Lesley Spanos Art Studio » Oils

90 on the last 10

Lesley Spanos — Thu, 27 May 2010 23:49:51 +0000

Is it just me, or do other artists spend 90% of their studio time working on the last 10% of the painting? If I painted for ten hours, the piece would look almost finished after one hour. I could slap it into a frame and most people wouldn’t notice it wasn’t “finished.” They might even admire my bold approach and my loose and casual brushstrokes.

Ten minutes in and having fun. Love that lemon!

At thirty minutes. "Hey, this is EASY! Even the metal parts."

One hour into the painting. "Cool. Another thirty minutes on this, then I can get some yard work done and still have time to relax."

The yard work didn’t happen, nor did the open beer in the back yard while listening to Indy 500 cars buzz by at the distant Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (When the wind is right they sound like a swarm of dive-bombing wasps from my house. Locally they black out the race on TV to boost attendance, so we can’t watch it live on TV like the rest of the country.)

Nope, I spent another nine hours on my feet working on the painting, my artist’s insecurity constantly pushing me into fixing “problems” and finessing little details that may or may not enhance the finished work.

In other words, wasted time. Most of that time was spent on the two roses in the upper left. Yes, the roses were a tiny bit better in the end, but not four-hours-on-a-holiday-weekend better:

Finished painting at ten hours.

I don’t know why roses are so hard for me. When I look at the structure of a rose blossom my brain scrambles the signal and I paint the visual equivalent of gibberish. It’s like I’m looking at it but not seeing it. I was using acrylics but finally had to break out the oils so I’d have more blending time. I’ll still probably go back when the paint is dry and add a glaze over the rose on the right to knock it back into the shadows more.

Ironically, this was painted for the A Day Not Wasted May challenge. Lee provided artists with a well-planned and executed reference photo. (See how he shot it here.) Lee invited us to use just parts of his extensive still life setup, and it seems most of us zeroed on in the same composition using the apple, lemon, and jug. My original square composition cut out the dreaded roses, but then I noticed that several people had already done that one, so I went rectangular and added the roses to the top.

In spite of all my whining, a day is not wasted if a lesson is learned. So once again I’m reminded to STOP FUSSING WITH THE PAINT. Overworking the paint is my biggest sin. I need to learn to lay the paint, leave it, and go have a beer.

Hey! Google!

Lesley Spanos — Fri, 21 May 2010 18:27:36 +0000

This month’s Virtual Paintout is in the Czech Republic. Finding a subject was difficult for me, until I came across this guy mugging for the Google Street Views camera. I liked him. Here he is on Street Views:

View Larger Map

I’ve seen collections of images of girls baring their chests for the Google cameras, but haven’t come across that yet while roaming the virtual streets.

Here are a few images taken along the way:

Sedona Morning

Lesley Spanos — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:37:50 +0000

What’s that wretched creaking sound? Must be my rusty painting skills! It seems like all my creative focus lately has been on planning paintings, rather than actually painting. But then along comes a good art challenge, and like the challenge whore I am, I can’t help but play along. This one is hosted by Lee Brown on his A Day Not Wasted blog. An artist and photographer himself, Lee is providing some drool-worthy HDR photos that are an absolute pleasure to work from. No dead shadows in his work! Go see his Sedona Sunrise Challenge yourself for some great visual treats, and play along, if you’re so inclined.

This one didn’t exactly fall off the brushes, but at least I finished something. Here are a few photos taken along the way:

Starting with a loose brush sketch over a red ground. When I sketch with a brush, I use an angled flat, which makes good lines as well as filling in large areas quickly. With the paint, I tried to approximate the tone of the deepest shadows.

As the painting progresses, I try to let bits of the red show through. Easier said than done.

Here’s where I wish I’d stopped. I prefer the painting at this stage because it’s looser, warmer, and the values are closer together. But, as usual, I thought it needed to be more finished…

…so I tightened up the details and added more light and contrast. Now it looks more like 10am than sunrise.

