Sunflowers and Speedwork

Well, summer has come and gone, Now it's time to commemorate the days with another painting. One of my Facebook friends posted a number of absolutely gorgeous pictures of the sunflowers in her area and this motivated me to paint my interpretation of her flowers.  So here you go.

I had a lot of fun playing with modeling paste and gel medium. I really love Golden acrylics. I have found that with my passion for palette knife paintings that I don't have patience for the cheap watery paints anymore.

And speaking of not having patience.. I don't have patience for just simply running 3 days a week and calling it good. I HAVE TO HAVE A GOAL! ugh.  That is just one of my quirks.

So, I am in the heart of training for the Fort Worth Marathon on November 8th. I know. Working full time, raising three daughters, being a pastor's wife and taking 12 hours of graduate class isn't enough for me. I have to train for a marathon. 

Yep.

And so far, I am loving it. 

Okay, check that. Today I am tired.

But Wednesday is my only off day, so by this morning, Tuesday, I was sluggish. And it was SPEEDWORK! oH mY GrAvy! I did a 1 mile warm up, 9x600's and a cool down mile. Last week, no problem hitting my goals. Today, I had to work a little harder at it. But I ran Thursday thru today and that is new for me.

Anyway, I think besides the sluggish part of it, I like making speed work the last workout prior to the morning off. There is just something really cool about hitting my time goals knowing that I ran a ton of miles on Saturday and Sunday! 

I am stronger than I think I am!!

Always.

A Purple and Pink Floral Painting

Yesterday in between getting things ready for art camp and shuttling kids to various places, I painted this floral piece. It is on a reclaimed canvas, so I don't know how it will look long-term, but I love it right now. 

Today is the end of our first week of summer and I'm determined to enjoy it. :)

On Monday summer school starts and we have art camp for a week.  Lots of exciting things happening here this summer, but I do enjoy taking time to paint.

Finding My Palette

I have very much enjoyed learning about palette knife oil painting from my lessons with Leonid Afremov.  His style is all bright colors and very loud, and it totally works for him.  It doesn't work for me that well. I have found myself struggling with the brash reds and overwhelming colors.  I just couldn't get the color palette to work for me the way I wanted.

So, last week, I did what I ask my students to do.. I took a step back and looked at the pieces that I like the most. I mentally broke down the process and decided that my issue was all of the red in my paintings.  While red is one of my favorite colors to wear, it isn't working in my paintings!

Here is an example. 

I painted this bridge piece per Afremov's instructions.  It was a successful piece, if the goal was to do what I was told. And as a student, that is the goal. I learned the process.  But the piece just hung in my studio and in my mind it was blah.

So finally, yesterday, I changed it. And I made it mine.

I love that the reds and purples are just barely there, providing depth in the colors, but not overwhelming anymore.

I have to say, the colors speak to me.

And carrying it further, here is a brand new painting done completely without red. I LOVE it.

Should you like it as well, you can find prints of it and my other works at Fine Art America.

A break between semesters

The school year is winding down. This means all kinds of crazy, but one thing it means is that I'm not buried in deadlines for competitions and I'm finished with my grad classes for the semester.

I am rather proud of my 4.0 for the semester. 12 hours of graduate classwork on top of our life meant for some stressful times, but I didn't want to make a B. So at least for this semester, all is good. :)

One of the things I am most proud of this semester is that not only did I earn A's in all four courses, but I feel like I really LEARNED useful stuff too.

And since last night I didn't have classwork to occupy my time and as I've mentioned before, I don't watch much television, I painted another painting.

I'm really focusing now on developing my own style. I love palette knife paintings, but using the entire color spectrum has bothered me. My painting mentor pushes us to use all of the colors, but I'm finding myself really enjoying a limited palette painting.  The painting below has no red in it.

I think for a 20x24 inch painting completed in an hour and a half, it's a nice piece.

More than that, it was fun.

A little painting

I got to paint this weekend.

Yippee.

A little paint does wonders for the soul.

I've even sketched out my next painting! 

A Reclaimed Canvas

I started a painting back in May and it was a bust. 

Somedays you just have them.

But it was driving me crazy to have this really bad half completed painting just sitting there.

So yesterday I scraped the thick and heavy parts off and started over.

I love how the old painting provided depth for the new painting.

And I have to say, I love what I came up with!!

My first commissioned piece!

 A friend of mine just recently purchased an insurance agency and is decorating her office building. She asked me to paint some bright and fun paintings for her! I am super excited!

She took one of my first landscape paintings as it was ready to go and it's already hanging in her personal office.

This piece is currently curing and then it will be hung! I can't wait to see it on the wall!

It is 2' x 4' and makes quite a statement!

And if you want your own copy of the Tree of Whimsy, click here.

Tree of Whimsy

My newest painting. I'm having so much fun!! 

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/tree-of-whimsy-emily-mclemore.html

A Servant's Heart Painting. Finished. Finally.

I finally finished the painting that I created during church a few weeks ago. It was a hard one. Thankfully my dad came over and did a good critique for me and helped me move past the "i just don't like it" stage to actually fixing it! I don't know what artists do that don't have dad's or mentors to help them!

