Two Gala Apples

8" x 6" Oil on linen.

For Sale at DailyPaintworks (Click to bid.)

A little still life setup concentrating on lost edges, shadows, and the wonderful color of these Gala's.

Trappist Apple

11" x 14" Oil on Mounted Linen.

On sale at DailyPaintworks (click here to bid).

This painting features a souvenir from Belgium. The Westmalle Trappist Ale glass is trapping a Gala apple. I like painting shiny glass and fruit, but I don't think I have combined them like this before. I really like the shiny bits here.

Hang On

11" x 14" Oil on Linen.
On auction at DPW.

After painting Orange on a Perch, I thought of this more anthropomorphic idea. So, I staged this somewhat unsettling still life of a banana holding on for dear life to a slightly sloping board.

Apple and Not Orange

10" x 8" Oil on Linen.

This painting is in response to a DPW Challenge from Carol Marine to paint using other colors from the original after establishing the correct values. The idea is that the result will still read as correct 3-dimensional objects. I think it works in this case except the green orange is a bit strange. Changing the Granny Smith to a red apple came out quite natural.

Here is a bigger look at the finished painting:

Orange on a Perch

8" x 8" Oil on Linen.

Available.

I've enjoyed depictions of partially peeled fruit in other people's work. I wanted to try the same with a slightly unusual staging. Within this composition, I looked to keep the lines and focal point off of the center lines. Working through getting the right values to get good modeling is the fun part here and was a good warm up for my afternoon painting session.

Do you like my party hat?

9" x 12" Oil on linen.

Sold.

My favorite book for several years was Go, Dog. Go! (well, at least when I was a child.) So when I pulled these two pears out to set them up for a still life, "Do you like my party hat?" came to mind. The bright Bartlett has an outrageous hat and the brown pear seems somewhat forlorn. The result does feel like a (mismatched?) couple arriving at a party.

Pear and Knife

9" x 12" Oil on mounted linen.

Available.

It is just past harvest time in the orchards over the pass from us. We visited a couple of stands and bought about 100 lbs of fruit. Most is now canned applesauce, but I also got a few pears for painting subjects. I wanted to show how small this bright red pear is, so I posed it with a silver butter knife. It is always fun to paint a "shiny thing"!

Orange and Mango

7" x 5" Oil on linen.

Happy New Year! It is a slow start to the new year in the studio. Other projects have consumed my time, but here is a little warm up sketch.

The mangoes were a bust on the eating aspect, but they are very pretty. I think I would like this setup painted bigger and with a very wide format. The partially peeled orange is a popular subject on the interwebs and I can see why. The texture and variation are interesting and capturing the orange color is also a surprising challenge.

You can lean on me - Pears

14" x 11" Oil on panel.

$125 - Shipping to US included.

These pears were approaching ripeness, so they needed to get painted to memorialize their great blushing color. I arrived at a nice setup where one is leaning on the shoulder of the other. (Maybe not a new motif, but I like how my take on it turned out this time.)

Compositionally, the highlights on the fruit are the focal points with a nice warm shadow acting as a third character as you eye reads the painting left to right. The format in the larger version gives some space, but the tops of the pears cross into the upper half of the painting. I was careful not to place anything important right on a centerline. Unfortunately the darker paints have a bit of glare in these photos, so the painting looks even better in person.

The smaller version is a "little buddy" that I painted first as a warm up study to the larger painting. Here it is with the larger painting to compare the sizes.

Two Pears

24" x 24" Oil on panel

$440 - Shipping to US included.

In response to a persistent request for painting BIG, here is a little bigger "fruit Crop" to go with the others. These pears have great blushing color now with just a hint of their former greenness. AND they're in love...probably newly wed. This will be their first Christmas together!

The photo has some nasty glare, so I will update it when I have some better light. Even though we are over the hump and the days are getting longer, it is still gloomy at 4:30pm here. I'm anxious for longer days; at least we are going in the right direction now.

Lemon Lime

(Click for a larger view.)
12" x 12" Oil on canvas.

$100 - Shipping to US included.

Ah, a natural combination! Lemon/Lime continues my series of "fruit crops". I again was interested in the highlights and shadows on the fruit. I was happy to keep the brush strokes loose and juicy. Fruit should be juicy, right?

I was also happy to get a painting finished after fighting a broken fire sprinkler pipe all of this week. Life if full of challenges, but thanks to some new friends and old friend, we have a repaired and updated inverter system running in the house. Now I am learning all about water damage and how it is dried out!

Two Apples

Continuing the series on cropped fruit pairs, I decided to include a work in progress shot along the way. These two apples are lit from the left side in my favorite shadow box staging. It provides a nice sharp contrast and an interesting sinewy "S" shaped shadow. I was careful with the composition to avoid tangents and keep the focal points in strong locations to move the eye around in the painting.

Here is the work in progress:



And here is the final painting:


12" x 12" Oil on canvas.
Sold.

Two Oranges

12" x 12" Oil on Canvas.

$100 - Shipping to US included.

Here's another in a series of fruit "crops". I liked the closeup of the two peaches so much I am going to continue in a series. These oranges had nice color. The green fade on the stem end of one makes a nice effect.

I was busy while I was away from the easel, but it is good to be back.

Two Peaches

(Click for a larger view.)
12" x 12" Oil on canvas.

Sold.

I have been spending much of my painting time on the large Dragon Boat painting.(See the updated post below.) I am sticking to working on it during daylight, so I found time the last two evenings to paint this vibrant still life. I wanted to play with some unconventional cropping and close up detail. I carefully set this up to avoid symmetry within the square format. The two day process let the underpainting dry some so that I could build a little transparent glazing.

I also painted the sides of the deep gallery wrap canvas dark, so this is ready to hang without a frame.

Two Cherries

6" x 6" Oil on mounted linen.

$50 - Shipping to US included.

Series paintings are a great tradition started by the Impressionists. Here are two Bing Cherries from the roadside stand in Sky Valley.

One Cherry

6" x 6" Oil on mounted linen.

$50 - Shipping to US included.

The seasons roll around and it is time for fresh fruit at the roadside stands again. Bing cherries are available just like Bing search engines.

Lemon Study

5" x 5" Oil on mounted canvas.

I plan to do a larger Lemon along the lines of the cut open apple. However, I wanted to warm up with a study because I know the difficulty of getting orange and lemon skin to look how I envision. So, here is a study; I like how it turned out, but may change the technique somewhat for the larger painting. I included a couple of the water droplets on the fruit and that was a fun addition.

Peach #2

5" x 5" Oil on panel.

$75 Shipping to US included.

I revisit the same little peach sitting on white marble this time. You can just see a hint of reflection on the surface. I also changed my angle of view for this one. My goal was to get more of the look of white peach fuzz in a painting done in one sitting.

This one is the last appearance for this peach, since it is time to eat it. I'm sure I can get a replacement somewhere.

UPDATE: This painting was juried in to the Arts of the Terrace 2008 show. It is being held at the Montlake Terrace Library September 27 - October 4.