Great week!

Sunday: Yesterday was a good painting day, I even unclogged a bathroom drain, my first ever! The liquid stuff never worked for me and only damaged finished surfaces - nuisance stuff all the way around. I bought a 15 foot drain auger made of coiled steel at Loews for the ridiculous price of $7.98.....worth much more in my opinion. The last plumber charged $168 to do the same job it took me less than 10 minutes to do........and there were (2) guys. I guess the other one was there for encouragement!

Guy's this thing works!

Yesterday was such a good day, I managed a 2nd session after lunch and my drain project. My lily pond is out of control too, I had to chop out some to give the fish a bit of room. The lilies are especially nice this year and blooming profusely, last year they bloomed well into the fall. So I think the fish and lilies have established a perfect ecosystem.

Not much room for pond inhabitants..

None of this has anything much to do with painting or my easel time yesterday. Soooo......my current painting is a seascape on a 56x48 linen wrap. This time it's not gloomy like the last one. I'm after the illusion of 3-D depth of warm sunlight drifting down onto sun drenched white caps. Right now I have the background in place, but my waves still need depth adjustments. I also used W/N Griffin alkyd fast drying white with Neo-Megilp so I could work over yesterdays work if need be. My normal oil white even with Neo-Megilp, which is also a dryer has a tendency to take a few days to setup enough to work over.

 I learned a little trick - the bottom part of the painting is too dark (overhead skylights)

I placed some white gator board at the bottom to reflect light back up on the painting. Now the lower waves are lighter and on target with the upper portion.

963-1 56x48 oil on linen wrap (5-16-15)

9:23am time to paint!

 DAYS END

963-2 partial view (5-17-15)

   
Monday: I was to pickup my digital captures and paintings from Old Town Editions in Alexandria, Va. today but I can't stop in the middle of a painting. I need another session on my waves. My foreground wave is looking pretty good, the 2nd wave is not quite right yet. I studied it for quite awhile last night and it works well in diminished light. That tells me I need to defuse my edges more. However, the trick today is merging the upper atmosphere with warm sunlight filtering down to my surface. In this case its an overlay application and the surface has to be dry for any reasonable outcome. Normally I would do this as a single action at the front-end while painting the sky. So if it should give me any problems there's a way out.

If I get done today, tomorrow I can change gears for a day or so and work on my other project.

7:52am time to paint!

 963 Summer Mists 56x48 oil on linen wrap (5-18-15)

Tuesday: My painting is done, signed off and cataloged...and I'm off to pick up my digital captures this morning in Alexandria...

A CLEVER IDEA

David Cheifetz

DAVID is a young artist I follow and started collecting, we both entered the profession about the same time. Over the top talented, he recently started an online solo exhibit with RSVP invitations and a timed chat room reception to boot. The first one, I couldn't figure out how to enter , but now its easy, just click on the the Un/Realism link on his site. 

Aside from the overall concept, the part I find brilliant is how David presented each painting visually......check it out!