Posts Tagged: paper

Spintop

Spintop

Spintop

6″x6″ (15×15 cm) – oil on gessobord

First painting in 2015 – Spintop. It is also the last installment for Unwrapping exhibit that will be opening in Mostly Glass gallery this weekend. I am happy and a little scared. Wish me luck!

Many people ask me ask me how long this style of painting takes? I usually tell them – long. It takes a long time, several weeks. A couple or three months if a painting is larger. But how long is long exactly?!

I decided to time myself and find out. So I painted with a stop watch for several weeks, and now can report to you that this 6″x6″ painting took me 52 hours: 7 hours for composition, prep work and drawing, and 45 hours of painting. I started composition work on November 29 and signed the painting on January 27 – almost two months, but holidays got in the midst and there were literally a couple of weeks that I did not paint at all.

Adagio for Three Strings

Adagio for Three Strings

Adagio for Three Strings

12″x9″ (30×23 cm) – oil on aluminum panel

More often than not these paper paintings take longer than I anticipate. Or hope! I think this one took two months. But I am not entirely sure, and am afraid to investigate. What if it took 3 months? Regardless, it is now complete and drying.

There are are couple of things to mention about this painting. This is my first try working on Dibond surface. Dibond is a two ply aluminum panel used for signs. It can be gessoed and used as painting subtract. I really like it and hope to use it for most of my work. It is smoother and less absorbent than Gessobord. Lovely surface!

I took the level of complexity up a notch with this painting. Crinkled music paper is great fun to paint! My gallery will be happy, I hope :). He loves complexity!

Ma Chérie Amour

Ma Chérie Amour

Ma Chérie Amour

6″x6″ (15×15 cm) – oil on gessobord

I finished this little painting of cherries in a paper bag last week. This is another installment for the Unwrapped show I’ve been painting for. It came out a nice and shiny little painting, but all I had for it in terms of a title was dull and boring.

So I posted the painting on FB and opened it for crowd-sourching for the title. My friends just ROCK! In 24 hours I had a different problem – too many brilliant titles. 40 to be exact, almost impossible to choose because there were so many good and clever ones. They even created a bit of a rift here in the studio as my husband, my daughter and I had different favorites. In the end I did the deciding – it is my painting LOL!

Thorns on Paper

A Little Light Reading 7-18-2014 lo-res light

Thorns on Paper

12″x12″ (30 x 30 cm) – oil on gessobord – commission

Thorns on Paper is a second commission for Mostly Glass gallery and another painting for the Crinkled Paper show planned for this year end.

I’ve been working on this painting since April, it took nearly three months, longer than I hoped. I am happy to finish and sign it. And it did not help the matter that towards the end a scratch  appeared on a finished background. Could have been Elvis’ work, or I might have gotten careless for a moment – hard to tell. I could not repair it and had to repaint the background.

About the title: Everyone who talked about this painting so far calls it “Caravaggio”, which seems to be an intuitive thing to do given the book title painted in the front. Natural that it may be I find it a bit presumptuous. I titled the painting Thorns on Paper to reflect on the painting on the book cover Crowning with Thorns.

The White Wave – all finished, framed and gone

White Wave packed 5-30-14

This is my final parting shot of The White Wave painting. I am packing it to go to Mostly Glass gallery.

The White Wave

The White Wave 5-3-2014 10x7 lo-res

The White Wave

9″x12″ (23 x 30 cm) – oil on gessobord – commission

Here’s a new painting titled The White Wave. A couple of years ago, when I first painted crinkled paper, the complexity, the chaos and the lack of logic or reason of it has got to be too much, and I promised myself that I would not paint crinkled paper again unless I would be paid for doing it. HA! I broke my promise in less than 3 months, just to see if the first painting was not a fluke and if I can really paint wrinkled paper. I could 🙂.

The real thing happened in the beginning of this year. A gallery that I worked with some years ago suggested a solo show later this year, the theme being crinkled paper. I am working on a new collection of works for this show. The first two pieces of this collection the gallery has commissioned – that’s the right way to support art! The White Wave is the first piece of this new series.

As far as good news go, this is pretty much up there!

Latest Gossip

Latest Gossip

6″ x 6″ (15 x 15 cm) oil on gessobord panel

SOLD

Some thought that I gave up painting… I don’t blame them! I’ve been posting sketch after sketch for months… but I’ve been painting too. Remember after “Unwrapping” I promised myself to avoid painting crinkled paper unless it is a commission? Well, I could not stay away – crinkled paper is addictive. I must be a glutton for punishment… It took this long and was a major pain.

This little painting had the longest “ugly” stage I can remember. Until three days ago it looked like the best candidate for recycling bin I’ve ever seen. I am not sure why I did not give up. My daughter says that I go through this with every painting. I think she is right, it is always a pain, uncertainty, major self-doubt, anxiety and confusion. I hear from my artists friends, writers friends, musician friends that it is the same for them too. So much for happy bohemian life style. I hope you like the painting though.

O Sole Mio

O Sole Mio

6″ x 6″ (15 x 15 cm) oil on gessobord panel

SOLD

Remember how it sounded when Pavarotti sang it? It is hard to come up with something sounding sweeter than that. And of course pear shapes invoke certain associations. Anyway, pears are so easy to anthropomorphize… they are so much like us. I have no trouble imagining them serenading each other or singing a duet.

Of course, painting a music score is a lot less sweet. It’s pretty much a pain in … wherever. In oil while keeping perspective… I hope I did it correctly. If you can read music and see a mistake – don’t tell me, I don’t want to know!

Unwrapping

Unwrapping

8″ x 8″ (20 x 20 cm) oil on gessobord panel

SOLD

It’s been almost three months since my last oil painting. There are several reasons why. I’ve been away, and painting not in my own studio is slow somehow. I’ve been organizing the Chicago chapter of Urban Sketchers, and that took time and effort. But the real reason it took this long is that my subject was so damn hard! I can’t believe I actually got it to the end! It would be a while before I paint crumpled paper again :).