Cupcake

6x6 oil on panel $50 click here to buy

Here is my first painting of the New Year! I am going to try to do more palette knife paintings in the coming year, they are so much fun to do and people always want to touch them.  I learned the hard way never to bring a wet knife painting to an art show, they always get touched.  (I had one person get upset at ME that it was still wet.) Happy New Year everybody!!

Tulip Tango

6x6 oil on panel SOLD

I'm having a bit of fun with the Pantone color of the year "Tangerine Tango" It works well with lime green and white. The tulip was a bit of a bear though...took me all day. Perhaps something simpler tomorrow......

Hay Rolls

8x10 oil on streched canvas $65 click here to buy.

I love seeing fresh cut hay in the fields, and those rolls look like such fun! If I was a kid again I probably would be sitting atop one of them in the warm fall sun reading a book.

And the Winner Is........................

Arlene! (randomly selected by my 16 year old son for fairness)..........Thank you all for your comments and visiting my blog,......I think it's way more exciting to give a painting away than selling one, I always wanted to be the "winner"....I'll keep trying! Congrats to Arlene Chipman, please email me at kdukat4@yahoo.com or reply to this post with your email so I can get your address to ship you your sunflower painting! I like the giveaway so much, I think I'll do another soon!

This week has been absolutely crazy for me, notice the lack of any post in the last week! I was suprised by my wonderful boyfriend of 5 years with a new "toy", a red convertible coupe, kind of like I had in high school only so much nicer.....(I had a 1979 rusty Fiat, that I drove all over New Hampshire when I was in my teens....which I sold when I left for the Navy)....Now, with 4 "almost grown" kids later, (and vans, sedans, suv's aside), I got my dream car...The best part of it and a huge surprise for me was the marriage proposal that came with it! I have an incredible fiance who accepts me for the crazy artist that I am!

Phew! As if that wasn't enough, my two oldest boys graduated from high school this week. I am so proud of them both, but most especially for my oldest, Jake, who is autistic, and who has struggled mostly socially his entire school career. I can't thank enough the teachers along the way who knew how to get through to him, and accepted his hugs with affection in return. Good Luck to Jared also, who heads off to college in the fall....it's harder than it looks!!!

Also, after a spring of storms and rain, we had the most glorious week of sun ever, and I was able to plant all my flowers and vegatable garden....it was so nice to see all the farmers out plowing their fields and planting their corn.....it was a close call, as we live in the "bread basket" of America.....

Finally, I have almost all of my daily painting on display in various locations throughout Ohio, the latest being Coffee Amici in Findlay, who has an entire wall devoted to changing exhibits of local artists and generously takes no commissions. If you live in the area, please frequent them for their generosity to the arts. I have been very blessed this year, I'm not quite sure what I've done to deserve it, but I certainly know who to thank. I'm posting a pic of a work in progress that is destined for a show at the end of June. ( I need 5 larger paintings for a wine and art festival in Findlay, so I'm going for a garden/flower theme. This is a peony from my garden....As always, I started out with the brush, and when I became frustrated, switched over to palette knife.....why does the palette knife seem to be my solution to a dead painting....hmmmmmmm time will tell!not a great pic as I took it with my phone)

All caught up and Epiphany!

So I had an epiphany today after I finished this painting, part of the daily paitworks weekly challenge that I missed while I was away in NC, but thanks largely to Dreama for this challenge, and Carol Marine for all the the past challenges by jove I think I've got it!!!.....I've been in a serious painting rut of late, painting daily since January and I've been all over the place with style and subject matter, struggling to find one that suites me enough to just run with it. The only consistancy in my painting is when I complete the weekly challenge....so when I started this challenge, I thought back to my other paintings that I felt proudest of when I was finished and decided to tackle this one the same way....I used the knowledge from Carol's "One stroke per color" and the latest value challenge to tackle the Kitty, and I am pleased with this one! I think I have found the beginnings of a style, and can't wait to keep going with it, thanks so much Dreama and Carol, keep the challenges coming!!

More from the PKR workshop and Catching up!

I'm posting more of my examples from the PKR workshop mostly because I am still catching up around the house and I would like to do the Daily Paintworks challenges today but the rain is keeping me inside....I know when other artists go to workshops I like to see what they've done, so here they are! I really liked the exercise with the lemon on purple....it is 6x6 and the challenge was to do it in under 30 strokes....I think I did it in about 25, but it was fun!

Daffodils, Daisies, and Doldrums

This week has been the absolute worst since I started daily painting...I don't think I accomplished a single satisfying painting...Yesterday I started work on a larger picture of a rose, worked on it it for 3 hours, and when I went to clean up, the painting tipped over and landed directly on my palette, Needless to say there were 8 or huge globs of paint neatly ordered in spectrum order.....I decided not to even tackle that mess today, and decided to set up a cheerful still life to beat the awful weather doldrums and rut I am in.....Here is my attempt at a glass of daisies and daffodils, even they refused to cooperate as I tried to arrange them so I finally gave up in disgust.

Ten Fold Sold and Caramel Cuteness

This post is largely in part a message of gratitude to David and Carol Marine and their wonderful artist friendly site for daily painters www.dailypaintworks.com (I don't know why, but everytime I try to make something a hyperlink it doesn't work, grrrr) I've never met them, nor taken a workshop from Carol, but stumbled across the site when I began daily painting. I've done all but one of the weekly challenges and they have all helped me grow tremendously as a painter. When they posted the Help Japan Challenge, I opted in, and was a little discouraged when my painting didn't sell the first two times around....The third week it was posted, it got a bid! the benefactor, a fine gentleman from Barbados, purchased the work and to my surprise and delight, purchased two more of my paintings! I never expected the response I recieve just by doing what I love best, painting and giving back....I hope the efforts David and Carol put forth regularly for all artists out there are returned 10 fold, like it has for me. Thank you isn't enough for their dedication to their art.