I really loved how those twigs in the foreground caught the light in the reference photo, but I was having a devil of a time painting them with a brush, so I scratched them out with an exacto knife. I had to really dig in to get down to clean gesso. It was an okay experiment, but next time I’ll make the lines more “lost and found” rather than continuous, ’cause that’s how twigs catch the light.

Many thanks to Lee Brown for a fun challenge!

The View

Lesley Spanos — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:58:39 +0000

My answer to Karin Jurick‘s Different Strokes City Rooftops challenge. Thank you, Karin, for another versatile reference photo. The shot was taken from her hotel room in San Francisco, which reminded of Gerry Beckley’s (America) “View From The Hotel” series of photographs. He shoots the view from every hotel on tour, even if it’s just a parking lot, then catalogs everything by date on his website. Very cool. These kind of shots remind me that it’s the more mundane views from our travels that are often the most interesting in retrospect.

This was a fun painting to tackle. Here are a few shots taken along the way:

First I laid down an undercoat of acrylic in greyed purple-ish tones found in one of the buildings in the background. (It’s also the color of my bedroom.) Most of the foreground buildings will be yellow, so setting up a complementary color scheme early will hopefully keep the colors harmonious.

A loose drawing in grey marker went over the top of the acrylic. Even though this won’t be an abstract, I’m looking for shapes that would be pleasing and balanced if abstracted.

These next few shots were taken in the studio at night with little color correction, so they look warmer than they actually are.

Next I start to apply the oil paint with a 1″ slant brush. Usually I try not to premix my paints much, but on this one I am because the colors are so delicate, and the values are so important. I’m even using a value card to get those values right.

Here’s a color I love: Naples yellow! Mixed with titanium white, it’s like creamy sunshine. It makes me happy just looking at it. I don’t use yellow ochre. Though many artists use it successfully, it’s dull and heavy in my hands.

Finally, I get to paint the metal thingies on the roof! I love painting metal. I’ve taken some artistic license and made them shinier than galvanized steel, more like stainless, just ’cause I love painting shiny things

Oopsy, some of those horizontal lines aren’t very horizontal – gotta fix that!

The final piece, shot outdoors and color balanced so it’s as accurate as possible. (Though I was kinda loving the red tones.)

I don’t know what time of day Karin took her photo, but I’ve been trying to portray the pale lemony light of early morning in San Francisco, with a bit of fog hovering in the distance.

If I’d been doing this image purely as a cityscape, I think I would have left off some of the fussier details, like the metal bands (probably an earthquake retrofit) on the building on the right. But in an abstract state of mind, I sought out and emphasized repeating shapes and rhythms, and those bands gave me an opportunity for a nice vertical rhythm. I tried to hit every number between one and six when I chose how many items to put in each group of images. Maybe it’s just me, but I believe this creates a rhythm which is pleasing in a Sesame Street kind of way.

Chocolate, Vanilla, Chocolate

Lesley Spanos — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:10:17 +0000

Our Different Strokes From Different Folks challenge subject this week is cupcakes. Now, I love cupcakes, even if I don’t eat them. In fact, I firmly believe that some of the most exciting things happening in the arts these days are taking place in cupcake world. If you want to see what I mean, take a look at one of my favorite blogs, Cupcakes Take The Cake. Such creativity! We painters find it hard to do anything that hasn’t been done before, but the cupcake artists are giddy with exploring new territory every day. Or maybe it’s just a sugar high.

Karin’s reference photo was reminiscent of a Wayne Thiebaud painting. He’s one of my absolute favorite artists of all time, so to try to copy him would be a sacrilege. I’d fall terribly short of my goal and embarrass myself. Like this:

But I had to try. This first attempt was done with a lot of modeling paste in the “frosting.” I thought I could shape it to look like 3-d, but it was a lot harder than I expected. I mean, do I let the frosting cast its own shadows and light the painting just right when it’s done, or do I paint the shadows in in addition to the texture so if the lighting isn’t just right they will still show? I can’t remember how Thiebaud did it. I just know that mine looked lame no matter what I did to it, and it was impossible to photograph the texture.

So, that’s the tosser.

My second attempt was more traditional, with little texture, and shadows painted in. The hardest part was getting all those little confetti quins the right color in both light and shadow.

