A thirsty painting

I always have a lot of fun when I paint with acrylics, which always makes me wonder why I don't use them more often....

Anyway, here is an acrylic painting I did over the summer which will be in my first solo show which is going to be hung on Wednesday. There are about 20 more that I'm currently framing and finessing as well, which has kept me from doing my daily painting today. I had a lot of fun looking at everyone else's daily paintings for Sunday though. Isn't this daily painters' ritual fun and inspiring?

I named the painting 'Thirsty' because the flowers kept getting more and more parched and droopy over the week's span in which it took me for me to paint them. Ahhh the problems and joys of painting from life...

"Thirsty", 24 by 24, acrylic on masonite

Here's what they looked like when they were fresher...All but the sunflowers are from my garden.

sunflower art, floral paintings, Daily Painting, A Painting a Day, Art Collectors

Waiting for Love, A Painting a day

Working on portraits...

Waiting for love, oil on canvas, 12 by 16

Almost home, Daily painting

Every now and then it's fun to do something off the wall. The following painting started out as acrylic with some tissue paper. I covered the acrylics with oils and the effect is kind of interesting when you see it up close. (Note: you can double click on the painting to see the texture a little better.) The mermaid is in a quandary because she can't get to her home, which is the sea of course. That's pretty much how I felt when I moved from Pennsylvania to Florida, which is probably what prompted me to paint this fantasy.

"Almost Home", mixed media on gallery wrapped canvas, 16 by 20

SOLD

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A breath of fresh air, Daily painting

I recently signed up for a portraiture class at the Ringling School of Art and Design because I wanted to learn how to paint people. I tried painting a person’s face just once before signing up for this class, and since I liked the outcome and had fun doing the painting, I thought the class would be a good investment in my art education. I had found a reference photo of a Spanish dancer on Wetcanvas and painted her pretty quickly, without thinking much about what I was doing. Here she is:

"Kitri", oil on canvas, 8 by 10

Well, to make a long story short, over the past few weeks I have become quite discouraged with the class. The teacher is kind and I'm sure she's a very fine artist, but I simply have not been able to relate to holding up a pencil in the air and measuring how many millimeters of model’s eyes comprise the nose and then translating that measurement to the scale I'm using on my own canvas. Frankly, I’m not an engineer, an architect or a mathematics teacher, and the whole approach intimidated me. Today I walked into the class and was greeted by a new model and a substitute teacher. It appeared that the teacher wasn't even going to do a demo until I prodded him. Thankfully, the demo he did was like a breath of fresh air! Instead of measuring distances and angles and holding his elbow taut as he devised geometric formulas he simply laid down shapes as he saw them in their various values, and then began refining them. Bingo! A light bulb went off in my head! I enthusiastically attacked my canvas and although the teacher admitted that I had the most difficult angle in the room in which to view the subject, I was pleased with my rendering of model Chris. It's not finished by any means, but today's painting lesson proved to me that there's different strokes for different folks. I’m glad I didn’t give up! Here he is:

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A plein air dilemma, Daily painting

SOLD

It was overcast when I set up my easel on Morrill Street. The on the street was quite gloomy except for the contrast of a brightly-colored bougainvillea against a grayish house, which is why I decided to paint it. However, by the time I had laid in the first notes, the sun had broken through the clouds and was shining brightly. The light temperature had changed completely from when I had begun, so I knew that my painting was going to have a schizophrenic quality to it. I tried to adjust the values as best I could, but most of the initial color notes had to be completely covered. The house was rather depressing-looking so I shied away from its local color deliberately. Here's the result of my plein air dilemma...

Pretty in Pink, oil on masonite, 12 by 16.

If you are interested in purchasing this painting , please email me at maryannejacobsen@aol.com.

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3 roses- Daily Painting

Work-ing on be-ing PAINT-ER-LY. Not happy with the result but I am learn-ing.

Three Roses, oil, 6 by 7.5.

