Almost !

It is raining steady rain showers, soon our water tanks will be full again. They were down to a bit under 20% capacity. Now already 2/3 or so full. We let the first rains wash the red dust from the icky dust squalls of last week off the roof and gutters before we connected the guttering back into the tanks. It's good, we need rain...we have had a couple days and expect another week of rain.

I have Almost finished the Paris Lion. He got a lot of light handed detail work today. I thought I could finish him today, but then at this stage in things I always think that. No, he needs another day of work. Real fine tuning, light embellishments on him and his statue platform and on his background too. But before stopping today I did paint in a wash of shadows on the background, which is a moody afternoon scene with dappled shade of late autumn (late November to be precise). Another thing I did was introduce some rust to the painting ! That was very exciting, because the Paris Lion has had a restrained palette of beiges and darker colors for the background and Verdigris colors plus dark shadows for the lion and his platform. It was nice to have a new color to introduce and it helped give the painting some additional dimension.

This lion has been done more yellow green verdigris than the Chicago Lion, which was very blue green...it is just the colors he wanted, I took my cues from his personality. The Paris Lion has suggested his colors too. Interestingly, he had previously suggested a deep teal for some of the shadows on his back and sides. It was a great idea, an exciting addition. Today he suggested some real limey green colors for his shadows. I gave it a go and really liked it, the yellow green warms up the shadows and is interesting to see. I toned it down a bit in places with some grey and raw umber. And one area needs a bit of knocking back tomorrow. And it looked great with the rust I touched in to some of the crevices of the lion's self and shadows. Painting in the rust stains on his platform was fun too. The rust stands out against verdigris. I love how it looks !

I also put in some white highlights where the sun shines on the statue. It seems like this is enough, but on reflecting from more distance or from the camera image, I need to do more. This was also the case with the Chicago Lion, but at the end I got the sunlight on him looking good. So more to do tomorrow !

Secret Admirers

I have spent a rainy Saturday getting flowers and wine...then coming home to do a big flower photo shoot. One photo shoot is for photos to use in a painting for a competition. Another is to add to my photo library some additional shots of roses (I need more, in many colors). The last set of photo shoots was a set of preliminary compositions for a commission that features a floral still life with particular colors.

The roses are not market bought. They are garden ones, that come from what I call the Champion Rose Bush in this garden. It blooms first, continuously and vigorously, and last. Its small-medium size flowers are a bit loose and unremarkable in summer (they fade and open very quickly, then lose petals), but in spring and autumn, its blooms open to be very pretty with more pink on them than in summer. We got storms last night, so I decided I had best collect the nice blooms on that rose bush before they got ruined by storms. Though, with Rose Grazers in the house, I had to bring a big sacrificial bloom in for Winston....who was waiting at the door to see what flowers I brought him. I gave him one and put the nice ones in a vase and popped it in the fridge until today, as photo shoots of flowers are best done in natural light. I did get some nice shots today and one of them is shown above. I will be doing some paintings of these I think, very cheerful and springlike. Photographed in contemporary close ups and also in more traditional still life styles in vase.

When I was doing the photo shoot of the roses, I had some Secret Admirers come visit ! First Winston, who can't resist roses. I did not allow him to linger and graze however ( I know he will graze the roses heartily, which will ruin them)

Then Pook got up and came and checked them out too. Maggie did as well, but did not stick around to be caught on camera (she is shy of being photographed). Pook loves being on camera. So after I shushed him away from thoughts of tasting the petals, he stayed awhile and posed. He is a good cat model !

Pity these are small roses and a small vase, Pook is totally out of proportion to them, he looks like a Giant Lilac Burmese next to the dinky arrangement. (I have photographed him with bigger roses before with great results !) If not for that, I could use one of the photos with him and the pink roses for a painting... !

Lemon Studies

Our neighbours gave us a bag of lemons yesterday and I was pleased to see some had leaves and stems attached on them still. I had not painted with oils in a while, so late this afternoon, I got out a palette and oil paints, turps and some oil medium and decided to paint a couple of small studies of the lemons with leaves. I hadn't done a still life for a while either, so that was good to do too. It makes you think and consider what you are seeing. And also you have to make some decisions. I intended to do them as small alla prima studies. Alla Prima paintings are done in a single session. So you capture what you see at the time and in that painting session and don't muck around with it any more after that. It is a good practice for me to do this. I am thinking I should do one or two of these a week, of whatever I have on hand to paint that day. It's a great way to tune up and warm up before doing other painting too.

I painted the lemon studies on small primed canvases sized 8"x 10". I did one of them more zoomed in than the other, as you can see. The other has a bit more space around it...just worked out that way. It was a nice little painting session, no more than 2 hours and it was fun to use the oils again. A great warm up for more painting with them this coming weekend !

Local voting likes the zoomed-in lemon study better. Which do you like ?