Let's revisit where I left off during church.. Here I was at 1 hour or so into the painting. It was desperate for help, but I wasn't sure where I even wanted to start!

So I didn't.

I left it sitting on my easel in my "studio" for a couple of weeks.

But then I had a friend that wanted me to paint something for her and I felt like I had to complete this piece before I started something new.

So I started working on it and was bummed. It was bad.

But my dad came along and helped me to look at it the way I look at my student's work. Objectively with a critical artistic eye.

Hallelujah!

So after not too much more work, here is the finished piece.

I made a conscience decision to not revamp the entire piece. I felt like it needed to be a reflection of the church and the service that I painted it in. But I worked on the perspective elements a bit and the proportions of the figures.

Through this process I've decided that I really LOVE oils and I really DON'T like acrylics. I just can't blend enough with the acrylics. I'm already working in a rushed tempo with the palette knife, but you add the drying time of acrylics to it and it's hard!

So thankfully, at least for the summer, I am going back to oil painting! And I can't wait!

Now I just have to get some of my to do list accomplished so that I can relax and paint.

Painting in Church

I was asked to create a painting during church. Start to finish. One hour. Holy Cow!

 

Of course I said yes. You know me, I love a challenge.

 

So, yesterday, during our churches 9am service, I painted a complete painting.

 

Below are some of the pictures that Doug took of me working. Fun to see the process.

 

Notice the empty canvas. I had the sketch on the canvas to start, but that was it.

 As soon as the first song began, I started working. Fast and furious was the name of the game.

 

 

 

 

That had to be the fastest hour of church EVER. At the end of the service, the pastor asked me to tell about the piece... the painting is of my impressionist interpretation of the church and the woman we were honoring that day. (Miss Penny worked with the preschool children in our day school for 40 years!!)

When the service was over, Doug came up and took some closeups of me finishing up.

 

Here is the "completed" piece. It's not really, but close enough for the day. I told Miss Penny that I would finish it this week and get it to her. I want to get a chance to fine tune it and you just can't do that in an hour (plus the extra 30 minutes that I took afterwards while the choir was setting up...).

 

So will I do this again? Absolutely. But not once a month as I was asked too! That would be too much like work.  I also learned that painting buildings within the one hour time frame is too hard! I need to keep it simple! I ended up working in acrylic so that the dry time would work for transport, but I much prefer the blendability of oils. It was harder to work in acrylic as I had to just layer instead of blend. I think I'd like to try to find a way to transport an oil painting!

But was it fun? YES!  And when I really finish, I'll post a picture of the completed painting.

Spatula Painting

Some times you just have to paint with a spatula! Okay, maybe only art teachers say this.. but really, it was a ton of fun.

 

So why did I paint with a kitchen spatula? Well, simple.. art specific tools are expensive. Things purchased at the dollar store are not!

 

I'm teaching a workshop on Saturday to two groups of 35 art students at a state level competition and I need tools that I can get super fast. Ordering palette knives would have taken a couple of weeks and would have been  at least a dollar a piece for plastic.. that means, expensive. .25 cent spatulas are the way to go!

 

So a little back story.. I offered to teach the palette knife painting workshop last Friday when the organizers realized that they were short workshop providers. I figured that since I am living in palette knife world right now, it would be perfect. I knew I'd have to revamp some, using acrylic paint instead of oil, but I didn't think about how difficult it would be to get 70 palette knives! eek. I'm a planner and this last minute stuff has my brain whirling!

 

After I searched a few stores and online for cheap and fast palette knife options, I decided to head to the dollar store. Walking in, I asked God to open my eyes to the options. (Yep, I am becoming one of those people. While I'm not asking God for close parking places, I am asking for eyes to see the provision that He provides!)

 

Here are the three vary different, usable options I found! The handle on combs, baby plastic knives, and spatulas.

Here are the new "palette knives" with the traditional ones!

I also only used the paint that I'll be using on Saturday. Primary colors plus white and black acrylic.

I used the baby knife for mixing the colors and for most of the base coat on the canvas. I loved the smooth way the paint went onto the canvas. This is a new go-to tool for me!

But then I needed something that would provide a little more of the traditional palette knife look. I trimmed the spatula so that it had a point and went to town.

 

Isn't it fantastic!?! :) I mixed all of the colors on wax paper. The biggest difference between the acrylic and the oil is that I had to let the paint "set up" a little bit before I could use it easily. Otherwise it was just too runny!

Me in all my glory. Sad. It looks like it's uber late.. it was for me. Probably 9pm! But I wanted you to see the finished piece.

And here is a close up. I think the students will enjoy the process!

 

My first palette knife painting

I completed my first palette knife oil painting today. I'm pleased-ish with the piece. I know that I can do so much more, I just have to practice! But I am excited to continue and I already have some ideas about future paintings!

Here are a few pictures from today. Lexi took a couple pictures of me getting started.

Mid painting. 

Progress

Finished.

Now I'm off to the park. As much as I'd like to just paint today, the girls have other desires. And it is spring break...