Posts Tagged ‘landscape painting’
The Book – Part 2
The book I received a few days ago, “Starving” to Successful by Jason Horejs, has everything in it that an artist would need or want to know about preparing a body of consistent gallery-ready work, creating a portfolio, pricing, controlling inventory, researching art markets to find the right galleries and successfully approaching the gallery for representation.
I looked up Jason’s web site at www.xanadugallery.com and found many paintings and 3D pieces (He must have a huge gallery). I even ordered some software to help me keep track of my inventory.
Oh, yes, I found out that the person who sent this gem to me is my long time friend from Illinois. She’s the one with whom I go landscape painting in the wintertime – and it’s a birthday gift! How lucky I am!
Painting the Rye
Since today is Monday, my artist friends were scheduled to meet. Suzanne had received an honor by being asked by a local gallery owner to do a landscape painting with a group of locally well known artists and donate the painting to the Coastal Hospice on behalf of the gallery. So she wanted to practice painting marshes, as that is what she expected the group to paint.
The day turned out to be cloudy and the tide was low, not conducive to a good marsh painting, so we had to paint something else. As it happened, there were two fields of rye near her house. I had never seen rye up close, but today it had yellows and purples in it as well as greens and browns. It was absolutely lovely – especially with a little purple Vetch in it (a weed)! I don’t know if my painting will do the scene justice, but I had an interesting challenge!
Bob’s Auto Repair Shop
Today turned out to be a beautiful day! And, since it is Monday, my art friends were meeting.
There was a red building on a nearby road that one friend was particularly interested in painting, so we all agreed to meet there. It turned out that this small building had been a car repair shop many years ago, but with its fading red paint and growing vines, was a great point of inspiration for a landscape painting.
The Web Site
I’m the first to admit that the landscape painting that I do is not in the traditional representational style, and not everyone is excited about it. So I decided to build a web site in order to find a larger audience.
I began building the site, but at one point was getting a large number of calls suggesting I try to get my money back. The inference was that the builders of my site were involved in fraud of some type. When I mentioned these calls to my mentor, she never called me again – leading me to believe there really might be fraud somewhere. I abandoned the site and contracted with another company to build me one. The difference was that with the new company, they did a lot of things I had formerly done myself, and if I wanted something done I had to ask them to do it, and this took a long time, sometimes.
When I joined the mall www.easyplacetoshop.com it became necessary to have a site where I am able to adjust all parts of the site myself. I’m not sure how all of this will work out, but I may have a different web site soon.
Getting Ready for Mother’s Day
Today was a lovely day – temps in the 70s and with full sun! I did errands in the morning, but when afternoon came, instead of doing landscape painting, I did landscape rearranging.
A week ago I had purchased some pansies, those gorgeous little plants, to spark up my flower beds. Today was the day they found a new home! Also, I have several small azaleas which are beautiful in early spring, but by now are “has beens”. My trusty trimmers made quick work of them. I didn’t lay brush to canvas, but my front lawn looks ready for Mother’s Day!
Unexpected Events
Today was expected to be an easy day – a dental appointment and painting with a friend. The dental visit was for a regular cleaning and that went fine.
Then I stopped by the ball field where my friend, Val, was supposed to be landscape painting. She had scouted around to find the spot she wanted and was just getting started. She had only a 5″ x 7 ” board to paint, and said she would be about half an hour and would meet me at my house about a mile away. It took her 1.5 hours to get that little painting done!
She brought some paintings for me to photograph and crop, then put on a disk so she could enter a competition. Everything went fine until time to burn the disk. I had done this before, but we struggled for 2 hours, and she finally left, disappointed at our failure. A while later, I did find the right sequence, so she has her disk and only has to mail it tomorrow!
Painting at Leslie’s
On Mondays, I have a standing arrangement with my friends that we will do landscape painting. However, the weather didn’t cooperate today so Leslie said she would set up a still life if we wanted to go to her house. It was a good thing that we did as the day turned out very humid and uncomfortable.
When I arrived, Leslie was gathering flowers and later set them in a vase on a cloth on a coffee table. We set up our easels and began in air conditioned comfort. Later, her husband even brought us lunch! Now, it doesn’t get much better than that!
The net result was that Leslie and Suzanne turned out very fine paintings, Betty joined us for a while and shared art info, and agreed to take paintings tomorrow to Ocean City for their next show. And I was less than happy with mine!
Benefits of Walking
I’ve begun my walking routine again – and feel much better as a result. I became very lazy during the winter and walked only occasionally.
Tonight I was reading the blog of Cathy Woo (cathywoofineart.blogspot.com), a Seattle artist who walks in the Alki Beach area. For her, “It is not sufficient for me to be passively present in Nature. I have to walk it. Movement is essential to my well-being. It …provides insights more enlightening than any I could come up with by way of stationary concentration and effort”.
For me, also, movement is essential to my well being. I am just not happy unless I’m moving. I’m not sure that I gain as many insights as she as a result of walking, but it does give me more energy than otherwise. And doing landscape painting out-of-doors beats painting from a photograph by miles!
The Office, Again
Well! There was to be no landscape painting today! It had rained in the night and more was predicted for the morning.
It was a good day for finishing the office. I filed a big pile of papers and then attacked the income tax. A while back I had brought a big box of my husband’s old income tax papers down from the attic. Each year was carefully labeled and put in its own envelope and all were 9-20 years old. Do you have any idea how long it took to look through those and separate the recycles from the personal parts which I shredded? Now, if I can just get the desk tidied, the room will be perfect!
The Office
My friends and I had planned to do some landscape painting today, however the weather was not just cloudy, it had a heavy cloud cover with no possibility for sun to come through, and rain was in the forecast. If it is just cloudy, the sun usually shines through occasionally, at least enough to see where the shadows are, but that was not the case today. So we decided to give it up for today.
I spent a long time working in my office and a while working on my web site. The office had not recovered from my trip from Florida, but looks much better now. Perhaps with another day’s work it will really be organized. I just can’t figure out how it can get so messy so fast!