Roses and Strawberries

Roses and Strawberries from My Garden 8×10 Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

Each season while my roses and strawberries are in bloom, I photograph them and use them as a reference for a new painting. I’ve done this for the past 5 or six years and I can honestly say that it has not gotten easier – and it may never. That’s okay. My roses have so many densely “swirling” petals, as I would describe it. In theory, one is suppose to simplify the form based on highlights, middle tones and shadows, but in the case of my roses the petals are so thin and tight that I’ve never been able to substantially simplify the form. Overall, I like the shapes and colors. Below: I created a master study this past week as well.

Portrait Painting by Valentine Serov. 8×10 Portrait Study by Winifred Whitfield

I didn’t attempt to truly complete the reference image but I did enough to serve the purpose of doing such study. The reference has been in my studio for several years awaiting my attention. I liked the block of differing broken color in the upper area of his painting. I m always challenged by backgrounds and this is an approach I will try in my paintings. That’s pretty much the point of painting master studies – paying attention to how the masters painted and resolved their paintings. The artist Modigliani often did broken color blocking as well. He’s another of my favorite artist. My interest in this painting actually stops where that white fabric of the lower skirt starts. I probably should have ended my painting effort there. I found the bottom of his painting not particularly interesting and that white of her skirt distracting.

THE RESISTANCE: Tomorrow, May 14, 2025 should be the greatest protest demonstration against this administration we’ve seen. I believe there may well be millions of democracy loving individuals who take to the streets. in my opinion, Donald is the most corrupt, cruel, and criminal person in this country with his power amplified by virtue of the immunity granted by the Supreme Court. I want to vomit at the thought of the military parade tomorrow. I won’t watch it, of course. I’ll watch coverage of the new Pope and the many demonstrations. It was interesting to see how the media, and Twitter was used to amplify the California protest as justification for calling in the National Guards and the Marines!. It’s the first time I’ve so clearly seen that maneuver, though I think it is used regularly. And of course Donald is grand standing and telling lies to make the protest appear larger and disorderly. For sure he created a distraction which took the ELON attacks largely out of the news. Having hired half of Fox “News”, in his cabinet, they all are skilled at changing media focus. Gavin Newsom, however, has done a great job in fighting back. Stay safe tomorrow. It’s going to be a big day! Winifred

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White Roses Green Vase on Table

White Roses Green Vase 11×14 Oil Painting

I should have referred to them as “blush” roses. I’m trying here to paint a looser rose – but still it needs to resemble a rose I think. Some do and some don’t. Overall. there are some features I like. I like the setting – the table the translucent cloth. I wanted to “crochet” it but didn’t have time. I do have a favorite rose – bottom front and interesting – I had no reference for that one – from imagination only but not easy for me to do. It looks most sheer and soft. However, one shouldn’t be looking at any single rose, the question is – does the painting work. I do like the background. It’s a style of adding texture I can actually repeat – though randomly created. Initially, I thought the green of the vase vase was too dark and too intense, but I left it. It’s a pretty color and. the fade down gives it a hint of glow and transparency which I like. For some reason quite a bit of gray is showing up in this digital image which is not in the painting.

RESISTANCE: You can imagine I’m in pain with the passage today of that HORRIBLE NEW BILL in the House. Hopefully the Senate will block it. They’ve long said they will not allow it to pass. For the good of the country, I certainly hope not. It is so very IMMORAL. Those who voted for it are IMMORAL. Anyone who supports this bill is IMMORAL. They even allowed into this bill the tax exemption of “gun silencers”, and “tanning beds” for the orange guy I suppose. It’s shocking though I should no longer be shocked at anything they do. No one could have fantasied this script for the United States. I keep holding out for a glimmer of humanity in our governance but I’m finding none. And. the orange guy, I guess feels the needs to shore up racism in this country with white Afrikaners who are 4% of the South African population but own 80 % of the land but feel oppressed. Just think, people went to the polls and voted for this guy – otherwise they would have had to vote for a woman who is Black. This is rarely mentioned but we all know it is the truth.

Moody’s just downgraded the bond rating on securities backed by the FULL FAITH AND CREDIT OF THE UNTIED STATES due to the huge increase in deficit projected. This is also a big deal. Interest cost on trillions of debt outstanding just went up on 10 yr. 20 yr. and 30 yr. treasury bonds. This will mean a massive increase in interest cost to the. government. What do they say about this, they say “we don’t care”. They only care about a tax cut for the richest amongst us. This bill will devastate food care and health care for children and elderly and substantially increase the cost of health care to many using the Affordable Care Plan. I’m putting it out to the universe Senators – WE’RE COUNTING ON YOU!