Here are a few images taken along the way:

Happy one year anniversary to all Strokers!

First Carousel

Lesley Spanos — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 02:57:26 +0000

I’ve gone from being indifferent to carousels to slightly obsessed in just one week. I took tons of photographs of a couple of different merry-go-rounds at the Indiana State Fair, and I’m sure I’ll be painting more of these fiberglass steeds in the future.

Here’s video of the same carousel I painted:

Looks ordinary during the day, but at night it’s full of sparkle and reflections.

Here are a few images taken along the way:

Winter Glow

Lesley Spanos — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:03:33 +0000

A little practice piece from the weekend. It’s been a couple of months since I’ve had my oils out, so I needed to use them before I forgot how. Snow has always been hard for me, so last winter I took a lot of color notes. Those notes really helped! I must remember to do that more often.

New Mexico Adobe

Lesley Spanos — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:14:50 +0000

I can’t seem to get enough of these art challenges. They so neatly answer the question of “what should I paint next,” while forcing me to explore subjects I wouldn’t normally choose. This painting is my answer to the Wet Canvas Southwest and Western Art forum challenge for May. The photo of an old adobe outside the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico was kindly provided by Diane Cutter. (Check out Diane’s really cool woodcut of Karin Jurick’s dog Jack! It was completed after the deadline, so it didn’t get posted on the DSFDF blog.)

Here are a few images taken along the way:

I toned the canvas with shades of yellow and red acrylic, then sketched in some rough guidelines with ink.

Here I’ve started painting in oils, keeping with the orange theme. I make a mental note to myself to keep the shadows warm and the light cool.

If you’ve been following my blog, you already know that I’m an indecisive painter. I don’t start with a plan, and I don’t know what looks “right” until I see it. I’m the artist equivalent of the woman who tries on two dozen different outfits (some several times) before choosing one, or moves the living room furniture repeatedly to see what feels right. My paintings have to try on a few looks before I know which one I can live with.

For starters, I’ve tried painting what I saw in the reference photo, a series of white clouds. I liked the sky in the photo, but my version lacks punch. Really, it’s about as interesting as a bag of cotton balls. I paint it out and try…

…a simple cloudless sky. Which is even more boring than the previous version. You’d think it would be easy to do a sky like this, and it probably is for many artists. Not me. Mine has that awful chalky look (in spite of using zinc white), and I can’t get the color right. I wish I had a tube of cerulean blue.

So, in frustration, I paint it out again…

…and slash in the hint of a distant storm. Hey, I like that! It makes the foreground pop. Okay, it’s a keeper.

See that mesa to the right? I like how it turned out, too!

And now it’s gone. I almost wish I hadn’t painted those trees over it. Parts of the mesa where supposed to peek through the leaves, but I got a little heavy handed with the foliage.

Then again, maybe it’s better this way. The composition was a little odd before, with a mesa on either side and a house in the middle. Now it has more of a diagonal flow.

Originally I wanted to paint a couple of saddled horses under the tree to give it that old west look, but I chickened out. I think I’ll just sign it and move on before I ruin it!

Madison Avenue

Lesley Spanos — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:00:46 +0000

Here’s another painting for Karin Jurick’s Different Strokes From Different Folks painting challenge.




View Larger Map

Karen tells us that our location is the corner of Madison Avenue and 39th Street in New York City. This is useful information, because it allows me to look it up in Google Maps using Street View.

I can’t paint from a photo unless I can imagine myself inside the scene, and Google Street View helps me do that. I can see what’s behind me, up, down, on the next block, etc. I can even see that beyond that red awning there’s a McDonald’s in case I want some virtual high octane coffee while I paint. Photos are never as good as being there, but Street View is the next best thing. (BTW, if you haven’t seen it yet, check out Bill Guffey’s Virtual Paintout challenge. They paint – with Google’s blessings – from Google Street Views.)

By looking at the Google map, I can see that we’re facing north, and the time of day is probably – as I’d guessed – morning. That will help me make my color choices. Coincidentally, the Google Street View image looks like it was taken about the same time of day that Karin took her photo.

