Neighborhood News

The nest from the video in the last post is finished. This cardinal had a story to tell so I'm calling it Neighborhood News. Birds are such resourceful creatures. You never know what you're gonna find tucked into a nest. I've found cloth, yarn, plastic grocery bag pieces, hair - horse and human, moss, newspaper pieces, and a gold foil strip from a cigarette pack. 

This new piece is available on my website. I've also added a new landscape to the site today. Have you been to my site yet? Please check it out by clicking here. There's a link to this blog along with tabs to take you to each section - nests and landscapes along with a few other collections of things I do. We don't have to stick to painting only one thing do we? It's much more fun to mix things up - kinda like the birds and their building techniques. 

Have a fabulous rest of your week. On to the next painting....

C

 

It has to be painted...

I haven't recorded myself painting in quite a while so I wanted to share a little clip I did this morning with the start of the newest nest painting. I got the reference for this nest from a friend of mine and I thought it was just gorgeous. It has the fine straw in the center, Spanish moss all around, twigs with leaves still attached and pieces of newspaper tucked in for good measure. It was begging to be painted. I hope I can do it justice.

I'll share a picture when it's finished. Until next time.....

C

Fresh Eyes

I'm working all the angles this week! I just finished a commission for a nest painting. I'm working on a landscape and I'm playing with layers on 5 small abstracts. If you paint, do you like to work on different things at the same time. It may seem unfocused to do that but for me it makes perfect sense. While layers are drying on the abstracts I can be working on the other two paintings. If I feel stuck with something on the landscape I can always switch to the nest and work on it for a while. When I go back to the other piece I feel like I have "fresh eyes" and can resolve whatever the problem was. 

This nest is 20x30 and heading to a customer in Virginia.

An abstracty landscape in progress. I'm not sure how much more I'll be doing to this one.

5 little abstracts in progress. I'm REALLY not sure how much more I'll be doing to these. They're still speaking to me. Do you listen to your paintings?