Blue plums

Here's one from last summer, when I started doing Daily Painting. These little prune plums grow on a tree in our yard, and I love their dusty-blue color. They're tasty, too, though sour.

Well, it's pissing down rain (yes, I do believe that is the technical term) here in London, but no matter, as I brought my umbrella to England, in spite of The Husband's scorn at my doing such a thing. (He didn't even bring a jacket...and keeps wanting to borrow mine, no surprise.) There is no hair product I know of that can prevent Jewfro events from occurring here. (And if anyone does know of one, let me know asap!)

Went for a couple of hours today to the National Gallery. What has stayed in my mind are: Rembrandt self-portrait at age 34; Velazquez's Portrait of King Philip IV (with the upturned moustache); Van Gogh's Sunflowers (very yellow-ochrey) and one of two red crabs on a turquoise background: magnificent!!; and a few Gauguins, particularly a still life with these marvelously purpley mangoes--what gorgeous color on that one! Oh, and of course some huge Turner seascapes.

I love how extremely navigable London is via the Tube. But it's so hot and uncomfortable and crowded in the subway. Why hasn't someone invented some kind of giant eco-friendly cooling device for that?

I was awake most of the night with jetlag. Send good wishes that I sleep tonight!

Missing those little soft feets....

$115.00 - Blue plums (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Little guy(s)

This is a little 6" x 6" oil from about a year ago, when I first started doing daily painting... It's called Little Guy.

And here's another little guy (12-second video of Lynx):

$115.00 - Little guy (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Cherimoya and Lemonade Award

Thank you so much, Liz Holm, for this Lemonade Award (for "attitude and gratitude"). I'm tagged out right now, but I still post it proudly here. Check out Liz's work; she's been doing some nice portraits. I think the one of her mother is particularly moving.

About this painting: The cherimoya is such a strange creature. Almost reptilian. Very tasty, though. I liked how there's no sense of scale at all; it could be a fruit or a mountain.

$115.00 - Cherimoya (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Small scissors

Back to the painting knife, here. This one was less hair-pullingly-tortuous than the last knife painting. Dare I even say fun? No, I daren't.

$105.00 - Small scissors (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Leftover rooibos

I'm convinced that there is a special section in hell for [fill in whomever you want here] where they're forced to do knife-paintings all day for the rest of eternity. Aaaaaggghhhh! I think I won't do any more knife paintings...at least not 'till I recover some of my sanity, and all my torn-out hair grows back (kidding on that last part, fortunately).

Sold.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Leftover mate'

Today I painted a portrait in alla prima class, but can't photograph it 'till tomorrow in daylight, so instead I present here one from the summer, The Husband's leftover mate. This one was challenging but fun; it felt like doing a jigsaw puzzle of colors.


Sold.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Painting with a knife

In the spirit of continual experimentation, I decided to try painting without any brushes whatsoever, just a painting knife (not a palette knife, which is perfectly flat for mixing, but the kind of knife with the little metal bend between the painting surface and the handle...also confusingly often referred to as a palette knife, and I may myself call it that out of habit, so beware).


Can I just say that five minutes into it, I was so frustrated I wanted to scream and tear my hair out? And that ten minutes into it, I REALLY wanted to scream and tear my hair out? And that fifteen minutes into it, I wanted to tear out the hair of the person who invented the painting knife? And that twenty minutes into it, I wanted to also tear out the hair of the person who invented the very CONCEPT?


I wanted SO badly to grab one of my (tantalizingly near) brushes--A brush! Give me a brush! Any brush! Pleeeease!--and just make the damn mark I wanted to make. Painting with a knife is like trying to paint with some kind of severe physical handicap. The mark you try to make doesn't do what you thought it would, and then you go to fix it and completely mess up some other part that looked halfway decent, and then you go to fix that and...


I had to make a deal with myself, that if I could just do one painting from start to finish, I would never have to do it again. And it was even hard getting myself to agree to that.


...And an hour into it, nearing the end of the painting, I thought it was so totally cool.


The results are so fascinatingly different from painting with a brush. The result looks so sparkling and jewel-like, I suppose because there are all these subtle different physical levels so you're getting light reflecting off all these little edges. And the color seems somehow more remarkable, much more intense, than when painting with a brush.


Of course, when the Roma tomato was finished, all high on the experience, I decided to try another painting-knife painting, the white onion. I naively expected it to go better, since I now had "experience," but, huh! Whaddaya know!, it was just as hard and frustrating if not even more so since I was mentally fried from the first one.