SOLD

Plein Air Painting, Casperson Beach Park

"The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colors which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts." (James Allen)


On Sunday I decided to skip my class at Ringling and join the Plein Air painters in my area for the first paint-out of the season. As a fairly new artist, until now I had never painted outdoors in the late afternoon before, so was I ever in for a treat! The four of us ended up at the Casperson Beach Park and another painter and myself chose to paint the park’s canoe launch into the Intracoastal. I was immediately struck by the intense light on the banks of the waterway in the foreground and set about to capture that. I finished the painting today and am satisfied that I was able to capture the luminous light quality of that late day Florida sunlight.

Casperson Beach Park, oil on gallery-wrapped-canvas, 12 by 16


Here is the photograph that I took of the spot that day.

After viewing the photo it’s easy to see why so many landscape painters elect to paint outdoors instead of using a reference photograph. There is absolutely no way that my camera could capture that incredible light quality and the way in which the foreground was literally “lit up” like a jewel!


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How now, brown cow? A Painting a day

My DSL line has been down all week, and with increased frustration I discovered that it’s practically impossible for me to post pictures with just a landline. So my posts will be few and far between until I get a tech out to fix the problem.

I’ve been working on this painting on and off for 2 months. It’s finally finished because there’s nothing else I can physically do at this point to make it look any better. It started out very colorful and fresh-looking, but somehow along a slippery Liquin path I got carried away with slavishness. I started adding little water sparkles first, and then before I knew it the grass in the foreground had started growing, and flowers began blooming where none had existed before. Eventually I walked away from it in disgust because I liked the first version better than the mess it became. Today I pulled it out and looked at it again. I realized that the water was too light and that the values in the background trees were all wrong. So as much as I hate subtlety, I forced myself to subdue all the colors in the woods beyond the meadow. Interestingly, I think it helped a little and actually gave the painting a little more depth. So I’m done with it now and if anyone who loves cows has an interest in purchasing it for $75.00 please email me.

Cows and Calla Lillies, oil on canvas, 14 by 18

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Painting every day, final Capistrano Depot

Okay, some folks might call this cheating, since it was posted yesterday in its half naked state, but tough turps.

Yesterday I had a horrible day and although today's not been much better, I at least had a chance to go in and revise some major passages in my painting of the historic Capistrano train depot, in San Juan Capistrano, California. So I'm posting it again, in its final version, since I wasn't happy with yesterday's.

Capistrano Depot, oil on masonite, 12 by 16

The painting started out as a rather hideous portrait. I'm taking a portraiture class at The Ringling School of Art and Design, and frankly I hate it. The teacher's a dear, but I'm just not into mathematical formulas and geometry, (which I flunked in high school) so this class is driving me bonkers. I came home with a rather accurate painting of our model, who is a great model but not the most engaging person you'd want to paint...

So as I said yesterday, the hubby was getting weirded out by this guy looking at us from his drying perch on the kitchen counter. So I took the board and covered it with lots of dark green and cadmium red paint which came out real orangy... just in time for halloweeen.

I guess I should have gone for a pumpkin painting, but yesterday I decided to paint over the orange with a landscape of the Capistrano Depot in California. If you've never been there, it's a really cool old train depot, built in 1894, that contains an intoxicatingly yummy Italian restaurant, lots of ochre-colored arches, gorgeous bougainvillea and mucho, MUCHO artistic atmosphere. I had originally completed a similar painting in watercolor of the depot last spring, from a beginner's exercise in a Walter Foster book, so I really didn't even need to sketch it out first, which was cool. The thing that was different about this landscape is that I always start in the typical Cape Cod School of Art tradition- which is with a white support. Starting a landscape with an orange tint as a base was interesting, and the only real problem I faced was with the sky. Does anyone really want to look at a deep orange sky, I asked myself? I didn't think so. So I had to add a lot of paint over the wet orange stuff in order to cover what would have been a bit of a surreal landscape, even by California's standards. So there you have it. My painting is finished and I like it.

If you would like to purchase this painting, please go here to bid.