I painted "Shoop" today, for this week's challenge....I had already planned on painting this cute little bunny, but the challenge to use complementary colors helped with my pallette choices....Shoop is a baby bunny in my barn that found a wonderful ome this week thanks to Margie Shoop, and she used the adjective "caramel cuteness" to describe him perfectly!

Peep!

This painting is from last weeks chicken series I did, had to at least do a fluffy yellow chick after stopping at the Tractor Supply Store for bunny food and seeing hundreds of them for sale under a heat lamp....so cute. I didn't get a chance to paint yesterday, since I spent most of the day in Toledo for the last day of Artomatic 419....what a great show for meeting other artists and down to earth people. I've been to art shows where even as the artist I feel very outclassed by the attendees and it always made me a smidge uncomfortable, something to just accept I suppose. Today is my birthday and yesterday the Fedex truck pulled up with a birthday present of 2 live lobsters from Kennebunkport, Maine, where I visited last year with my wonderful boyfriend. I'm from the East coast (New Hampshire and Vermont) and I crave lobster all the time. There is nowhere in the midwest that does lobster justice, if it can be found, and no matter what the price. I have a feeling I know what my next painting might be.

Roosters, chickens, and hens oh my!

I am on a chicken kick this week, thanks to the Carol Marine challenge....I finished my 5th chicken painting today with one still on the easel...I am very happy with the last one I did, so maybe I'll stop painting chickens and move on to dogs....I have 3 commissions for 3 different families for their beloved pets, for some reason I keep putting it off. Commissions are not easy for me, it takes me much longer to paint them and I tend to overwork it....Hopefully these will go smoothly, I just need to bite the bullet and do it.

Tonight I have invited some local artists over to my home to discuss selling art online. I've been a longtime seller on the various sites and am willing to share my pros, cons, and knowledge of my experiences...hopefully it goes well, I'm not a good speaker in front of a group of my peers, and I'm not even sure what I'm going to say, but someday I would like to give painting workshops so this will be good practice....plus I need to come out of hibernation and start networking with real people, not just internet folks I want to get out there, so wish me luck!!

Weekends and Challenges

Most people look forward to the weekend to relax, catch up on housework, etc....but being a "stay at home mom/painter" , the weekends (esp at the tail end of winter) tend to get anxious for me. I have so many ideas in my head of things I want to paint or create, and weekends come much too soon. Weekends are "family" time and I need to learn the fine art of balance. I have 4 children, ages 12,16,17,18..... and It won't be long before I wake up and realize that they've grown up and moved on with their own lives....It's hard because they are at the age where they want to go out with friends but Mom's at the age wondering where did all the time go and how can I make it up? I have a feeling I will probably make it up by painting their childhood since I didn't have time to do so when they were young....For now, I look forward to "family movie night", summers on the boat, track meets, soccer games, new bunnies and kittens in the barn, band and choir concerts, driver's ed, proms, and upcoming graduations....(gulp, sob).....Painting everyday has truly helped me get through some of life's challenges....the loss of a dog, a friend with cancer, and now my kids leaving the nest......What does this have to do with Abraham Lincoln? Well, not a whole lot, except that it was this weeks Challenge on the Daily Paintworks site, and it reminded me of my favorite quote by him. I hope my kids think this about me someday.

"All that I am and hope to be, I owe to my mother"

~Abe Lincoln

Weekly Challenge "Two's Company"

I'm truly enjoying Carol Marines Weekly Challenges and learning even more. This week's challenge involved using a different color of paint for each stroke.....It took a lot of planning and thought at first, but moved along faster as I painted. I like the outcome, but I think I need more practice to get it just right, but the point was to avoid "overworking" a painting, which I tend to do, so in that respect it worked out perfect.....

Lost in Perrysburg and New Friends...

Perysburg is not a big town. It is also arranged in the typical Midwestern grid pattern and parcel so it should be fairly simple to navigate. Perrysburg is not like Boston, with its maze of diagonal one way streets that make you wonder where all the urban planners of colonial times were..... To get lost for 30 minutes in Perrysburg, Ohio is simply silly....I suppose it comes from my artistic scattered brain, and of not completely listening to proper instructions....sigh....story of my life....

I just had lunch with the Director of the Perrysburg Arts Council to discuss an upcoming show of my self-inflicted " A Painting Every Day" challenge....Of course I took the wrong exit and was 15 minutes late...and after a wonderful lunch of french onion soup, coffee, and conversation, I headed over to the Courthouse and Municipal Building to see the current Black and White Exhibition...(which by the way was OUTSTANDING....I was very surprised by the quality and intricacy of all the works. Somewhere along the course of my wayward art career, one of my art teachers taught me that black paint was BAD, VERY BAD...and never to use it, even for dulling colors...so I have a very limited use for black in my pallete...However, after seeing the works on display, I'm very tempted to break out my full tube of black paint)

Here is a painting of a cow I painted yesterday....White Mountains New Hampshire, a group I "liked" on Facebook gave me permission to use their photo posts for inspiration. New Hampshire is my home state, so whenever I'm feeling homesick, I paint something from their site...