Weekend Mornings

"With Me"

6 x 6 inches, Oil on Board

Available on Ebay

$39.95 + s/h

If you'd like this painting and place a bid/buy it through eBay - let me know you saw it here first and I will not charge you for the shipping/handling.

Weekend morning, wake up lazy, tossled hair, breakfast in bed, read the paper, plan for a fun day...dreamy....

Bamboo - Blue Light

"Blue Light"

6 x 6 inches, Oil on Board, Painted with Palette Knife

Available

I still have bamboos in my thoughts, so I painted a smaller version. When I paint with the palette knife I am a lot more loose (that sounds weird) and almost abstract. I know what it is...I just wonder if it conveys.

Lilly and Marco

"Lilly"

5 x 5 inches, Oil on Board, Painted with palette knife.

$36.00 + s/h

Available on Ebay/Click here to place bid.

Last year a neighbor brought over this lilly plant which I put into the garden once the blooms had faded. This year it produced three beautiful bright yellow flowers. I cut one to put in a bud vase and to be able to enjoy it. I know it's a lilly of some sort but don't know the name.

As promised, here are a couple of photos of our foster child, Marco. He's starting to learn his name.

Marco and Stella (in the back) looking for squirrels.

Marco not paying attention to the camera.

Bamboo Forest and Love

Do you tone your canvases before you paint? I do. With a mixture of burnt sienna and alizarin crimson. But I was feeling this tremendous joy when I started to smudge the paints onto the canvas that I thought - what if I fill my paintings with love. So I left a large Japanese character for Love on the canvas...And below is a very abstract painting filled with Love.

"Bamboo Forest"

24 x 20 x 3/4 inches, Oil on Canvas

Available

Put a little "love" in your art.

Yellow Lab

"Yellow Lab"

5 x 5 inches, Oil on Board

Available $36.00 + s/h

Click here to place bid on Ebay.

Yesterday the Pointer sisters welcomed a foster brother. A 3 year-old German Shorthair who was rescued from a shelter by the GSP Society because he was due to be put down. (OK this is a painting of a yellow lab up above - I'll have to do one of him soon - he's really cute) So we are going to keep him for a while until a forever home can be found. In the meantime he'll be learning a few commands like "come" "sit", his name, walking on a leash. It won't take him long to learn; he seems so happy to please and is very well-mannered. We plan on calling him Marco.

Problems with Blogger and the Follower Widget

I was having problems with my blogger page opening. I checked out the help topics and found that the widget for Followers might be the culprit. Blogger is aware of it and is working on this glitch. The only way to display my blog is to remove the "Followers" widget, so I have removed it for now. No one seems to know that when and if Blogger is able to fix this problem and we restore the Follower's widget - whether all our friends who are on the Followers list will restored...? I kinda like that widget so I'm sorry I have to take it off my page for now.

Anyone else having this problem?? Share your trials and tribulations.

Have a lovely day!

Sunlight

"Sunlight"

12 x 12 x 3/4 inche, Oil on Canvas, Painted with Palette knife

Sometimes living gets hazy and dark - that's when a little sunlight brings me back to the center. Friends are my little sunlights. Music to paint by. A fresh tube of paint. My Pointer sisters (they are my dogs). My neighbor who carries my trash can out to the curb without asking. A handwritten letter in my mailbox. A smile. Daydreaming of a farmhouse to convert to an artist's haven. My favorite TV show, my battered copy of "Pride and Prejudice", a cup of coffee - especially the sinful kind like White Chocolate Mocha....Hearing someone say, "I love you".

What's your sunlight? That touch of yellow - cad yellow pale mixed with a little white - that's the sunlight in my painting.

Embrace - SOLD

"Embrace"

6 x 6 inches, Oil on Board, Painted with Palette Knife

Available on Ebay

Click here to place a bid.

I was listening to Etta James sing an old standard "All the Way"....'when somebody loves you, it's not good unless they love you....all the way..."

Listening to music is inspirational when painting - I love my oldies, '70's songs and when I'm standing at my easel I like dancing to the music (oh yeah, disco was still pretty big in the '70's) while I slap on the thick paints with the palette knife onto my canvas...la la la when somebody loves you....la la la...

This little painting started as a brush painting but it just didn't have the pizazz I was looking for so with a little Etta James singing in the background, love in my heart, I grabbed more paints and repainted using the palette knife.

What songs do you listen to when you paint or do something creative?