In case you haven’t heard, an item was approved a couple days ago which will turn an AK7 type rifle into a “MACHINE GUN”. Now they can kill more children and other innocents – though “their thoughts and prayers” will be with their families. Winifred

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Boots Made For Walking

Boots on Blue Oil Painting 11×14 by Winifred Whitfield

Above you see the final painting of my boots but not necessarily the version I prefer. I found my boots in a box a few months ago. I hadn’t seen them in years. They’re so comfortable and they’re my go to boots for running errands – along with my bright red Pumas. Today is the day following my completion of this painting above and it’s the first time I compared it with the previous version which I over painted – see below.

Colorful Boots 11×14 Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

The initial version is very colorful. The brush strokes are expressive. I hadn’t been so “correct” about everything. My brain thinks “it is messy”, I couldn’t handle it and found it a bit too chaotic. I considered this initial version “failed”. That was OK with me. All painting practice is good – just making an attempt is fine. At the point of my “failure” I thought I would try some things. I darkened the background, toned down some of the color and “corrected” shapes within the boots. I didn’t realize I was killing this more exciting painting. The past years of my brain training makes it hard to appreciate random expressive brushstrokes and bold color. I try from time to time but it’s a struggle. My training is portrait realism, though increasingly I add a bit of expression and creativity “around” a face. I tried expressiveness “on the face” once” and posted it. It’s awful!.

I like the final painting, the bluer one at the top – but I find it less exciting. This experience has been important for me and I’ll continue to attempt to push past my limitations and the discomfort I feel when things are not “correct”. It’s sad for a painter to feel that way. Correctness might be important when assessing a realistic portrait but not BOOTS! I took many photos of my boots posed differently. I’ll likely try to paint them again in a different pose.

RESISTANCE: Oh my gosh! When do we get a break!! So far the Supreme Court and other Federal courts are barely holding together the provisions of the Constitution, although it is the Supreme Court which has gotten us into this mess and Garcia is still not back. Fortunately many others immigrants have been saved from deportation without “due process”, at least for now and Trump is pissed. Significantly, Donald’s ‘Big Beautiful New Deal” also failed in committee even before it could go to the House which saves Medicaid, which provides care to “the most vulnerable amongst us” ie, food and health care to children, medical care to people with extraordinary medical conditions, and medical care for the lowest income population and Veterans care as well. We have such immoral leadership in the Republican Party with Donald’s attempt to eliminate this level of support so the richest people in the world and large corporations can have more is IMMORAL – PLAIN AND SIMPLE! The reason Donald’s “Big Beautiful Bill” which he insisted it be called – didn’t get out of committee is because of the RESISTANCE throughout the country. Republicans from some districts know their tenure would be over in 26 if they did not vote to save Medicaid. 5 Republicans on that committee voted with Democrats providing a vote of 21against the bill to 15 which closed it down. I am thankful for those 5 votes. Between the Supreme Court ruling and the defeat of this bill he wanted to pass desperately, this was not a good week for Donald. I think he’s still smiling, however, because of the prospect of a $400 million luxury plane from Qatar. We’ll see. His lack of morality has no bound but then what would one expect from a criminal. This is what criminals do. Bye for now. Winifred

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Bowl of Fruit

Bowl of Fruit Painting 9×12 Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

Still lifes are not particularly exciting for me to paint – though I paint them. Painting still lifes is good practice, however, because of the varying shapes, textures and colors involved, along with the challenge of complex composition. Painting still lifes actually helps in painting portraits. In fact, painting in any style assist with painting any other style. You can look at this painting and see all the separate elements I had to paint. There were decisions and layers of brush strokes involved with each item.

I’m working up to the 10,000 paintings said to be necessary before one can expect to claim “mastery” in oil painting. I’m still under 1000 paintings, so I have a ways to go. It’s time for another portrait. Have a wonderful weekend. Winifred

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Little Round Things

apes White Cloth Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

What a journey this painting has had. It was intended as a little practice exercise – to paint something I would not particularly care about. To allow that the painting would not be “precious” as they say, allows one to be more comfortable experimenting – such that what or how one paints just doesn’t matter. So that was my mindset which carried throughout the painting process – as you will see. Below is the reference image – a little yellow plate with grapes on a brown surface.