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Capistrano Depot, A painting a day

Well, this painting will have an interesting history when all is said and done...

I started it today from a painting that I did on Sunday in my portraiture class at The Ringling School. My husband said, "That guy's face is freaking me out. Please put it somewhere other than where I can see it, like maybe the bottom of the pantry closet." So I took the painting of the nice guy in my class and covered it totally with cadmium red and sap green paint and started painting a landscape of the famous Capistrano Depot in California. At this point my DSL is not working and it's late and I'm very cranky, so the story of the rest of today's disasters and accomplishments will be postponed until another day. I'm hoping to get up early and change the values in this painting before Micah Condon posts the Daily Painters' daily masterpieces for Tuesday...

"Capistrano Depot", 12 by 16, oil

Blue Lagoon, A Painting a Day

It's amazing how much time these petite little paintings take to do! I spent about 4 hours on this one today and really feel I need to work on it a little more to get it right. So I'll probably pull it out tomorrow and start futzing with it again. This doesn't leave any time for me to work on any bigger projects! I did add some more glazes to my blue heron, so at least that got done.

On a happy note, I am definitely learning from this exercise of daily painting. I always shied away from small canvases for reasons I'm not really sure of, but I'm finding that more self-control is required when you work smaller. I may actually do this one again on a bigger canvas, because I realize some things I could have done differently that would possibly have improved it. We'll see.

"Blue Lagoon", 6 by 8 inches, oil on wood panel

Blue Lagoon, tweaked a bit, but couldn't photo in decent light so have these darned reflecions.

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That's amore!

I was unable to paint today because I'm getting ready for a trip. But a very full harvest moon was winking down from the sky tonight with such mirth in his face, that I decided to post this painting.

Tahitian Moon, 22 by 28, oil on gallery-wrapped canvas

This was one of my very first oil paintings, done last spring, and although I didn't have a clue what I was doing, I had a great deal of fun painting it. There's a lot of movement in the palm trees, which is a good thing, I suppose. The rest of it is pretty wild for most people's tastes, although it looks great on a white wall. The original is unavailable, but this giclee has been almost totally retouched recently, and is available for $200.00.

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Daily painting- Sunset glow

I'm still adding glazes to this painting, which I started earlier this week. It's totally different from my usual style, and I'm having fun with it. I'm not totally happy with how orangy it looks, (although my first intent was to capture the sunset glow) yet I'm afraid if I add too many glazes it'll start to look too dark and dreary. Ahhh...the fun of experimentation...

The painting of the heron was inspired by a photo that I saw in National Geographic magazine. The sun had already retired (photographer Stephen Wolfe's own words), the camera had been put away and suddenly the heron appeared on the river rocks. I'm glad the photographer was able to capture the moment , just as I am trying to capture the magic of the scene with these layers of glazes. I tried to get the photographer's email address from NG's website, so that I could ask the photographer's permission to use his photo as a reference. I was unable to find out any info on him, even after I googled his name. I do hope I'm not violating any protocol by using this photographer's stunning photo for a reference for my painting, since I always make it a habit to ask permission first, (when a photo inspires me).

I have a solo exhibit next month and it suddenly occurred to me today that I'd better start painting on some larger canvases than the ones I've been painting on lately. So my painting- a- day miniatures may need to be postponed for a little while so I can create some larger works.

Sunset Glow, Oil on canvas, 14 by 18, A work in progress

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This old house- Daily Painting

I'm a real sucker for old homes with character. This old house on Horseshoe Trail in Pennsylvania, oozed character and charm each time I passed it on my daily walks through my old neighborhood. I've painted it before, and this one won't be my last. It needs some major tweaking because I lost my light as I started on the shadows towards the front door, and couldn't continue.

I also reworked some passages in my Siesta Key painting that I wasn't happy with, and added some new layers to my heron on the water painting. So I did a lot of painting today. Now I need to do some housecleaning before my own old house walks away with the dirt...

