Big Clay Vase

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Big Clay Vase Against Silk Oil Painting 11×14 by Winifred Whitfield

I keep a folder on my computer titled “still lifes to paint”. This image has been in that folder since 2018. I set ip the still life and photographed it. I really like the image. I love the rough looking vase ( I guess it’s a vase) against the multi colored silk scarf over the shinny gold cloth. In no way did I feel I could paint it however. Besides, I found the digital file so pretty, I thought there was nothing I could bring to it anyway. And so, for all these years it sat. Every time I’ve come across it, however, I react to it in an admiring fashion. This week I decided I would try it. Afterall, I’ve been practicing for 7 years now. Unlike with painting roses, I actually enjoyed the process – I wasn’t miserable the whole time. Do you wonder what those orange objects are? I’m really not sure. I tried to make them resemble fruit or vegetables moreso than they did when I took them out of the bag of plastic objects I acquired from Goodwill long ago. Some objects in that bag actually looked like apples or oranges, others were not identifiable. They were shapes, with color and that’s all I really cared about.

You won’t believe what I’ve chosen to paint the coming week. I ‘m going back to misery painting roses. I keep thinking it’s got to get easier at some point. I took photos today and I’ve made my selection, guaranteeing you’ll see another “rose painting” in a week or two. The photo is pretty cute. Bye for now. Thank you for looking. Winifred

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In the Beginning

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Copper and Brass 12 x 16 Still Life Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

I didn’t do a new painting this week. I continued to work on a previous painting or was otherwise busy. So, I decided allow you to view a previous painting from my past. I think i painted this in 2018 before I started this blog about seven months after I began oil painting. It is relatively large at 12×16. For sure it’s not perfect but I’m surprised I would actually tackle this level of complexity so early. I did this quite a lot in the beginning. I set up still lifes regularly, photographed them and painted. I played with paint mixtures I mixed and modified oil paint, I made panels to paint on. I was so driven. In this painting the challenge was to paint metals, drapes and fruit. When I look at this painting, I am pleased, but I still find painting roses more difficult.

Below, I put in more time on the painting I posted last week. This is the latest version.

Garden Flowers in Green Vase Redo – 11×14 Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

There are so many ways a painting can be expressed. Sometimes, it takes a while for ones vision to evolve. When I posted last week, I had no intention of painting more or differently. However, the next day, when I viewed the painting I decided to put it back on my easel. I didn’t have a full game plan but I wanted “more”. For the most part I just viewed and reacted. I started to use thicker paint, more color and made some adjustments to the values. I added foliage and repainted and smoothed much of the background. I’ll add the original below to make this easier for you. At first it was fine – overnight it wasn’t!

Yellow Roses, Daisies, Petunias Oil Painting 11×14 by Winifred Whitfield

The greatest difference is in the vibrancy of the flowers and the thickness of the paint. Flowers don’t have to be vibrant. They can be subdued. In fact the flowers I was panting weren’t so colorful but I am happier with them now. Overall, the redo is less tentative and I’m glad I did the additional work. Thank you for looking and have a great weekend. Winifred

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Garden Bouquet

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Yellow Roses, Daisies, Petunias Oil Painting 11×14 by Winifred Whitfield

This is the first year I’ve selected multiple flowers from my garden, in a bouquet to paint. I kept them in the refrigerator most of the time and pulled them out only when I had a reason to refer to them, for example if I wanted to change the angle of a flower. I’m amazed at how long they’re lasting. If I kept them out continuously, they wouldn’t last long at all. I never imagined I would cut roses to paint, though that was the reason for the purchase of the rose bush. I continue to find painting roses intimidating and it continues to be my wishful thinking that I’ll become more competent in doing so. At the same time, I know how many I’ve already painted 60 or 70 or more, and it’s still a real struggle. I think we’ve had that discussion. Daisies and sun flowers aren’t so difficult. There is a way of painting them which I grasp and even enjoy – not so with roses or even the petunias. The next major challenge was trying to get a good image of the painting. My methods have become much more sophisticated and my images have improved, but the fact is, the more distinct the color or brushwork variation in the painting (as opposed to smooth gradients), the harder it is to get a good image – no matter what. Look at the vase, for example, the smooth gradients, as opposed to the flowers petals. I had to do so much manipulation of the image even to get the flowers the least bit acceptable and they’re still not the same as in the painting. I had to do nothing to the vase because of it’s smooth gradient. I really don’t mind painting challenges. I do mind the photography challenges. So much time is wasted. I’ve already started to photograph my next still life. I have about 40 images so far and still none are exactly what I want.