The Road

"The Road"

5.5 x 5.5 inches, Oil on Board, Palette Knife Painting

Available on Ebay.

Click here to place a bid.

When I finished painting "The Farm House" I still had a lot of paint left on my palette and some time left in the day so I painted this one. It has the same color scheme as the farm house but if you were to see the real thing you'd see so many colors. I use a limited palette when I paint - for this one I used Prussian Blue, Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Burnt Sienna and Titanium White. I tone the canvas - this one is a gessoed board - with a mixture of burnt sienna and Cadmium Red. I should grow and try other colors and do buy a tube of this or that now and then but seem to revert back to the limited palette colors.

How about you - do you use a lot of different tubes of colors? What's your favorite color? Do you have a favorite mixture? I like Burnt Sienna with Prussian - it makes a really deep dark and when mixed with white - it makes a nice gray.

Happy Painting!!

The Farm House

"The Farm House"

5.5 x 5.5 inches, oil on board, palette knife

I was having fun with the palette knife and did this little painting...I was talking to a friend about a ancestral farm house - but this is purely imagination. I don't even have a clue what the farm house looks like. Painting from imagination was fun!! It's all make-believe isn't it?

I've listed this one on Ebay - to place a bid - click here.

Big Sunflowers

"Tall Black Vase"

20 x 16 x 3/4" inches - Oil on Canvas, Palette knife painting

I'm sure I've mentioned here in the past that I like the advice Linda Blondheim writes about on her blog Art Notes. She often writes about marketing and art business. I strived to follow her advice on customer service when I first started to sell on Ebay. Last month I participated at the New Vintage Art Show and visited with several artists. I bought a pottery piece from one. I really liked her work and was thinking I'd like a few more pieces, but when I got home and opened the bag she had wrapped the bowl in - there was nothing, no way to contact her. No business card in the bag, no contact information on the receipt. And on the bottom of the beautiful bowl was her initials!! No full name!!

So, note to self - make sure that I put contact information on everything I sell and give out!!

Marketing is such a learning experience!

We miss Mickey - don't worry - he's fine!

Mickey used to come by and visit the Pointer Sisters fairly often. He came so often these past few months that we couldn't help but let him in the house now and then, espcially when the weather was wet or cold outside. He'd be hanging around our house or my neighbor's house and run to greet us when we came home. He's well mannered, quiet, loving and too well fed as he visited all the houses in the neighborhood. He wears a collar with his name on it and a phone number but we really didn't know exactly where he lived. I live in an area where our houses sit on acreage bound by the lake and park lands. We hadn't seen him around these past three weeks. My neighbor even worried about him.

This is Mickey taking over the Pointer Sister's beloved sofa which I can't throw out even though it is soooo old and tattered. It's the girls' favorite sofa and usually they sleep together kicking all the pillows off it. I guess Mickey thought it was pretty comfy too...

Here's Mickey trying out Stella's doggy bed - I think he's just a little too big for it...with him in it - you can't see the sides of the bed as it is crushed under him...

Well I tried that phone number that was engraved on his collar and the Mickey's mom answered the phone. We had a wonderful conversation about Mickey. He's fine. The hole in the fence Mickey used to use to escape from is mended. But she promises to bring him around one of the these days to visit the girls.

I'm thinking of giving this little painting to Mickey's mom. I know he's fine but the girls and I still miss him.

Boston Terrier - As Cute as a Pug?

"I'm Listening"

5 x 5, Oil on Board

Available on Etsy

I love reading quotes. They offer such inspiration. Just over a week ago I had a conversation with a friend - it's one of those cry into my wine kind of conversations. So here are a few quotes for friendship:

"God, I've been starving for this kind of conversation!" - Eleanor Coppola

"Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words but to pour them all out, just as it is, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keeping what is worth keeping what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away." - George Elliot

"When I count my blessings, I count you twice." - Irish Proverb

Painting of Trees - Once again?

"Hear My Spirit"

20 x 16 x 1.5 inches, Oil on Canvas

I had done something very similar to this a while back in a square format. I took it to my recent show where a young man stared at it. He didn't buy it but obviously showed a lot of interest. During the course of the day it was sold to someone else. So I promised him that I'd paint it again and again in different sizes. The original one was a 14 x 14 inches. This one is 20 x 16. It looks different in different sizes....it's hard to paint an exact duplicate isn't it? I'll keep another one soon.