For comparison, I’ve also included Karin’s original reference photo. It’s the same scene, the same size, yet see how different these two images are? Photos DO lie! Always. Neither of these photos is completely accurate. The Google image was taken with a series of wide angle lenses, creating all sorts of distortion and making distances appear much longer than they really are. My guess is that Karin’s was taken with a bit of a telephoto, compressing distances unnaturally. The truth can be found somewhere between these two images.

If I had time, I could try to correct the distortion by drawing the buildings using perspective. But I’m in a rush, and more attracted to the cars than the skyline (I like colorful shiny things!), so I’ll focus just on the lower right corner of the reference for my painting.

Here are a few photos I took along the way:

Hmmm… what color to tone the background? Well, the tail lights are my favorite part of this photo, so let’s try “tail light color.”

The background toning is acrylic. From here on out, I’ll be using oils. I didn’t want to get too fussy, so I’m drawing directly on the panel with a brush and Mars Black oil color.

(Note: The next few in-progress images are were taken in the studio with a camera at night, and I didn’t take the time to color correct them well. Too much red, too little blue.)

The painting progresses, and I can’t make up my mind about the figure on the street corner…

A woman striking a “casual” pose?

A businessman on his way to work?

An indistinct cluster of people?

Yeah, I think I’ll go with that last one.

This final image was done on the scanner and color-corrected so it’s truer to the original painting.

Kalifornia Roll

Lesley Spanos — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:53:35 +0000

A California roll is to sushi what Tex-Mex food is to Mexican cuisine – a Western adaptation of a traditional food using local ingredients more suited to the American palate. You can find them in shopping malls and supermarkets throughout the US.

The California roll is an inside-out roll (Uramaki), with the rice on the outside, because it was thought that non-sushi-loving Americans would balk at the sight of nori (seaweed) on the outside. Inside is avocado, cucumber strips, and some really gross fake crab (Krab) made from molded cooked fish paste. There are many variations of the basic California roll. Some include mayo, cream cheese, and other stomach-churning ingredients. I’ve had them with crab salad inside (real crab, even!), and while the concept grossed me out, they were actually much better than I expected. (The key is to think of it as an hors d’oeuvre rather than sushi.) Some rolls are sprinkled with sesame seeds or fish roe (Tobiko), while others are served plain.

I did the painting as part of Karin Jurick’s Different Strokes From Different Folks web challenge. If you go here, you can see the original reference photo for this challenge, as well as the other artist’s interpretations.

I love being part of this challenge, but I almost didn’t do this one because it was such a difficult photo for me. Here are some of the issues I had with it:

There are few shadows to define the form, and I rely on shadows a lot in my painting.
There is fish roe on the rolls. I don’t do fish roe of any kind. Can’t even look at it without my stomach doing flip flops, due to a bad New Year’s Eve experience with some caviar a few years ago.
The rolls are drenched in shoyu.

I decided the only way for me to do this painting was to gather some of my own visual information, and combine it with Karin’s photo. I needed to see what color the rice would be without the shoyu, and where the shadows would fall if I changed the lighting. I make simple “mom” style sushi rolls at home, and we had some leftover rice in the rice cooker, so I made a quick mock-up using only rice. The rice wasn’t properly prepared for sushi, so I added a bit of rice vinegar and nuked it to make it stickier. Fortunately, it didn’t have to taste good. All I needed was a “blank” so I could add the characteristics of Karin’s sushi on top of it.

I arranged the pieces like the ones in Karin’s photo, and played with the light and the arrangement of the other elements. Here’s my final choice:

I wish I’d moved the wasabi out of the shadow, maybe to the upper right corner.

I used a 12 x 9″ gessoed masonite panel. To tone the surface, I used several thin layers of acrylic paint, separated by clear Atelier binder medium, and finished with a top coat of binder mediun. You can’t really see it in the photos, but the layering gave it a tortoise shell-like surface with lots of depth. I almost didn’t want to cover it, and promised myself that I’d leave as much exposed as possible.

