Mabel Ringling's Rose Garden

What a treat to paint at Ringling! I had just finished reading The Ringmaster's Wife, which was very good, before attending a paint out at Ringling. I had to paint the garden after learning about Mabel's interesting and saintly life. It's free to stroll the beautiful grounds and it's a lovely place to paint. I used my artistic license and edited out the trash can. Thanks for looking.

The Entombment another Titian copy

Merry Xmas Ornaments

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I had a lot of fun painting these ornaments. I was inspired by the 10 minute challenge at the DPW, but I stopped painting the red one at 15 minutes and decided to just to paint three more until they were finished. Definitely not in 15 minutes. (There's a mini selfie in three of the bulbs.) I hope your holiday was joyous and thanks for looking.

Two Views from Selby

Anna Maria

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Being an artist is something like being a voyeur. I was fascinated with this group at the beach.  They really came prepared, to the tune of 6 umbrellas.

New Plein air Paintings

Living in Florida in the winter is paradise and that's why we moved here but around mid-October every year, I'm frantic to sell up and move away. I do enjoy a few months of summer heat, but summer in Fl lasts a good 6 months and the last few are very much like Dante's inferno. This year the strong and desperate urge to move came just about 2 weeks before heaven set in. Whew! The ideal is to become a snowbird, in the future I hope. So now I'm playing catch up with gardening and I'm painting outside too. I found a group of Sarasota artists through Meet Up that paint weekly and the 2 middle paintings were painted with them. I'm so glad I found them and I'm grateful to be painting in a paradise that's within driving distance.

Copy of a detail from Titian's Pastoral Concert

I posted this one earlier and have reworked it.

Diana and Callisto detail after Titian

So many of the old master paintings are wrought with emotion and pathos while the art of our time seems to be more about looking, portraying light and color and shadow. And yet, our time is becoming increasingly dramatic, violent and tragic. Are we ignoring the stories that are unfolding around us? Is the art world politically correct? I don't know, but while I was painting this, I had these thoughts along with, what is going on in this picture anyway? Was there a great wind that blew off all these women's clothes? To quote the Simsons, "What is being implied here"?

Another Titian and Egg Cup

I'm still alive

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I've been making studies to get back in the groove after taking time off to paint my kitchen cabinets and of course, I've gone back to work. Painting the cabinets was harder than painting pictures and took forever, bur it's done and it's a great improvement. When I started painting again after not painting at all for about 2 months, it seemed like every brushstroke was an exercise in self-doubt. So, I decided to copy some master paintings, hoping that would help me get past this block. I have this tiny paperback of Titian's work and decided it could be sacrificed for the sake of art. I just finished my third one and will post it tomorrow, as I didn't get a good photo. I'm really enjoying painting the copies. I'm loving the intense scrutiny of Titian's work and I'm starting to feel freer in the process.

Riverwalk

24x34 oil on canvas

Ahh summer. No one loves summer like a teacher. Summer's when I get to paint full time and paint when I have good energy. The only multitasking I need to do is laundry, etc.  Kind of ironic that my first painting is of children. The standing figure is one of my now former students. Next year he'll go on to the middle school. The picture is few years old and finally I got around to painting it. Here's a bit of my process. First I gridded the photo and drew with pencil and painted a thin coat of gesso over that. I blocked in with acrylic and then tackled one section at a time in oil. I listened to a few books on tape while painting and the last book was one from the Outlander series and I am so hooked!
Thanks for looking.

Blue Sky Vine

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Just a little study. The blue sky vine is amazing. It grows 50' a year and has a ton of flowers. The only problem painting them in the house is they are covered with ants. Any ideas on how to get the ants off without harming the flower? I need a mini Pied Piper.

The Neighbor's Backyard

This is the view out my studio window. The trees are hung with Spanish moss, which glows while the sun sets.

Black Bunny and Shells

 Final answer.

White Lotus

Pink Lotus

I think this is the finished version, but I uploaded so many...

What's on the Easel?

      Still working on the top painting on and off since summer and I'm not sure I'll ever be happy with it. Maybe it's a learning painting, a stepping stone. Anyway, I had fun painting the plastic bag. I started the pink lotus yesterday and the photo shows some value problems that hopefully I can fix tomorrow. (My daughter said, "That's a really long stem.") There's my palette, it's glass and I use a table top easel to keep it vertical, which helps with both glare and reflections. I mix clove oil in my paint to keep it wet, which has its pros and cons; I can work wet on wet for a couple of days in a row, but then I have to wait for about a week for it to dry. I experimented with liquin over the summer, which is a total 360. I liked how it made the paint flow and having the painting be dry the next day had its benefits, but I hated having to throw so much paint in the trash plus liquin's very hard on brushed. No pun intended.
   
   

Buddha

Backyard View

Waiting Off Stage

12x12"

This was painted from a Paint My Photo reference ( http://pmp-art.com/linda-willason/gallery/120979/lil-beauty ) I loved the photo, had a lot of fun painting it and I'm happy with the way it came out. Obviously, I took pictures of the progress.