Will I suffer through this experience again? You bet.


P.S. Best part = no brushes to wash! Worst part = see all of the above.

$115.00 - Roma or White Onion (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

The end of Titanium White

A lot of Daily Painters have done this subject matter, so I thought I'd try my hand at it. It was fun, but also frustrating at times. The folds in the metal tube are like painting very stiff fabric pleats--interesting, subtle, sometimes hard to pull off. In any case, it was an interesting experiment. I may try another one sometime, but on linen; I keep forgetting how annoying I lately find it to paint on a slick panel. There was a period when I really loved it, but at the moment I prefer linen. I'm sure my tastes may change yet again at some point; that's part of what keeps it all interesting.

$105.00 - The end of Titanium White (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Art show

I found out a few days ago that these three pieces (out of six submitted) were juried into the upcoming Boulder Art Association show. (I think the other three were just as nice, if I do say so.) I currently also have a solo exhibition up in pastels at the Solstice Center (here in Boulder, CO).

I'd been away in Mexico and got the snail-mail news about these 3 pieces getting in to the show only upon returning, and I was like, Cool!  Then about three seconds later I thought, Oh, right, uh, shit, they have to get framed. Of course, it was then the holidays, and everything was shut down or on half-day hours, etc.... which meant I had to go in to the framer yesterday and beg sheepishly, because these suckers have to be hung this Mon.a.m. (Yes, I will have to get up at some ungodly [for me] hour to schlep my artworks to the library, site of the exhibition.)  Anyway, it's all good (I hate that expression. It is NOT all good. Getting up early, for example, is bad).

Feeling rather under the weather (another weird expression) today, so am not painting. Rather, contenting myself with salivating over other people's art online, in mags, etc.

The two sunflowers are oils: one 6" x 6", the other 5" x 7".  The pastel is 6" x 9" (not including the mat). 

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com. For purchase info about these three pieces, please email me.

Guavas

Painted 'em, then ate 'em.


(The photo is a bit glare-y and doesn't show the vibrancy of the orange accents.)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

$115.00 - Guavas (Ready to Frame)

Whew!

Some paintings are (relatively) easy and some are definitely not. This one was firmly the latter. It's ironic to me how the finished painting (seen here) looks like it was done in a carefree, easy, quick manner, rather than via sweat and cursing.


But the problems started even before the paints came out. First we had to email our housesit hosts about whether they had a juicer, because there were two oranges in the kitchen (one not so orange-colored...see my painting a few days back) that felt heavy, a.k.a. juicy, and we wanted some fresh juice. After a spousal argument over whether the oranges looked moldy or not, we were instructed by the email response as to where to find said juicer(s). One was electric and looked frighteningly complicated, and the other was a little white plastic thing that you suppposedly put a little fruit wedge into and then folded it in half with some pressure. I'm guessing it was really for lemons, since your hand would get pretty tired making glasses of juice that way. The Husband tried it, and appeared to break the thing on the very first attempt. Fortunately, however, it was just a cheap thing and a little knob had come out which fit right back in. However, The Husband was giving up on the juicer.


I took a wedge, figuring we'd just have to eat the oranges instead of drinking them. I took a bite of the gloriously orange-colored fruit, and found it too sour to enjoy. However, it was so gorgeous that I took another wedge plus a half-orange to paint. Off I went to our hosts' open-air art studio.


Two-thirds of the way into the painting I started disliking the composition, which involved the single wedge the way you see it posted here plus the half-orange next to and slightly behind it. Four-fifths of the way through the painting, I was hating the composition so much, I decided to remove the half-orange altogether, leaving a lonely single orange wedge which was, however, strongly painted enough to stand alone.


Got rid of the half-orange (and got very messy hands getting rid of it in its painted incarnation), redid the shadow, and then spent a long time trying to recover the freshness of it, having gone too far at one point overworking it.

Whew!

$115.00 - Orange wedge (Ready to Frame)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Pair of pears

This is last night's painting, which I will also leave for my hosts here.  

I had purchased these pears at the Wednesday-afternoon tianguis (open-air market) here in Ajijic, Mexico, and brought them home to the housesit we're at. I washed them and gave them an iodine disinfectant soak, then found a gorgeous pumpkin-orange dishtowel and laid them on it to dry. As soon as I placed them on the towel, I knew I had my still life.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Ripe and not so ripe

These are actually both local oranges, but one was a lot more ripe-looking (i.e., orange) than the other. This is yesterday's painting, which I will be leaving for our housesit hosts.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com