Baby Roma Tomato

Mixed media (oil and acrylic) on canvas panel, 6x6"

I tried something a little different with this one. I don't typically do underpaintings, but with all I'm learning from the Renaissance painting class, I thought I'd see what I could incorporate into a more direct painting. I first did a layer of burnt umber acrylic paint for the darkest parts of the background and some of the shading on the tomato. That dried while I cleaned out my brushes. Then I went in with my oils and painted the whole thing the way I normally would. The background is the same color of green throughout, but the bottom layer of dark brown resulted in some dramatic shadows. It made for a rather neat effect, something I'll keep in mind for future paintings. Waiting fifteen minutes for an acrylic underpainting to dry certainly beats waiting several days for the same underpainting to dry in oils!

Magnitude 7 show

Oil on masonite, 6x6"

The astute blog reader will notice that this painting was posted way back on August 10 of last year. So why is it up again? I am shipping this one off to Ohio this weekend. The Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati is hosting their annual Magnitude 7 show. This is a juried show of works that measure 7" or less in any dimension. Since many of the paintings I've been doing lately fit that criterion, I decided to submit a few pieces. Much to my delight, this one made the cut. Since the piece had been sold a couple months ago, I had to get permission from the owner before submitting it, but she was excited about the possibility of having her painting shown. So I framed it in a wide black frame and now it's ready to go.

I must confess, I'm feeling pretty proud about getting accepted into this show. They had about 550 pieces submitted from the US and abroad, but only 51 pieces will be shown. So that's pretty tough odds. The show will run from June 6 through July 3 if anyone happens to be in the Cincinnati area next month.

Acorn Squash

Oil and egg tempera on masonite, 6x6"

Here’s another painting done in the mische technique. It might be my favorite one so far. When you see it in real life, it’s amazing how much it seems to pop off the panel. It looks like you could reach into the painting, grab the stem, and run off to make some squash soup. If you were into squash soup, that is. Unfortunately, the photo has a bit of glare, but hopefully you can still get the point.

Continuing the steady stream of life updates, our house-hunting trip to Minnesota proved fruitful: we got a house! We worked with a fantastic realtor (who happens to be my dad) and did a whirlwind tour of available homes in the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis. We found a great one with lots of space and a big yard just at the top of our price range (turns out the great houses are never at the bottom of your price range). We made an offer on Monday, they counter-offered on Tuesday, we counter-counter-offered that night, and they accepted our offer on Wednesday! So now we just have to wait for home inspections and everything else that goes into closing the sale. We haven't decided yet which room will be my studio, but there's lots of space so we shouldn't have any trouble finding a spot.

Apple in Mische Technique

Oil and egg tempera on masonite, 6x6" NFS

Here is the very first Renaissance style painting that I started. I know, you already saw a couple of them a while ago. But this was the first one that we started back in January, it just took longer than the others. There are at least ten layers of paint in this piece, starting with earth red and ending with cadmium red--with many other colors in between. I really like the way that the apple comes out from the background. The apple I was painting from had very strange markings on it, as you can see. But by the fourth week of painting, it was definitely getting brown all over. So I took a photo of the apple and had to use that to finish the painting. Unfortunately, none of the photos that I took of the painting came out very well. As with the other Renaissance style paintings, there is a touch of medium (a mixture of varnish, linseed oil, and paint thinner) mixed in with the paint to make it a little more translucent for glazing, so it has a bit more sheen than paintings that don’t have any medium. That sheen makes it difficult to photograph without there being a glare. I’ll try to get a better photo sometime soon.

In other news, remember that job I was interviewing for in Minnesota? Well I got it! My wife and I have decided to make the move to the Midwest and we’re actually flying back to Minnesota this weekend to look at houses. Wish us luck!