This Old House, oil, 14 by 18

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Venice Beach, plein air

Today I did paint my painting a day miniature. But I'm ashamed to post it. It's dreadful!I also worked on my larger moody/broody glazed painting. It's starting to take on some character, so I'll keep with it, even though I don't know much about this old master's technique. Hopefully, it'll be good enough to post here, when it's finally finished.

In the meanwhile I am lamenting the fact that the weather here is just beautiful for painting en plein air, yet I can't go down to the beach because the red tide is so bad. I am one of those people who reacts violently to the red tide blooms, and even getting within 5 miles of the beach gives me terrible headaches. If you don't know anything about red tide, just google it. We've been having a bad bloom here in Southwest Florida for the past few months.

The last time I painted down at our local beach was late June. After that, the red tide began to appear and it was also just too darned hot! Here's the painting of Venice Beach that I painted en plein air the last time I was there. I didn't like it at first, because I stupidly placed the horizon line almost dead center. But it kind of grew on me after it sold.

Venice Beach, oil on masonite, 12 by 16

SOLD

A Painting a Day, Happy sunflower

SOLD

I didn't feel like painting today... nope, not one bit. What helped was reading other daily painter's blogs and realizing that some days it's hard for others to get motivated, too.

I think today the news affected me the most. So depressing. So scary. Makes you want to jump under the covers and hide. Enough of that, Maryanne.

I forced myself to paint tonight. Took a long bike ride, poured myself a glass of wine, took a deep breath and just began. I started an atmospheric painting that is quite different from what I usually do. No bossy color or thick impasto. It's gonna take a lot of glazes to make it look cool, so don't hold your breath waiting to see it. It was daily painter Marie Wise's beautiful Iris painting that inspired me to try glazes. Thanks, Marie.

Since I couldn't go any further with the atmospheric painting, I then threw together this little sunflower. I was totally spontaneous in my approach and didn't allow myself to think much about what I was doing. Now I realize I'm way too cerebral, since this painting is a breath of fresh air for me. I usually don't like my paintings very much, but I like how this one came out.

If you have any interest in purchasing this painting, please go here.

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Casey Key's Beach Path, A Painting a Day

Casey Key is the next town north of where I live on the Gulf of Mexico. It's the home of many rich and famous people past and present including Oprah Winfrey and Stephen King. It's a beautiful island and my hubby and I often take little bike jaunts down the 8 to 10 mile stretch of narrow island. Homes on one side of the street back right up to the the Gulf of Mexico, and the homes on the other side of the street are on the Intracoastal Waterway. Unfortunately, since it's the home of the rich and the famous, you really don't have access to any beach there, other than a quick, surreptitious peek through some rich guy's expensive tropical foilage.

I caught a photo one day, of a lovely home that had a garden path that emptied right out onto the beach where one lonely sun-drenched palm tree stood in view. There was a huge Norfolk Island Pine at the end of the path, as well as a profusion of sea grapes, scrub palmettos and some really colorful bougainvilleas that also lined the path. This painting, "Beach Path" was inspired by that quick view of someone else's paradise.

Okay, this one took a couple days to paint, since I had other obligations over the weekend, and I wanted to paint outside to capture the exact light temperature. There are beautiful colors in the shadows which you can't see from the photo and the little palm at the end of the path is truly "lit". I like it. You can also click on the painting to see more detail.

It measures 12 by 16, oil on masonite. If you have any interest in purchasing this painting, please email me at maryannejacobsen@aol.com.

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, Casey Key

, Oprah Winfrey

Indian Summer Morning, A Painting a Day

SOLD

This painting took about 4 days to complete over the past 2 weeks. I guess that qualifies it as a quadruple painting a day.

I've named it Indian Summer Morning and it's filled with lots of lovely autumn color and painted impasto-style with a palette knife. It's 12 by 16, oil on masonite and you can click on the painting for a close-up view of the impasto.

This painting is available for $100 by emailing me, or if you prefer to use ebay you can go here: here.

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