Grapes – Reference Image.

Below is a crop from my initial painting of the plate and grapes.

When I stood back to look, it was apparent I was doing my same old realism and I didn’t want to do that. So, I scraped the paint off the plate. I think it’s rather pretty but I wanted something different from just pretty. It’s getting less hard for me to to paint something relatively well (the plate) and then decide – NO – scrape it off and try again. I maintained the grapes throughout. Below was the next attempt.

Grapes on Blue, Winifred Whitfield

Above, I painted over plate and the background and started adding random colors. Again, I decided NO and scraped off the paint. Then I decided I would approach it differently. I would find my little yellow plate and set up what would be a background and table covering and work from this structure. Below is that photo of what would be my background reference image:

Yellow Plate with Background and Table Cover

Above: I thought that having this reference would assist me with what I wanted to accomplish. I found a piece of stiff cloth I like to use because it will hold stiff folds. It’s actually a piece of house painters floor protective covering which has vinyl on one side. I set the little yellow plate on it – no grapes – and I photographed the plate against the cloth which gave me a reference background and table covering. Below was my first attempt using the reference to form my background.

Grapes on Tan Cloth

Above: Rather interesting colors and shapes but not what I wanted. Here again, the plate shape is painted with a sense of realism reflecting of the original shape than I wanted, if not the color. Thus, I’m heading down the wrong path again. I struggle with this. Below, I try again.

Grapes with zig-zag background.

Above: Not so bad except that the color turned to mud because I hadn’t sufficiently dried nor scraped off the tan/gold paint you see before it. This time I would allow it to dry over night and reapply cooler paint colors during my next paint session. Below- the final PERHAPS.

apes White Cloth Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

In actuality, the light colors in this painting are very neutral – not so warm hued as they appear in this photo of the painting. (It could just be my screen.) I intensified the grape color, added deeper reds to the grapes and added a couple additional grapes as I always enjoy doing. I admit I never took the grape stems too seriously. I succeeded in a looser background with lots of texture, random abstract strokes and lots of energy. The background is not necessarily pretty but it’s not BORING. That’s important to me. To have energy and not to be boring was my only objective for this little exercise – which turned out NOT to be such a “little” exercise. In keeping with the intention to not make this painting “precious”, I’m going to sand down the background as soon as this painting dries more. I have found that the result of sanding a painting during the painting process or after, most often enhances the painting. It allows some of the underlying colors to come through and it affects the edges in some way. I expect it to become more interesting. I’m not sure what will happen. If the results are particularly interesting I will show you. If you actually made it this far – thank you for sharing this journey with me. Winifred

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Decorating the Background

Oranges Grapes and Vines Background 11×14

This past week, rather than creating a completely new painting, I decided to experiment on an existing painting. Painting backgrounds is an ongoing challenge for many painters. This is certainly the case for me. A background should be an integral part of the painting, created within the context the development of the painting, not as an after thought or a final thought. I was not happy with my original background of this painting, even though it resembled the original reference photo, I thought it could be more interesting. I’ve been practicing swerving lines and small floral and foliage elements during the past year. As someone explained on YouTube, painting is a physical exercise, and it requires effort and practice to teach the hand how to make different brush strokes. Think of the gymnast who has practiced and can perform a certain technique very well – but has no facility in another technique and must work hard to get her body to perform it. So it is with brushstrokes. It is few painters who can paint any subject matter very well. You should see how awkwardly my hand moves when painting the petals of roses or a cluster of petals in a lilac or hydrangea. Portraits over all are hardest to paint, (the nose. eyes, lips) but floral elements, require the most complex brushstrokes. For me, painting fruit is easiest. For a while now, I’ve wanted to add decorative floral elements to the backgrounds of my paintings. Last week I added some floral decorative elements to the portrait I painted. It was subtle but it was there. This week, I added floral elements more substantially to this still life painting above. I made quite a few other changes as well. The original painting is below. You may well think the simpler version is preferable. Important to me was giving my hand practice adding graceful swerves and floral elements which you see in the painting above – and there will be more because I am still practicing.

Oranges and Grapes Still Life 11×14 Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

I think of the destruction and terror which must have been experienced by the hurricane victims – now trying to rebuild their lives. I also think of the terror of the Haitians who’ve been placed in harm, accused repeatedly of eating their neighbors cats and dogs. All very sad. Have a good weekend. Winifred

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