NYC Subway No. 5

 NYC Subway No. 5
4"x4"x1.5" oil on cedar wood block  $75

Ready to hang!

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NYC Subway No. 4

NYC Subway No. 4

4" x 4" x 1.5" oil on cedar block   $75

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New York City Subway No. 3

New York City Subway No. 3
4" x 4" x 1.5" oil on cedar block

A close up:

Ready to hang:

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NYC Subway No. 2

 NYC Subway No. 2
 4" x 4" x 1.5" oil on cedar wood block

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Subway Series - no baseball involved

NYC Subway No. 1
4"x4" x 1.5" Oil on cedar wood   SOLD

A close up:

Ready to hang ---

Many more to come..........

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Breakfast!

Subway Card Bagel No. 7
 2" x 3.25" oil on Metro Card

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Chelsea Girl

Come out to Chelsea tomorrow, Saturday October 20, 2012 where I'll be setting up a booth to sell my paintings, prints and notecards. A wonderful, curated event with great hand-made goods and art. See you there!

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She took the A Train

Subway Card Subway Car No. 1

Oil on subway fare card

Sold this subway card painting this week -- didn't even get a chance to put it up here first.

I have several more in the works -- watch this space!

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Grandpa was a Painter, Not a Fighter

My mother mailed me this lovely pen and ink drawing, made by her father during his military service in World War 1. My grandfather, Robert Birrell, was a Scotsman who served in his Majesty's armed forces. 

You can see his signature and notation of the location here --

But this is a bit of a mystery -- he clearly had a sense of humor but I'm not quite sure what this means -  Hotel  Dal Blai?   

Any ideas? 
Please let me know........

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Florence

 Nightingale, of course.

 I've been laboring over this little creature for several weeks and still need to change it up a bit.

Let's take it from the top: first, the clusmy sketch on the 36"x24" canvas.

Then the obligatory hot mess.

Then a little less of a mess. I rather like it at this point but am thinking my client may want more detail and clarity. Hmmmmm. Except for the fact that some of the charcoal grid is shining through, does this (below) look too unfinished to you?

So I added some more interesting patches of color and textures to the background.

Then I left it alone for a while, not sure what to do next.

When I returned I plowed through my color palette and tackled the detail of all those small wing feathers.

I started really veering into the blues for the bird body -- not sure If I like it. I may need to head back to the grays.

Close up - 

Ok, that's all for now. Sometimes I can see what's right and what's wrong only after taking a photo -- why that would be, I don't know. Maybe a more technical "eye" on the subject is more objective.

Think I will be making our little Florence Nightingale much more of a cool-gray character rather than such an intense cobalt or cerulean blue. 

More to come!

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Up the Beach

"Beach No. 8"

Up the beach, down the beach - I'm always getting those backward. I think when you are looking towards the center of town, or "downtown," then you are looking "down the beach." 

When it comes to a country road in Sav, however, I don't have a clue which way is "up the road" and which is "down the road."

 But the locals sure know the difference. And promptly correct your mistake.

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Bird Orchestra

Just realized I never shared this photo of my Jamaican birds all together -- at least so far. I have 8 more to paint and have made significant progress on the next one up -- Nightingale. Will share it shortly...

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The Fine Print

I just received this photo from one of my delightful customers in Georgia, Karen Loftin. Karen purchased 4 of my pen-and-ink prints -- very affordable pieces, printed on Hahnemuehle's exquisite William Turner paper, and thoughtfully arranged them in these lovely white frames. Beautiful!

Here's a close up of the actual prints themselves --

I'm SO very pleased to see my pretty ladies displayed in such an elegant fashion -- and I hope it inspires you to consider doing the same. Thank you, Karen!

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Cling-A-Cling CLING!

It never occurred to me that Cling-Cling, as with so many of the other oddball names assigned to the cottages and rooms of the Whistling Bird, was, well, a bird.

Turns out that the Cling-Cling (or Kling-Kling) is also known as the Jamaican Antillean Grackle. According to my sources,  these sable-colored, glossy birds "love handouts and scraps of food ... and are quite adept at stealing food so as not to share with other birds." They also have a fondness for the nuts of the Royal Palm tree (as shown in this detail from my painting.)

But I get ahead of myself.  Let's go back to the beginning.

My Cling-Cling began as a frumpish little tart, rather than the regal and imposing figure he eventually became. Here's how he started out:

Like I said, frumpish tart.

I didn't much like his attitude.

When I stretched this canvas back onto the stretchers here in Jamaica, I gave him the once-over and decided he needed a new pose. I tried to rub away the charcoal with my paint thinner so I could re-draw the bird. I didn't make much headway in erasing that first pose. It just wouldn't go away.

So I just took up a paintbrush and, using a couple of entirely different photo references I found online, I  began to block out a different form for my Cling-Cling. I used a deep prussian blue, and then blocked in the background in oranges and yellows, completely obliterating the aforementioned frumpish tart.

He's looking a bit raven-ish here, no? A bit spooky, a bit Edgar Allen Poe-ish. I found out much later that there is also a superstition about the Cling-Cling down here in Jamaica - oh nevermind, just go look it up yourself. 

Gooosebumps.

Anyway - I was happy with that silhouette but needed to tamp down that bright orange. Too garish. And so, I layered on some paint, looking for a more golden yellow color.

Or maybe a more buttery yellow? I decided I was going to add that nut/seed in his beak, which would be a brilliant orange color, so I really wanted it to pop off the background. That idea made me really tone down the oranges in the background, even though I did like them as shown above. The yellows became lemony, with hints of green.

After adding the Royal Palm nut in his beak, I decided to softly add a bit of palm leaves into the background. He looks a bit less menacing now, too.

Except for those claws -- they look pretty vicious!

Look for Cling-Cling to be hanging in his eponymous cottage at Whistling Bird, Negril, Jamaica.

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They call her Nietzsche

Perhaps she has a lot on her mind at 12 months of age.......

So here is how her portrait began, oils on the hand-cut cedar block:

She was wearing the floppy straw hat I bought for her. Her family said it made her "look like one tourist," and laughed. She was trying to pull it off with her left hand.

But I decided to leave that hand out in the final painting.

Nietzsche No. 1  $40
4"x4"x1.5" oil on hand-cut cedar wood block

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