The drawing was laid in using a permanent black pen. Mistakes on binder medium can be erased with a cotton swab moistened with rubbing alcohol.

Then I began painting in oils, using lots of red in the rice to prep it for the reflected greens from the plate.

Just feeling my way around here, trying to figure out the colors. The aqua of the plate was particularly hard for me, but eventually I realized it needed to be dirtier and more yellow.

I tried to stay as true to the original photo as possible when painting the sushi. Everything else is mine, but I wanted those to be Karin’s sushi… minus the shoyu and roe. Because the Krab and avocado in the reference were brown from the soy sauce, I had to create those colors from memory. In the end, I felt the greatest sense of accomplishment from painting those two ingredients.

I kept the plate and mock sushi in front of me, and ended up painting more from life than from the photo. So much subtle color is lost in a photo!

For once I remembered to leave space around the edges for the frame. If I hadn’t, that shoyu dish at the top probably would have been cut off. I want that dish almost kissing the edge of the painting, which probably breaks someone’s rules of composition.

Here’s the finished piece, with the edges cropped as they might be by a frame. The final touch was a drop of shoyu on the plate as a tribute to the original photo.

I’ve dubbed this a “Kalifornia Roll” because it’s filled with Krab.

The Girls

Lesley Spanos — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:32:35 +0000

I can’t say that “Sex and the City” has ever been one of my favorite television shows. I’ve laughed at times – sometimes really hard – when I’ve stumbled across it, but it’s not anything I’ve ever gone out of my way to see. It’s hard for me to relate to characters who obsess over shoes and clothes. Though I can understand a good, healthy obsession with sex.

So I’m surprised at myself for painting a tribute to Sex and the City. The source of inspiration was a photo of a wig shop window taken by artist Karin Jurick, posted on her Different Strokes From Different Folks challenge. It’s a very cool image, with many stylized wig heads to choose from. My first thought was a take on the Rolling Stones “Some Girls” album cover, but then I noticed these four “girls” grouped together, and from that point on all I could see was Samantha, Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda. (I had to look those names up on Wikipedia.) I searched the web for photos of the actresses, because the only face ingrained in my memory is Sarah Jessica Parker’s.

Here are some photos taken along the way. Please excuse the poor image quality and uneven lighting, as I was shooting in the studio at night.

This surface is a little unusual for me. It’s a piece of birch plywood I stained with a wash of orange acrylic, then sealed with several coats of Atelier Binder medium. I like this stuff, because it provides good adhesion for the paint, and dries crystal clear. Think of it as a clear primer. The way the paint feels when it glides onto this surface is wonderful – sort of buttery and silky at the same time.

The drawing was inked in roughly using a waterproof pen. I’m reminded once again that I should take more time to get the drawing right, because there were a few problems I could have avoided if I had.

The hair seemed like a good place to start establishing the characters. Kim Cattrall’s ‘do came from a red carpet photo rather than the TV series. For a wig, the height and Marilyn Monroe sweep seemed more appropriate than her straighter TV hair. It doesn’t look like her character, but it’s my favorite head in the painting.

Carrie’s hair wasn’t supposed to be green (I got some black paint in my yellow), but I liked it, so I left it that way. It fit with the look I was going for, a mix of reality and caricature.

How’d Courtney Love get in there?

Okay, I’ll just paint out Courtney’s face and hope to simply suggest Miranda with a blank wig head. Not a bad solution, because my heads were looking too human, and I want some of them to look wiggy.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Now Charlotte has morphed into Lisa Ling…

…but it’s nothing a big pair of sunglasses won’t (mostly) hide.

I left the background as is, just the stained/sealed wood surface. I love the look of the paint next to the wood grain.

And so we end another painting adventure. Thanks for stopping by!

P.S. It’s just occured to me that I have painted characters who idolize fashion with no bodies for their clothes, and no feet for their shoes. No, my girls are all brains and witty dialogue!

Chocolate Mousse Heart Cake

Lesley Spanos — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:26:21 +0000

So for Valentine’s Day, I watched my husband eat cake. We searched several bakeries to find just the right cake. Something oooey-goooey and yummy for him (chocolate, of course), and something visually delightful for me to paint. Don’t pity me – we also found a great deal on a couple of small lobster tails for Valentine’s dinner. The hubby grilled them. OMG, they were amazing, and such a beautiful red-orange color!

