4×4 oil

 This post is a little more for the men – it leans towards the masculine side of subjects for my art – which isn’t much. I tend to paint more “girlie” subjects – birds and flowers. But for the men that follow my blog – this one is for you ! I think my dad would like this little truck painting. I thought of him when I painted it. I was driving home from the grocery store one day and in front of me was this neat old blue truck. I loved the glowing red lights with the blue and the great shape of the old truck so I grabbed my phone and started trying to capture some quick pictures and stay on the road and not hit anyone . I don’t have a clue what type it was – I’m not good with car types, but Grady on the other hand could tell you what kind of car every neighbor drove in our old neighborhood. We’d be at Wal-mart of somewhere and Grady would say – oh, they live 5 doors down from us – we wouldn’t know the people’s name but Grady knew their car.

The boat is one I painted from our Maine trip.

5×7 oil

6×6 oil

Well, if you haven’t picked up on this yet I like to paint birds. I’m trying my best to get caught up on all the paintings I have to share with you – I’m WAY behind, so I thought I’d share a cluster of my bird paintings with you. I’m still working on getting good at photographing my oil paintings so I apologize because some of these didn’t photograph very well but I just didn’t take the time to redo them. Most, if not all, of these birds are finches. Click on any of them to see them larger.

This oil painting was done more like my sketches in my sketch books. I like doing simple line drawings with notes and I thought I’d see how that would turn out on a canvas and I like how it looks. I did another one of a single bird but can’t find the picture of it – if I find it or decide to take another picture of it I’ll post it. 

8×8 oil

8×8 oil

In the previous post I shared about our trip to Maine last fall and as promised here are the paintings from that trip. I painted these two the day I was on the beach while Grady hiked. The rest are other scenes from our balcony or from around the local area.

8×8 oil

6×6 oil

8×8 oil

8×8 oil

6×6 oil

We usually take a painting trip for me and last year (yes, I know I’m a little behind ) we took a trip to Maine. We agreed that it was our all time favorite trip. It was BEAUTIFUL! I painted a ton while we were there. We had a wonderful view from our room so I painted a lot from our balcony. We had a great view of Porcupine Island (don’t you love the name!) and there were colorful boats out there all the time. Here’s our view & our hotel…

We also went to the beach one day and while I painted Grady hiked the hill/mountain I was painting. Here’s the view from the mountain - Grady took a picture of me on the beach waaayyy down there.

I will share the paintings I did on the trip in the next post – you can see one of my paintings on my easel in one of the pictures above.

8×8 Oil Stick

That’s about the only thing I like about winter – it’s the path to spring! The bleak, cold, dead, dreary, colorless days of winter are what make the warm, life-filled, colorful days of spring so exciting and beautiful.  And it’s a beautiful picture of the gospel – death gives way to new Life!

This painting was done with my oil sticks. I love the buttery loose feel of these and how you have to layer and mix the paint on the board. I’ve been doing a LOT of flower paintings like this – more to come later!

6×6 oil

I’m part of a plein air (just a fancy name for painting outdoors) painting group called the Chestnut Group that has special paintouts where we get to paint at places not always open to the general public. We get to paint in some really neat places all over Tennessee. These two paintings are from my first paintout with this group in Warfield, TN (I think that’s where we were). My first painting was of a wonderful old red barn that was HUGE.

After lunch I was pretty wiped out but decided to venture out by myself into the little town square that had some great old buildings – I did this second one really fast.

6×6 oil

8×8 oil

8×8 oil

8×8 oil

These are just a few of the MANY paintings I’ll have for sale today.

Here are three buttercup paintings I did in the spring from flowers off our property. The earliest house I remember living in when I was little had buttercups down the property line and I loved them as a little girl and love them still today. We’ve been planting big batches of them around our pond each fall. They were fun to paint too! You can tell the first painting is my earliest buttercup painting because it doesn’t have very thick paint on it. The little russian doll container I use to hold my salt in my kitchen. The last painting is my favorite.

I meant to mention in the post about the art sale that the bird painting was done with oil bars (or also called oil sticks). I am in serious love with these things!!! It’s like painting with soft sticks of butter and they leave a nice texture to the canvas when you smoosh the bars down as you paint – I’m ALL about texture when it comes to painting! I’ll have more paintings done in these bars to show you as time goes on. They take a while to dry but you don’t have to varnish them because they are made with wax which is really nice. Below is a picture of my every growing oil bar collection. Another wonderful thing about them is that you don’t have to use turp or any mediums – just some paper towels and you’re good to go – they would be perfect for someone just starting out in oils. They also keep you loose with your painting because they’re huge so you can’t get all detail. They are FUN FUN FUN!!!!

8×8 oil – SOLD

Those of you who are familiar with my work will recognize this painting - it’s my oil version of this watercolor painting I did a long time ago. It’s still one of my favorite pictures to paint from Africa. Here’s the watercolor version…