Posts Tagged: dollar
Plus Two Dollars
Plus Two Dollars
6″ x 6″ (15 x 15 cm) – oil on gessobord – SOLD
The second painting for the second show I am painting for. This one in California.
But let me tell you a story. I have this church down the block, I am sure many of you have heard of it by now. Every year they have a rummage sale, and every year I go to hunt for props, and every time I hunt I score. A winning proposition :).
This year I went again and found a basket-full of mismachted bone china, bent silver spoons, a large shell with an ocean sound inside, and a set of 16 prints by Toulouse-Lautrec. Every object was a dollar or two. The fun started at earnest when I went to pay for my loot. The nice elderly gentleman was a singularly wrong person to manage the cash box! He decided to do the sums in his head and kept making mistakes in my favor. By the time he had 9, I had 11 and corrected him… by the time he had 14, I had 16 and corrected him again. All the while he wanted to talk about Lautrec, American realism, painting in general, and modeling for life sessions. In the end he got 18. I no longer believed him and gave him 20 – God bless!! 🙂
Here I have for you the three cups from the rummage sale… Plus the two dollars difference in our sums.
A Stitch in Time
A Stitch in Time
6″ x 6″ (15 x 15 cm) – oil on gessobord – commission
It took a lot longer than anticipated, but I finished it this year! This is a very important painting for me and I wanted to do it right and took my time. This is my first commission. And an international one at that.
With this year almost gone I see many of my artists friends doing a recap. I read them with great interest – people have accomplished great things, painted significant works, showed work in important places, taught numerous students, and thought up amazing innovations. I thought to myself I must do a year-end post as well.
So here it goes:
- In 2012 I painted 11 paintings and sold almost all of them. Got and painted my first commission!
- Made my sketching a serious practice, drawn numerous sketches, traveled to Stockholm and sketched there.
- Founded Urban Sketchers Chicago group as a part of Urban Sketchers global movement. The group is now 75 artists strong, meets monthly and has its own FB page and blog.
- Met and friended a great many artists around the world and learned a great deal.
- Began to understand and use social media marketing – it works, how amazing!
It was a great year – 2012. Here’s to a better one in 2013!
Fiddlesticks
Fiddlesticks
8″ x 8″ (20 x 20 cm) oil on gessobord panel
SOLD
The whole time I was painting Fiddlesticks I was remembering “Odessa Tales” by Isaac Babel. If you haven’t read this, hurry – you are in for a treat … you can thank me later. It is better in Russian, that being the original language, but the English translation is very good too. I bought the English version for my husband who does not speak Russian and he laughed his head off from cover to cover :). He is still quoting from it all these years later. Anyway, “Odessa Tales” was the originating influence for this painting.
I did not have any major painting discoveries during this work. I did confirm for myself that my homemade medium recipes work better for me than various readymade mediums from the store. I make a Lean medium for my first color pass and a Fat one for my second and later passes. Now I have a collection of fancy brand mediums that I don’t use anymore.