You Are In for a Big Surprise

Giving lots of thoughts to Jen's post on extra-ordinary! We all get into the day to day living pattern without much thought, just ordinary stuff. Feed the cats, and Bella the chicken. Make porridge, do the laundry... all done without much thought. Mundane, boring... but the ordinary can be extra.

Friday

An early trip to the bakery for Shabbat Chala, pitots and borakas!
No traffic, lots of parking space, and the smell of fresh baked goods  EXTRA!

Feeding the cats and Bella... Lady begging for some hugs and petting... EXTRA!
The cool air  EXTRA! Even the smell of freshly laundered clothes  EXTRA!

Coming home from Natanya after a condolence visit,(shiva) Waze took us home on a road near the sea.  Glimpses of the sea between the buildings EXTRA.

I am certainly going to try to look for the EXTRA more!

Tuesday  workshop always EXTRA

This painting was done over another rather unsuccessful painting below.  I had added another blue layer which made it worse. At first, I just wanted to sort veil it with light gray tones but it sort of had a will of its own and all sort figures began appearing.

When You Go Into the Forest

Oils and Cold Wax

Cut Canvas

24" x 19"

Day 11 30 in 30 Challenge

Leslie's 30 in 30 challenge 

20 x 25 cm

Oils on gessoed cardboard

Another image of Mishmish looking out the kitchen window.... Mishmish in Hebrew is apricot and out side is an apricot tree... imagine a tree... anyway the tree fell in the last snow storm...

Bit off more than I can chew on this one....  Oils with palette knife on gessoed cardboard.   

Working with Grays Reference Photo 4

My first workshop from Richard Robinson  #24... Still trying to get a decent and not muddy painting... I realize I have much to learn using wet on wet.. Will be doing some studies uses warm and cool grays on 400 grm cartridge paper, this time I coated it with 2 coats of acrylic paint... think I put too much texture.... size A4  28 x 21.....
First attempt  with tonal colors...

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 Next painted and then scrubbed away with wet cleaners

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New strategy.... going to do some more drawing and premix the colors

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Final stage... not happy with it.. still too fragmented...too small a format for so much information... still getting bogged down with details not important... 

African Faces

These are large, at least for me, 60 x 80 cm canvases that were painted in 1912.. my first beginnings using the palette knife... to loosen up and get out the graphic mode...

The inspiration came from the book,Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa by  Hans Silvester, that my artist friend Lillie brought to class.

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There are lots of photography bloggers that have posted about Silvester's work and I even found another artist that did paintings using his book.  Here is one blog North Goes South  that I particularly liked.

Trees

In the later part of November Heleni , our workshop instructor, mentor, and friend suggested that we try painting outdoors.  The weather has cooled down and the cold of winter had yet set in.  So a few of us lugged our easels and tables outside to the roofed area at the entrance to our community center. This also corresponded to renovations that were started in the auditorium which forced us out of the main room to a much smaller room or outside...luckily the weather during December was mild and only once did we have to rush inside because of a sudden rain!!!! It was during this time that I did these tree studies...the closest thing for me for plein-air painting. All were done in oils on cloth covered cutting board, or kappa board or massonite. All were done using the palette knife!

Two studies of the HUGE Eucalyptus tree near the parking lot and library. 30 x 40 cm

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One study of the Chinese Flame tree that lines many of our the streets. 34 x 48 cm

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Two of some Palm Date trees and Washingtonia. One 34 x 48 cm and one 30 x 40 cm

Date Tree

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Washingtonia

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Uri the Footballer

High Kick

Here is a little oil sketch of my grandson Uri. Done on a gesso-ed  corrugated cardboard. I find using odd pieces of cardboard, matte boards and other recycled stuff lets me be less constricted.   This was done from a photo taken a year ago when he was three and half.  Link to picassa album.

Portrait of Asha

A new beginning... I will be blogging in only one blog.... and hopefully keep it more active.... I have also changed the title from  My 120 Painting   A Journey to just  My Journey...It will contain what ever I am doing whether its a WDE  work... daily painting... photography...  sketches.. WIP [works in progress] .... workshop paintings....  no more numbering.... I was finding it too difficult to keep track..

This January I decided to try again to do a portrait of my sister Asha [Susan] who passed away 4 years ago at 61.  I had started a portrait 4 years ago, which was not successful and was scraped off. I had tried since but never really got the likeness and the personality.... I am pretty happy with the results... I will take a better photo but in the meantime here it is..