Day with 'The Painter Sistas'

3 of 'The Painter Sistas' figured out how to coordinate our schedules and meet for lunch and a gallery visit. Present were Erika Nelson, Dustie Meads, and Vicki Ross (me). Missing were Shirley Mullin and Linda Cassidy. Leslie Newman stopped by for a little taste of fun.

We are a very loose group...formal schedules just don't work. We all stay in good touch through Facebook, blogs and emails. Dustie is on a nocturnal schedule, I'm on a whatever i can steal away from real estate schedule, Erika is on an available ride schedule, and so it goes! We met for a simple lunch, and I got to have them in our house for some serious painting talk...so pleased that this house has good access for Erika and Betty (Grable) her wheels. She got to see her painting hanging just inside our front door...she took bunches of photos to show her Scott how I have paintings strewn all over the downstairs! He probably wouldn't believe it without photos! (and I had it picked up)

here is Erika:

I have really been painting, but not on things easily posted. Finished the 4 weeks of Tonalist painting with Deborah Paris, which had 2 weeks in Santa Fe right in the middle of it, so I had to play catch up for the past 2 weeks. It is not an easy technique, centered around multiple transparent glazes that are allowed to dry a few days between. At this point, I seem to be using the glazing for the darks, and then building up to opaques...which have no use in Whistler's phrase 'like breath on glass'.

Some of my thought processes santa fe have been centered on ending the 'student' phase of my art career and shifting into 'what I want to be when I grow up', otherwise known as developing my own comfort zone and style. I did sneak in another online instruction by Katie Swatland, a once a month instruction.

Katie is labelled by Art Connossieur (sic) as 'one to watch', and is a member of the invitational group of Richard Schmid's Putney Painters. He is endorsing her format with photos and advice. The first lesson centered around the age-old custom of copying a painting done by a master. Richard's 'Fallen Pine' was the subject and my effort is next:

"Fallen Pine after Richard Schmid"

12x16" oil on linen

The challenge is to try and figure out what processes the artist used to complete his painting...when did he use a palette knife, when a soft brush, what techniques did he utilize. In what order. Think it is easy? Try it. Just be sure to title your painting as "Fallen Pine, after Richard Schmid" so that it can never be passed off as an original done by you. Assuming you can even pass it off  :)

It has been hotter than hades in NW Arkansas...over 100 for several days last week. We did real estate open house extravaganza last weekend and it was too hot for people to get out and stir. I took my painting gear and managed to pull this next one off during the afternoon. From a photo my brother, Mark Neil, took.

"Arkansas Stream" 

8x8" oil on panel

Fine Art Prints Here!
arkansas

Tomorrow I PAINT and get back in the groove of ARTIST. Last week was spent switching to ATTs U-Verse TV and internet which changed all the network settings for computers and wireless networking. After 10 hours or so of messing around with IP addresses, I finally called a specialist. It took him 2 hours to get it all coodinated and all printers and computers playing nice again. Then over the weekend in between open house duty I realized that I had driver/software issues that took several more hours to troubleshoot. Grrr. BUT, everything is working fine and I can close down the left brain for awhile!