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Compost Studios:
Devoted to the art of reducing, reusing, and recycling experience through words, art, and poetry.
July 2, 2009 at 19:21 This art journal piece is a dreamscape of memory, a moment between day and night, between land and water, between reality and fantasy. The colors are a bit too intense and Thomas Kinkade-ish, but I like the mood. I may try applying a color wash to the original to tone it down a bit. I hadn't painted since last summer and really enjoyed doing the trees.
June 28, 2009 at 11:21 I don't know what I think of this. It just is what it is, and I'm not even sure it's finished.
Broken Branch
July 30, 2008 at 11:51 
Earlier this spring I took a photo of my cat Pete gazing out the window. It served as inspiration for this painting. I left out the bench because I have difficulties with linear perspective and was afraid that I'd ruin the painting trying to get it in at the end.
July 8, 2008 at 20:33 My first four-lesson session on acrylic painting ended and my second session has yet to begin. What to do inbetween?
A friend of mine was telling me about the passion flowers in his garden and sent me photographs of them. I was enchanted by their colors and intricacy and thought maybe I'd try to paint one.
Yes, my initial intent was to paint ONE big passion flower on my canvas--a dead on, dead center composition.
The problem was my canvas was 16 x 20 inch rectangle, not square. I thought I could make it work, but as the painting progressed, I knew it wouldn't. I needed to add more elements, so I added two more passion flowers. Since I hadn't planned to do an arrangement of three, it came out weird because all the flowers were flat on the canvas and seemed to float on it instead of being part of it. (Yes, Linda, I need shadows!)
View on the easel:
When I photographed the canvas, one of the shots came up horizontal, and hey, I liked that better:
Then I used my photoediting software to crop it:
Cropping the photos let me play around with the composition and see how I might have done this better. I think I like the final shot best. What do you think? Truth is, my favorite part of the canvas is the background. I love how I managed to bring leaves into the composition without really painting leaves. They emerge and disappear and keep the eye moving. The whole painting took me five hours. Yeah, this was a lot more complicated than painting tulips! July 8, 2008
June 23, 2008 at 19:12 My first art class was all about painting a landscape in black and white. I was stunned at the results. I expected to be embarrassed by my efforts, and instead I felt pretty good about them.
For our second class meeting, we had to bring a photo of a flower arrangement and paint a still life inspired by the image during class. Here's the photo I brought with me, a scene from my kitchen in Belgium:
Here's my first color acrylic painting ever, based on the tulip photograph. Note that it's not supposed to be an exact duplication of the photo. This took me about 90 minutes in class. It was a large canvas, and I struggled with my smallish brush and figuring out what type of background to do and how to get the flowers on it.
For homework, we had to paint a second floral still life. I chose to do the tulips again so I could compare results. Here's my second study in tulips. I think I spent about three hours on it this afternoon, and it's a smaller canvas. I bought a new brush that offered a firmer feel and more coverage:
It was encouraging to see how much I improved from the first canvas to the second. I'm not good at spatial relationships and perspective, and that's something I have to work on. As I train my eye to "see" in new ways, my ability to add dimension to my compositions will improve. Now they all seem a bit flat to me. In time I hope they'll become more dynamic, especially as I master light and shadow. Lots to learn, but I'm making progress and that's what counts.
June 23, 2008