Great artists abound like peaches in August

Starting Out
A 12" x 12" gessoed canvas is painted
in a combination of acrylic colours to produce "peach"

One bad thing about the Internet in my life is that
I'm already easily distracted, and the visual stimulation
available on the fantastic art blogs I'm discovering
can keep that going full time.

I loosely draw the image in cadmium red.

I read on someone's blog lately that there were
no good art blogs, and I wondered if that
artist had his head in a paper bag. Maybe the
blogger was wearing a sleep mask that day, because I
find the complete opposite to be true. And that's
serious.

I fill in a turquoise background with a large
brush to get some depth.

There are so many astoundingly creative, masterful
artists to discover that I could spend my whole
day reading about them, analyzing their work --
learning. But at some point I have to pull myself
back from the readily available, technologically
induced attention disorder and sit down to paint.

I start working on the details, peaches
background, shadows and highlights on the glass
and add a peach. I'm not happy with
the balance, so that's tomorrow's problem.

Two things got me working on the little painting
I'm giving you the step by step on today.
1. was a video on painting a peach by Hall Groat
II, www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5 - lfm X9zQA
the second was the amazing peaches we've
been eating this week.

In fact those peaches are so good that I had to
move as fast as possible with the painting, because
my family wants to eat the peaches that are in
my antique glass bowl.

I decide to darken the table, and work on
the shape of the bowl.

The astounding thing about this painting's progress
is that it happened in the middle of a housing
disaster, and I stayed focused on the one task
I could accomplish despite the very bad news
in our house.

I work on refining the bowl, peaches,
shadows and glass and then
the demands of the house took
over. I'll finish it up tomorrow.

In the 300th rain storm of the last
three months, our basement flooded, and now
my husband is trying to clean up with my
son's help, while I make the calls to drain
companies, insurance and the clean up crew.
I have a cast that can't get wet and I'm on
crutches. When in doubt paint.

Have a productive and dry day.

Visual Generosity

All the photos in today's blog are by
Christopher Muir, my son, taken
on a recent holiday in South Korea

Beautiful Rock

A couple of my landscape paintings this year were inspired by
my friend Flora Doehler's beautiful photographs of Bear
River. True my work looked nothing like her photographs,
but I really appreciated the spirit of generosity, which allowed
me to work from them.

Inside the Beomosa temple

My son Christopher, has the same spirit of generosity. He
is a trained pro photographer, but is currently teaching
English in Korea. The other day he sent me some
spectacular images from a recent vacation he took with
his girlfriend, Megan. I'm on vacation myself right now
and not creating any paintings for my blog. My artistic
soul like the rest of me, needs the rest. So I asked if
I could use some of Christopher's beautiful shots on my
blog, and he emailed me back right away to say go ahead.

The south gate

I'll include some today, and some another day. I really
think blogging is about sharing, and that visual
sharing is a good practice for artists to engage in.
We can't be one another, or ever produce identical
work to one another, once we know that we can
definitely learn from one another.

The beautiful Buddha lined walls along Seokbulsa.

Christopher and Megan
at the Udo Island lighthouse

These pictures are from the album

From the album:
"Korea, Korea. Vacation, Vacation."
by Christopher Muir

Have a sharing the bounty day.

What's out there

I spent some time today looking at artists' blogs. There are wildly creative people in the world,
and one of the things I love about the Internet
is that you can get to see their work, even
study their methods without going anywhere.

My paintings are influenced by everything
I see, and then by my own creative spirit.
The Dance Series began because I teach
part time at a community college. Seeing
my students in every type of casual wear,
from jeans, to cut-offs, to track pants with
T-shirts and even pajamas on occasion
made me want to create an idealized
picture of young people. I started with one big painting, and the series
grew and grew.
It turns out that most people look wonderful
in more formal dress.

Tia used to live across the street from me and
she's an ideal model. She is brilliant and has a great laugh.
I've had this habit of cutting my model's heads off at the top.
My friend Pam, a superb painter in California says
I need to give the model's head breathing space, but
sometimes (often) I can't fit the model on the canvas,
and I can't paint huge canvasses all the time. This image
doesn't really look like this. It was photographed in
very yellow light. In real life the colours are much brighter,
less yellowed.

Today I've been blown away by some people who paint
little canvasses every day. Of course the king of that is Bob
Burridge, who paints about 10 little paintings
every day before he starts to paint, but here's a list of
other sites you might enjoy.

http://aaronlifferth.blogspot.com/

http://belindadelpesco.blogspot.com/

http://web.mac.com/kjurick/iWeb/ZemArt/Welcome.html

Have an intuitive day!