The best peaches ever

I am almost finished my little one foot square painting of
peaches in one of my antique glass footed bowls. I thought
I was completely done, but the photograph shows me
one small change I want to make.

The main thing is it is pleasing to me now. It captures
the lush colour and festive feeling of this summer's
peaches. I just had to celebrate them in paint.
Last year the peaches were hard as rocks -- it
seems the fruit loves rain, because this stormy
summer has produced the most delicious peaches
in years.

Peach party
12" x 12"
acrylic on canvas
Almost done

I rarely paint people so that they fit the page, and I'm
a bit surprised that I almost fit the whole bowl onto
the small canvas -- I love to paint large paintings -- but
even then my subjects usually won't be contained
on the canvas. This bowl breaks one of my painting
rules, because even though it's old, and a bit off center
in shape, I put it right in the middle of the canvas.

I've had quite a time changing the balance. Here's what
I tried today. I cut a sprig off a peach tree
that trails over my garage roof, and tried to paint that
into the painting. No good. I filled a small antique glass
creamer with milk, and thought I'd call it peaches and
cream. Worse than the branch. Then I hit on the
solution -- two more peaches. Hurray.

I've painted all day today, working on paintings which
aren't finished yet. My small peach study is almost
there, so I'm showing you the results tonight.

Have a finishing-touches-day tomorrow.

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.