer.  Putting it in the computer and playing around with the colors allows me to know how much I can saturate the actual painting without using paint.  I will also use technology of my iPad to pull out more detail.  The nice thing about the ipad is you can enlarge your photo you're working from and not have to print it out!  You can truly hone in on detail too!  I noticed the other day a class being taught using ipads right next to an easel, they were put on tri-pods to be held up.  Here I thought I was being unique and ingenious!  NOPE!  

Please remember this is only the initial blocking in of color and I will be adding orange to the alizarin and alizarin purple to create a more vermillion type of color (which is my all time favorite color) to add some variance to the flamingo's color and not make it just shade of pink...that would be far too boring.  

The legs (sticks???  haha) were made with the colors raw umber and alizarin purple, mixed with white, but I added a touch of the yellow from the eye to make it look muddy.  Wow, did I ever like that color!  The legs are very skinny, and right now a little wobbly and uneven.  I need to make them more straight!  

To think I still have to paint the sides of this painting.  I have done an initial coat where I can, so it's just a little more I'll need to go over.  

Ready to laugh?  I've already decided to put my signature on the lower left hand side because I don't want to put it on the right and have it mistaken for a bird dropping...haha!  Ya have to think of everything!  I'm having so much fun with this painting.  I'm especially adhering to that old adage Helen Van Wyke taught me, "Start with a broom and end with a needle" which means, start with the largest brush to block in color, and work your way down to smaller and smaller brushes until you're using the tiniest brush you know you'll work with to complete the painting.  So you have to have guessed by now, I have a lot of detail I still want to pull out of this painting.  Especially the feathers on the right, they don't look like much now, but wait!  They will!  And the feet have to get a "dirty" look, which will also come in time.  First things first.  So far though, I like the progress on this particular painting!  

And the beat goes on...

I'm starting to add the flamingo's feathers in, testing the colors and so far, I like them.  I'm using alizarin crimson, alizarin crimson violet and raw umber and of course soft formula white.  I also added a glaze in parts of the sand which were just alizarin crimson violet.  Amazing how it made the sand pop!  

No, I'm not going to leave the legs pink in case you're wondering, it's just the color I had on my brush and I wanted to lay them in with some color.  I stopped painting the feathers for two reasons, I ran out of Liquin (didn't feel like pouring more out), and this is so high up on my easel I have to extend my arm up high, and that's not a comfortable position for a long time, so I stopped there.  This gave me the chance to step away from my work to see if I liked where it was going and I do.  I may not need to purchase more colors for the feathers as once thought because I've only started with two and like what I have already, the other reds I have may be enough, combined with orange and thalo rose.  We'll see.

For now, this is what my palette looked like.  I've always found it amazing how rough a palette looks and what we make of it.  

Got the first layer of sand in for Flamingo painting!

I've never painted sand on a canvas this large, so I studied the photo I'm working from and saw some definite patterns and I used them as guidelines.  I truly love the color combination of Titanium White, Ivory Black and Raw Umber.  Make a fantastic sand color, although I know I will probably add in some light yellows as highlighted areas, and I want to add some reddish colors too, like a glaze.  But once again, I have to wait to let the paint dry.  

Now I'll be going in to test my colors for the flamingo.  I have about four or five colors I'll be testing as this is one colorful bird!  Probably because he ate a lot of shrimp!  Did you know that's how shrimp get their color?  Yup!  That's how!

Waiting for paint to dry Part 2

Never in my wildest dreams did I think there would be a part 2 to waiting for the paint to dry, but alas, here it is!  Once again, I am waiting for paint to dry on my large flamingo painting, but the nice part is I can see the painting coming to life.  I drew on the canvas with a reddish color pencil as my friend and artist Bob Cassell suggested I do.  He's such a gifted artist, I make sure I soak up all information I can get from him!

Find below the drawing of the flamingo and the initial layer of paint which is drying.  I found a fabulous color combination for sand.  Mix together a little ivory black, some raw umber and a lot of white.  What a gorgeous beige color, one color of sand.  It's got just enough of that grayed down version to make it look like sand.  I was hesitant while I was mixing it, thinking it would act better as a palm tree on a sunny day type of color, but, it is perfect.  I can see adding various versions of this combination to make the hills and valleys where the flamingo is standing in the sand.  And yes, I made the legs ultra skinny because it will look like the flamingo is standing on the sand that way, not part of the sand.  Besides, like trees, I can just imagine how fat those legs could get if I didn't start small.

