Spoons and Oatmeal

Spoons and Oatmeal   oil on canvas   14 x 11 x .56

Our kitchen is well used and well loved.  There is something cooking all the time.  Although neither of us professes to LOVE to cook, we do love to cook simply delicious meals from healthy ingredients for both ourselves and our dear ones.  Oatmeal is a frequent breakfast selection.  Artistic compositions abound in the kitchen....what with all of those interesting tools...strainers, shredders, scales, spoons and the like.  While preparing for this work, I took a variety of photos for possible paintings.  I decided to do this one now as the bouncing summer light was so very appealing.  I am satisfied.  
 

The Bundt - it's not just for cake anymore

Bundt Pan...a sketch

Yesterday, I spent a wonderful day with my friend Jo wandering through the Medina Antiques Mall. It is a pleasant adventure that we love but, with our busy lives, have not found the time to do for many years. What's not to like? Air conditioning....music....and plenty of visual stimulation....almost to the point of overload. It is not nostalgia that drives me, but the true visual pleasure of wabi-sabi-one-of-a-kind items, the counterpart to what we see in most market places. I am always drawn to items with visual texture....old architectural elements and cooking utensils. Lots of muffin tins, old boxes and relief carvings. These old pans are a perfect way to learn much about "the nature of things", which improves and refines drawing skills. We have to deal with perspective, two-point and ellipses, as well as the way light describes the many indented surfaces. The pans are rarely perfect, which adds a quirky element to the drawing. Fun. For an interesting drawing problem, then, we need not look any farther than our own kitchens. The rest is just cake.

Relief

Architectural Rosette   watercolor

I guess I am attracted to all-things-handmade, especially things that are carved from wood.....or even those molded in iron.....or things pressed into copper.....or...........let's just say that I like relief work. Painting one of these objects is a wonderful exercise as we learn all about 3-dimensionality on a flat painting surface. Those parts that are closest to the light source, and to us as viewers, will have a lighter treatment. Those parts that receive the least light will be the darkest. And then there are the areas in-between, whose rising and falling make the image believable. Old architectural pieces offer much in the way of painting relief, as do kitchen molds, egg cartons and muffin cups. Hopefully, we will be able to translate what we learn into the topography of the human figure, a still life painting or a landscape. An even more challenging task would be to render some abstract marks using our findings.....to watch them rise and fall from the painting surface. Awesome.

Negative Painting

Beliefs   watercolor   18 x 19.5

Sometimes, especially in watercolor, intricate things are best described by the holes in them, or the space around them. This is especially true for things such as lace and garden fences. (Is there a life metaphor here?) This was the class lesson for "Beliefs". We were studying reliefs, raised surfaces, and how they are described by the light hitting them. I like to call this concept the "to's and the fro's". I paired up this iron garden cross with mineolas which were in season. Using a limited palette always pleases me. I am pleased with the result.