Great artists abound like peaches in August

Starting Out
A 12" x 12" gessoed canvas is painted
in a combination of acrylic colours to produce "peach"

One bad thing about the Internet in my life is that
I'm already easily distracted, and the visual stimulation
available on the fantastic art blogs I'm discovering
can keep that going full time.

I loosely draw the image in cadmium red.

I read on someone's blog lately that there were
no good art blogs, and I wondered if that
artist had his head in a paper bag. Maybe the
blogger was wearing a sleep mask that day, because I
find the complete opposite to be true. And that's
serious.

I fill in a turquoise background with a large
brush to get some depth.

There are so many astoundingly creative, masterful
artists to discover that I could spend my whole
day reading about them, analyzing their work --
learning. But at some point I have to pull myself
back from the readily available, technologically
induced attention disorder and sit down to paint.

I start working on the details, peaches
background, shadows and highlights on the glass
and add a peach. I'm not happy with
the balance, so that's tomorrow's problem.

Two things got me working on the little painting
I'm giving you the step by step on today.
1. was a video on painting a peach by Hall Groat
II, www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5 - lfm X9zQA
the second was the amazing peaches we've
been eating this week.

In fact those peaches are so good that I had to
move as fast as possible with the painting, because
my family wants to eat the peaches that are in
my antique glass bowl.

I decide to darken the table, and work on
the shape of the bowl.

The astounding thing about this painting's progress
is that it happened in the middle of a housing
disaster, and I stayed focused on the one task
I could accomplish despite the very bad news
in our house.

I work on refining the bowl, peaches,
shadows and glass and then
the demands of the house took
over. I'll finish it up tomorrow.

In the 300th rain storm of the last
three months, our basement flooded, and now
my husband is trying to clean up with my
son's help, while I make the calls to drain
companies, insurance and the clean up crew.
I have a cast that can't get wet and I'm on
crutches. When in doubt paint.

Have a productive and dry day.