More Fruit

Oil on 5"x7" Canvas Panel
This fruit brings to mind a warmer climate, and sunshine, and the colors of summer. All the things that are missing right now. It snowed today.
Sorry the clip holding the panel is in the picture, but no time to retake it right now, maybe tomorrow.

"Peeled Tangerine with Cranberries"

Oil on 5"x7"Linen panel
I peeled the tangerine, and painted another picture of it with some cranberries. This one is done on a linen panel that I had made. I had primed the panel with a thin "scumble" of raw sienna oil paint and then let it dry. Painting on this surface was enjoyable. The dark paint in the background is thin and transparent, and the light foreground is also thin, but opaque. The tangerine is painted thicker, which makes a nice contrast. This was my last linen panel, I think I'd like to make some more!

"Tangerine, Nuts and Cranberries"

Oil on 5"x7" Canvas Panel
Around this time of year it seems that I always have these items in the kitchen. They look good together, like they might be ingredients in some sort of holiday recipe. Orange Cranberry bread comes to mind. Anyway, I enjoyed painting this one, I might try another with these subjects sometime. I especially liked putting the highlights on the cranberries, they look like little jewels.
Thanks everyone for your wonderful comments, I appreciate them so much!!

Tangerine Painting with Pear and Apple (Finish)

(Above) "Tangerine" Oil on 5"x7" Linen Panel


"Fruit with Tangerine Painting" Oil on 6"x8" Linen Panel

Here is the little tangerine painting I did, and a painting of that painting with a bosc pear and a ginger gold apple with it. The tangerine didn't originally have any leaves on it, I just taped a sprig of leaves to it to paint by. And as that painting sat finished, I brought out the pear and apple to see what I could do next, and noticed how nice they looked sitting in front of the tangerine painting. So, decided to paint it that way. I had fun painting these.

"Tangerine and Mug 2 "

Oil on 5"x7" board
I used the same subjects in this painting as in the last one, just rearranged a bit. The blue, orange, and green seem to go so nicely together.
I notice on my color wheel that blue-violet, red-orange, and yellow-green are a triad color scheme, which is 3 colors equally spaced from each other on the color wheel. Color wheels can be so helpful when trying to compose a painting, I should try and look at mine more often.

"Tangerine and Mug" 5"x7"

Oil on 5"x7" gessobord

I've been wondering why I haven't had much luck with my paintings lately. There have only been a couple here and there that I've been happy with, the 4 or 5 disappointing ones just got set aside, and ignored.. (poor things!) I wondered why that was happening. Why wasn't I happy with them? And, I wasn't happy while I painted them either. It seemed like every stroke I put down, I needed to correct. Then everything would start to look over worked and boring... and I'd loose interest in finding and correcting the problems in it.
I wondered why I never felt that way while I drew. I'm always happy with my drawings. I'm never worried how they will come out, I don't usually labor over them and correct any strokes...
So, I decided to try and figure out how to paint more like I draw. I set up this tangerine, and coffee mug, and drew it a few times. Then I practiced some oil sketches on a piece of gessoed paper (the first time I ever painted on gessoed paper, it's nice!) Then, once I was all warmed up, I went ahead and did this painting. I like it alot, it's a colorful little thing! and I'm happy with it.

"Tangerines" Oil on 6x8 Canvas Panel

These are mineola tangerines. I have tried to paint them before, and they are always harder to do than I think. It took a few tries, but I'm finally happy with it.

Bananas and Tangerine 8"x10" Oil on Board

click on images to enlarge
click here to view this painting on eBay.
I played around with this painting today, and decided just to add some new lines and darker values here and there to fill in the space better. I like it much better now. I tried to think of some new object to add, but everything I thought of just seemed to complicate things more. So. I think I am finished with this one.

Bananas and Tangerine

8x10 Oil on Ampersand Hardbord
I thought I would try and do something with a painting that I had started quite a few weeks ago. I had put it away, since I didn't like it very much -for whatever reason, I don't really know. I wish I would have taken a picture of it before I started working on it again, but I didn't. Well, I fixed it up a little, and I'm still working on it, I think I might need to add something in the lower right, near the banana...it seems unbalanced to me with the banana in the back going out of the picture and nothing to balance it out on the other side... I can't just take that banana out, because thats what the tangerine is sitting on... hmmmmm Maybe I'll just have to put it away again for a while.... I don't know yet.

Peeled Mineola Tangerine, Oil on 5x7 linen panel

I went back to this tangerine painting, because I wasn't happy with it the way it was. I wanted to change the shape of the cast shadow, and give the background some depth. Well, I'm much happier with it now, and I think I leave it this way.

This painting is Sold