It’s cooler now – 70 degrees was the high today – and yes, I’m happy about Kamala. Have a great week. Winifred

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From My Garden

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Roses from My Garden, Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

Most often, but not always, I paint artificial flowers. This time, however, I went to my tiny garden and cut from my shrub rose bush I’ve had for 4 years. I don ‘t typically cut nor paint fresh flowers. I prefer to leave growing flowers in place. Most likely, they wouldn’t last long enough anyway. Even when I had a huge garden, it was the same. This rose is not such a great one. II’ve had great roses of many varieties but they can grow to be really huge and I have no room for that. My shrub roses are OK, if not great for painting. They don’t have long stems, only weak thorny stems. I cut a few, then wondered how to contain them. I wanted to use my brass cup which has the large opening of a cup. That wouldn’t work – until a smaller container I could insert could be found. It worked. I took photos and used the photos and fresh roses to work from. The already prepped and textured panel was perfect for this effort. This panel was 3 years old just waiting to be chosen. I was ready to go. Above is the painting. II like it. I has a vintage look, helped along by the texture of the panel. I particularly love the green of the foliage – shiny and bright. It makes me think it is a live plant.

Hope your week was good. Winifred

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Breathing Room

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Orchids in Red Vase 11×14 Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

I’ve long wanted to paint an image in this style – an image soft and atmospheric. But, I always chased the detail. In this instance I had blocked in the background enough to know what the color and depth would be. I had painted the vase enjoying the rich color, form and highlight. An initial simple shape of the fruit had been painted. I could turn my attention to the orchids, which had been loosely “rubbed” out of the initial paint layers. Already I liked this painting – it was loose and without too much detail. I only had to finalize all and paint the flowers – or so I thought. The conversation went something like this with my inner voice speaking – really it did.

“YOU’RE DONE WITH THE FLOWERS” What? I said – I really haven’t started on them. “NO. YOU’RE DONE WITH THE FLOWERS – FINISHED”. I wanted to resist – I hadn’t painted the flowers – maybe just a little more paint to shape the petals and to turn their edges, I thought. Resisting, I picked up the brush and put a bit of shadow color on a few petals, and added a bit of highlight color – I didn’t like it. I wiped off the paint. “I TOLD YOU YOU WERE DONE”, said my inner voice, AND IT DIDN’T LOOK BETTER WHEN ADDED PAINT”….. And so I was done.

I’ve never created such soft irregularly shaped, low contrast flower petals in a painting EVER! Look back at last weeks post – hugely different. As a result, I want to create more softness and atmosphere! In general people love contrast. Ask them which image they like and they will they choose the one with the greatest contrast – contrast to them meaning it’s a better image. There’s a place for contrast for sure, but at this time I’m interested in exploring atmosphere and lower contrast, a quality which has alluded my paintings. I wasn’t confident enough to employ this technique, and didn’t really know how to achieve it, and it occurred in this painting, only because I heard a voice greater and louder than mine. I’m pretty excited.

The 5 days of extreme heat – meaning the temperature reached 88 degrees – is over – at least for a while. Finally, I purchased a big air conditioner, and did so before I even knew there would be a heatwave. It was inevitable that the need would occur at some point. Our nights, however, remained cool this time. All is well in Poulsbo. I hope you’re enjoying your summer. I hope you enjoyed my atmospheric painting. Winifred

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Roses in Green Vase

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Pink Roses in Green Vase 12×12 Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

Hope you had a fun holiday. It was my first day of air conditioning, but it wasn’t too hot – only 80 degrees. Roses are so complex to paint but I keep trying. In a recent podcast interview of quite an excellent artist, he recalled that in art school, he would view other artist work and think he wished he could paint so well, he wished painting would get easier. He thought that would be the case in the future. Now, 20 years later and a highly acknowledged painter, he proclaims, that though he is more experience with more developed skills, it NEVER gets easier. I hope I don’t bore you with my regular mention of how difficult any given painting was – which is all of them. Sometimes all I can think about is the constant struggle. I should just accept that this is the nature of the journey. and be careful not to go to the point of frustration or a negative mindset. That’s likely why painters remain engaged for so long. They never get to the place of feeling bored, or feel as though they’ve figured it all out. It’s a constant struggle.

