Should I Eat A Peach?

 

 "Should I Eat A Peach?"

12 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

$400, free shipping

Thanks, mom, for supplying this title! I'm not a huge poetry afficionado, but I enjoyed reading "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot, to hunt down this quotation, which popped into her head when I showed her the painting.

Value study! ballpoint pen, sharpie, and white marker on toned tan paper:

 

You can see several more work-in-progress shots of this painting on Instagram.

Thanks for looking!

Rainbow Bright - And Studio Listens!

 "Rainbow Bright"
10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

$350

Click to buy

It's been a great week - busy and interesting, just the way I like it. One thing that happened: I got interviewed for the podcast "Drawn to Win." What fun!

Here's a link to listen - whether you're working in your studio this weekend, on the road to somewhere summery, or just out for a walk - let me keep you company for an hour. 

Thanks, and enjoy!

"Tangerines on Turquoise"....and Tons of Teaching!

 

 "Tangerines on Turquoise"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

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July was a whirlwind month, busy and full. This painting was a demo I did for students in Portland, over a two-day period. Here's my palette - heavy on the red-oranges. I really wanted to emphasize the red glow that reflects back and forth when oranges cuddle up together, and those saturated contrasting colors on the oranges and the plate.

 

...And this, believe it or not, is some of the student work from that class! What a talented bunch - not beginners. They did great. 

Painting Grays in Color

 "Token"

16 x 16 inches, oil on canvas

$500

Available here

I use these white geometric objects in some of my workshop exercises, and lately they've infiltrated my home studio as well. Though I'm usually painting them in black and white while teaching, I also love exploring the spectrum of grays that occur when white objects are surrounded by colorful light. 

When approaching a gray - or the modeling of an object whose local color is white - I ask myself a series of questions. What's the value of the gray? What's its temperature? What colors in the environment are influencing its color? Often, to arrive at the gray I need, I'll start with one of these surrounding colors (like the purple in this painting), and neutralize it until it works on the white object.

Another way to "see" color in ambiguous areas, like grays, is to use a color isolator. Sometimes I'll just squint through a half-closed fist. 

 And here is the preparatory sketch for this painting, on canvas instead of the oil paper this time:

 "Flame (Black and White)"

12 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

An art lesson for the teacher: painting with complementary colors

 

"Orange and Blue" 

6 x 6"

oil on canvas

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There's probably a rule of thumb for teachers that they should thoroughly test out any lesson they're planning to impose on those who've signed up for their class. Well, setting rules of thumb (and all common sense) aside, I didn't. Ok, ok, to be fair, I've done this one before! When I was 15 years old, but still. Preparation.

So, knowing *roughly* what was going to happen, I launched right into my demo, and once again found myself learning right along with my students. It blew my mind, actually: with only two tubes of paint and white, I mixed a palette, that, to my pigment-starved eye looked like an entire rainbow!

Click on the pictures below to see them bigger, and read my notes without a magnifying glass:

A closer look at my palette:

 

Then, blindly pretending that this was an all-day workshop instead of a three-hour class, I proceeded to suggest that we pick another color and add it into the mix, just to see what happened:

 

"The Power of Three" 

6 x 6"

oil on canvas

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With the addition of Alizarin Crimson, my original complementary palette became a veritable rainbow. Just look at it:

  

If I seem a little excited, it's because I'm brimming with all the possibilities of limited palettes to try. When you call it "color theory," my soul shrivels a little (possibly remembering torture by color-aid, freshman year at MICA), but when it's just me and my palette knife - that is fun.

"Broken Brown Egg" colorful kitchen art still life oil painting and new years resolutions

 

8 x 8"

oil on canvas

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Well, it must be a new year, because I just made a folder for my highly specialized desktop archive entitled "Paintings '13." Geez. This is usually the time of year when my motivation dips. The last year sweeps to a close with so much momentum - shopping, parties, champagne, more shopping, drinking champagne and online shopping...and then January comes. Well, this year I'm going to try and keep my engine running, and step number one is get back to the easel! Step two is to stay on the treadmill, so, no shortcuts combining steps one and two, I guess.

I painted this last night in front of a lovely little group at Oregon Art Supply. My work will be hanging there through the end of January, so stop by and see it - and replenish your stock of paint, rubber stamps, wooden manikins, whatever, they've got it. I just bought myself a shiny new French easel, bringing me one step closer to my yearly plein-air painting resolution. Will '13 be the year?

"Decorating by Candlelight" Christmas ornament oil painting holiday xmas art gift

 

6 x 6"

oil on canvas

$100

click to buy

While "Decorating by Candlelight" doesn't necessarily sound like a fire-marshall-approved activity, I've certainly begun my holiday decorating. Basically, I pull a huge plastic bin of ornaments out of my garage and dump them all over my studio. Then my daughter comes in and helps distribute them in totally random locations throughout the house. Like under her bed, and in the cat food bowls. Ah, Christmas!

Because Zazzle always has killer deals this time of year, I ordered myself some calendars. I'll have them for sale at my Oregon Art Supply show and painting demo next Friday, and it's also good to have some last-minute gifts on hand, right?

more pictures here

   I'm really happy with the quality of the printing, and the shipping couldn't have been faster. It reminds me of a joke we used to tell about a chinese-delivery place growing up: you hang up the phone and the doorbell rings!

"Lemons and a Crayon Drawing" original art oil painting still life by Sarah Sedwick

 

8 x 8"

oil on canvas

Framed, $300

email me to purchase

No need for any additional credit here: the crayon masterpiece is all mine, 100% Sarah Sedwick. Well, possibly with the drooly assistance of a very young Ellie. It's been tacked to the cork board in my studio for literally years now, I just couldn't bear to part with it after wasting all that wax!

"Sunnies on Purple" floral flower painting of sunflowers and fruit

 

6 x 6"

oil on canvas

Framed, $200

click to buy

I really got into the color variations within the different papers in this set-up. They seemed to move from cool to warm to cool again in the reflected light from the flowers and plums. You can see my still life below. I had a strong halogen spotlight on (which was helping me out with those trippy color undulations), but had to turn it off for the photo.

 

"Plums and Asian Pears" fruit food art still life oil daily painting and color palette

 

6 x 6"

oil on canvas

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More of the lovely plums, alongside the lovely but basically inedible Asian pears. Below you can see my work-in-progress, about halfway done:

 ...And here is the finished piece with the palette I used right alongside. If you click on the image, you can see it bigger. This my basic go-to set of colors. Sometime I add in some extras - like the Pthalos - to spice it up, but for most subjects, this is it. And yep, that's a disposable paper palette. My fave.

"Black Grapes and Lemons" fruit still life kitchen decor daily painting original oil on canvas

 

6 x 6"

oil on canvas

click to bid

Late summer is wedding season - especially in the Pacific Northwest, where if you don't want rain on your wedding day, you'd better do it in August or September! My lovely next-door neighbors (who keep me supplied with brown eggs to paint) just tied the knot a few days ago, and I gave them one of my paintings for a wedding gift. Next time you need to find a special - and unique - gift for a couple just starting out, think original art! They'll think of you every time they look at the painting!

"Beach Ball" beach shore coast sea ocean pool vacation house childs room nursery decor

 

6 x 6"

oil on canvas

$100

Purchase from my Etsy shop

This is actually Beach Ball no. 2 for me. Number one was way back in 2008, and I've thought about repeating it a few times since, but I had gotten rid of the beach ball! Ellie recently scored a couple of these at a birthday party. I love all the colors in the shadows, plus it was an opportunity to bust out my tubes of exotic blue that I rarely get to use on more natural subjects.