I plan on adding some alizarin to the sand combinations and I'm also going to try adding "alizarin purple" as well and see how that goes for making shadows. (Always experimenting.)  So far, I love what I have finished.  This particular photo may not show how stunning this will turn out, but when I open my door to my art room and see that flamingo on the canvas, I already can visualize it on the walls of the art center!

Waiting for paint to dry...

When I was co-authoring a book named "Nina's Corner" with Joyce Marie Taylor, one of the sayings she wanted to use in the book was "boring as waiting for paint to dry".

I immediately called her and said, "No!  We can't use that metaphor.  I like waiting for paint to dry, to me, that's not boring.  I'm an artist, I like watching paint dry!"  She chuckled.

So we settled on "as boring as watching grass grow".

While we were collaborating on the book, I was also busy creating the cover painting which would appear on the book.  When I sent the image to Joyce, she was blown over.  She loved it.  She explained to me a book's cover doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with the story on the inside.  It didn't, as it was the front of a house which is located on Boca Grande, Florida.  (Although I took the house out of the picture and just painted the gate's entry, it still was the front of a house but had NOTHING to do with the story at all.)

Here is the cover of our book as seen on Amazon.

Here it is laid flat.  

Here is the original painting.  

I LOVE this painting.  It's small and is hanging on my dining room wall in the corner between the front door and the dining room table.  It has a lovely beige cloth inner frame and a gold outer frame.  It speaks volumes to me.  (See how I took the house out?  Yes, there was a house behind that entry gate but it isn't needed for the painting.  Is it really that pretty?  Well, let's just say I gave it more color than was there and the palm fronds are all seemingly alive in the painting whereas in real life they weren't.  

Actually Joyce and I wrote another book together titled "Life in San Argle".  We had fun writing together and if she ever wanted to write together again, I would happily say yes!  Joyce is not only a talented writer but she did the complete layout for the book cover, including the placements of our photos, wording and where to put the painting, what to cut out, etc.  She is an amazing, talented woman.  I adore her.  Our second book, "Life in San Argle" is dedicated to her father who passed right before we started writing the book, and to my mom who also passed.  There is some serious writing going on in that book which would bring tears to your eyes as her feelings were still so raw from losing her father and not to give the storyline away, she blended in the focus of the story well with things that were happening in her own life at that time, although the majority of the story was mine.  There are also really funny, knee slapping moments, especially in the bathroom at the wedding.   We truly do work good together, if only it could get greater recognition.  I'm so proud of both books and everything that went into them.  Joyce Marie Taylor brought more out of me than I ever knew I had.  

All available on Amazon.com

Nina's Corner

Life in San Argle

 by

Joyce Marie Taylor 

and Kathleen E. Kelly

Can be downloaded into a kindle and other devices.

Better yet, check out her website at www.joycemarietaylor.com

Preparing for the National Show!

I don't know if it will ever happen, to be juried into a National Show, but I am attempting it!  I decided to go with painting a flamingo in a very unique position.  I took the photo at Sunken Gardens a few years ago.  I know I want to do this painting large, so I got my canvas I had out of storage of a painting I never finished.  Well, actually I did finish it, I painted it small and dismissed the desire to paint it large.  But I kept the canvas, as large canvases aren't cheap.  It's a gallery wrapped canvas, so I will not have to frame it!  The canvas is 24" wide by 48" high.  I haven't worked large in a long time, but this is something I have wanted to paint for a long time.

Here is the canvas with a print out of the photo I'm working from, but I'm having difficulty getting a good print out of the photo to work from because I shot it in "RAW" so the file is too big for it all to fit in the confines of a standard piece of paper.  I wasn't about to let technology get to me, so I took a photo of computer screen where I have the image saved and also did it on my iPad.  I've found working from an image on an iPad gives me greater insight to the brightness I'm looking for in my paintings.

See how you can see the Thalo blue color on the canvas?  I'm doing thin layer of Titanium White to cover them up before I start painting.  I'm on layer number three.  On the right you see the attempt to print out the photo I'm trying to work from, and you can barely see the head of the flamingo!  

This photo came out a little blurry but it shows how much I need to work to get the canvas to start with a clean white surface...there's so much work needed to cover up that blue!  I have a ceiling fan running so it dries quicker.  

Here's the attempt of taking a photo from my iPhone and transferring it to my iMac so I can print out the whole flamingo.  Oh, technology, sometimes it works in our favor and sometimes it's a real pain!  Regardless, I am looking forward to this painting.  

That's all for today.  

I made a collage of my challenge!