The vase is one of my favorite parts of the painting. I changed the original colors but generally maintained the pattern of the vase. It looks lustrous almost like marble. I’m going to rest from roses for a bit to try something different. Have a wonderful week. Winifred

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Roses in Small Brass Container

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Roses in Small Brass Container – Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

Since last I saw you, I’ve been incredibly busy creating new still life reference images to paint. I have a huge collection of “silk” flowers, many diverse yards of fabric, many vases and other containers and a great and versatile video light with I really love. Having such an assortment of goods, I decided to set up new floral still lifes to photograph. I didn’t plan to began my photo shoot at midnight, but I did, and it continued to 4 a.m. I so enjoyed what I was capturing that my obsessive compulsive tendencies were apparent to me. In addition my creative energy always seems to increase with the lateness of the hour. Over the next few days, I continued to set up new back drops, table-top settings, vases of flowers and light configurations. I photographed so many images, that not even one tenth of the images were preserved. I now have a new selection of still life references to choose from. I seem to prefer ones with dramatic and high contrast lighting. I enjoyed such lighting in the image above along with the warm pretty colors, the texture in the background and foreground cloth, and the shapes the shadow and highlights form. It’s so important to begin a painting with a good reference and one which is exciting to paint. I considered setting up my still life and painting it from life but my studio set up is not right for this at the moment.

Bye for now. Hope you enjoy. Winifred

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Peony Buds

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Peony Bud Bouquet in Decorative Pitcher – Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

A couple weeks ago a friend gave me a large beautiful bouquet of peonies from her garden. There were pink peonies with a light yellow centers and even larger white ruffly peonies. I began photographing them right away. I knew I would select a reference image from them one day, when I wanted a very complex and difficult image to paint. I continued to photograph the peonies as the petals wilted and the bouquet grew smaller. The pink flowers with yellow centers wilted first, days later, the white ruffly ones lost their petals. Thereafter, only white buds remained until one of the buds, began to unfold as a small flower. The buds and young flower were originally white but I wanted a different look and feel hence painted them pink and lavender colors and added the small decorative pitcher.

The peonies have all faded now – until they come again next spring. I am happy I captured the many stages of their life in photographic files, in addition to these two oil paintings as memories.

The painting below reflects the last of the larger white peonies and some of the remaining buds. (The pink flowers with yellow centers are not represented in these paintings).

Peony Flower with Buds Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

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Study of John Singer Sargent Portrait of a Capri Girl

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Study – Sargent “Portrait of a Capri Girl” 1878 – 9×12 Oil Painting

It’s difficult to even find this image on the internet because it’s such an early work painted by Sargent and no doubt it’s not one of his most popular paintings. However, I found it at some point in the past and saved it to a collection of his portraits I keep on my computer as possible references. She was one of his very first models. I have created another study of the other from his set of two paintings of the Capri Girl. It is nearly 16×20 and I enjoy it on my wall. At a point I just quit working on this one and decided that “near enough” was good enough”. After all, it was intended as a study, not a copy, and I felt I’d derived sufficient benefit from the process. I wasn’t sure what that was in this instance, but it’s always useful to attempt Sargent’s brushstrokes. I think, I’ll next attempt a still life. I have some new references. Have a wonderful weekend. Winifred

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Beads in her Hair

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Beads in Her Hair 9×12 Oil Painting by Winifred Whitfield

My painting this week was influenced a little by the Rembrandt study I posted last week, though the beads in her hair give it a pop of modernity. I like it. I enjoy the portrait look of the Old Masters which continues to influence many modern painters. The poses, the lighting, and even the expressions have a certain look. The reference image for this p ainting was a young girl about 10 years old, wearing a very colorful sundress sitting in a swing on a playground in bright sun. This is why she is lit from above. I subdued the lighting atop of her head to keep the focus on her face. I also subdued her expression, making it a little more serious. I wanted to add a pop of color and decided on turquoise which is a nice compliment to the gold and orange colors on her face. So far, I haven’t wanted to change the painting but I make no promises.

The painting is showing up in this post a bit darker than I see it but I know it will vary on every device anyway. There’s nothing I can do about that. Enjoy your day. Winifred

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