Jazz Club

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My gallery in Carmel has sold 2 paintings and he wants more! I'm furiously painting to get them to him in time for summer vacationers. As in most tourist towns, his business tapers off in the fall and doesn't pick up again until spring.

Pike Place Fish

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I'm working on some larger paintings of the market. The challenge (as always) is to simplify, especially when there is so much activity and color.

Monorail at Mercer

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This is the third of the three "Seattle" paintings I've done thus far. I delivered them to Alki Arts today. I wanted to do a view of the space needle that was not commonly seen. I stood and waited for the Monorail to come by so that I could get that into the picture too. I wish the sky were this blue today!!!!!

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Another painting from my day at the Pike Place Market. These guys were taking advantage of a lull in the action to do a bit of chatting among themselves.

More Fish

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I walked all over downtown one day last week taking photos, most of them at the Pike Place Market. It was a busy day with lots of tourists. Out of about 60 photos maybe 6 were good reference material for paintings. Thank goodness for digital!

Limey

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The DPW Challenge this week is to paint something that was a gift. This gravy boat was a gift from my niece, Tara. I think it is a lovely shape, and I have thought numerous times about painting is- so I finally did!

Regatta

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I wasn't sure how I could depict the people in the boats without getting into too much detail, so I waited until I was well into the painting before I tackled it. Then I filled in a loosely shaped section with mostly darkish neutrals and cut into the shape with mostly sky colors. I pretty much got the effect I wanted.

Make Way for the Dark Horse

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Another sailboat painting. I took 5 sailboat paintings to Alki Arts last week. Tis the season.....

Not For the Faint of Heart

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The Daily Paintworks Challenge this week is "stripes". So here you have it: stripes. I fas feeling an urge to use lots of color (maybe following the last post's pale palette?) Note the reflection of the blue/purple glass in the base of the cup at the left. These are the kinds of things that excite me in a still life. Often I don't see them at first, but when you're looking really really closely at all the colors, they reveal themselves. 

Egg Cup, Egg, Cup

This is my first post with my new IMac. Our old PC got so bad that I wasn't able to post, and then I downloaded a Blogger app to my IPad and did a post that was less than satisfactory. Hope this works better! There certainly is a learning curve involved when switching from PC to Mac and I hope in the end it's worth it.

So....this is the first still life I've done in awhile. I'm really happy with the color combo. I've been trying to paint with a lighter palette. That's not to say I'll give up on my beloved deep color and high contrast. I just want to be able to create strong compositions and interesting paintings that are in a higher key as well.