Here are some shots I took along the way:

Eventually I’ll get around to painting the whole cake, but for now I decided to start with a slice so the chocolate mousse filling – yet another interesting element – would be exposed.

This is the first time I’ve used Ampersand Gessobord (note spelling – no “a” in “bord”), and it was a little different than painting on canvas. I had to fight the acrylic underpainting to get it to go on evenly, but overall, I was pleased. Any problems I have with it are just a matter of inexperience. Because it’s smooth, this stuff will be better than canvas for reproductions. Nothing screams “reproduction” louder than a canvas weave printed on flat paper.

I’m really enjoying my new tube of M. Graham Terra Rosa. It works great for painting the red-toned chocolate frosting and cake. What I’m sorely missing in my palette is a good cool red or magenta so I can mix a nice magenta-pink color for the berries.

Here’s most of the painting blocked in, with details just starting to take shape. The blackberry in the foreground was starting to look really sumptuous at this point, like it’s bursting with sweet juice. I wish I’d added just a tiny bit more detail and stopped there.

But did I? Noooo! Of course not! I ignored the nice suggestions made after my last post, and worked it until the paint was exhausted and screaming for mercy. The direction the painting was going was definitely “worse” rather than “better,” so I decided to call it done and post it. That’s the “finished” piece, up above.

As I wrote this post, I found myself whining about how the blackberry in the foreground didn’t look as good as it did in the last stage. That berry really bothered me. It was all I could see. It’s always like that for me – if I paint twenty things right, it’s the one wrong thing that grabs 100% of my attention. “Why whine?” I asked myself. “Just fix it!”

So I grabbed it off the drying rack and blacked out both berries before I lost my nerve:

Once I did that, the whole balance of the painting changed for the better. The top berry receded into the background more, and the foreground berry no longer competed for attention with the chocolate frosting. The composition didn’t look as jumbled because I’d made the primary and secondary elements more clear.

In the end, the trick was in putting on just enough detail to make black holes look like berries, without ending up with the same too-detailed- too-light berries I painted before. I redid them a couple more times, and learned a little something each time. I made a conscious effort to keep the colors dark, and use as few brushstrokes as possible. I’m satisfied now.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my ramblings!

Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail

Lesley Spanos — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:23:01 +0000

Fortunately I had my camera with me the day I saw this Harley in a parking lot at the Indiana State Fair. I’m not a motorcycle person, but this thing was a work of art. It was gorgeous. The chrome was blindingly shiny, reflecting sky and clouds and earth. The painting is small, only 9 x 12″, but I’m imagining how cool it would look painted life-size or a little bigger.

Painting chrome is new to me, so I fussed with it a lot and was never was completely satisfied. I’m starting to understand it better though. Next time I need to be bolder with the strokes, and think of them as abstract squiggles.

Here are some shots I took along the way:

The canvas was toned with a sloppy mix of acrylics using a big brush. I suppose I should make a better drawing right from the start, but usually I just begin painting with minimal pencil guidelines and refine as I go with paint. But really… that wheel is pathetic, and if I’d started with a good wheel, I could have saved an hour of “refining.”

There’s one part of this painting I love – the background! I made a few pastel color mixtures, thinning the paint a lot, then slopped it on casually. It’s loose and colorful, but not so much that it detracts from the bike.

Finally the big shapes were in place and the wheel was looking less wonky, so I was able to start adding details.

The final step was all about making the chrome “pop” by adding the final darkest darks and lightest lights.

I could probably keep torturing this one for hours, but I think I’ll call it done and get back to painting some desserts. Probably something chocolate. I have a new tube of a color called Terra Rosa sitting here, and it almost looks like chocolate right out of the tube. Can’t wait to try it!

Canyon

Lesley Spanos — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:02:23 +0000

Today I felt the need to break away from small paintings and tiny brushes and cut loose. Funny how I always want to paint loosely, but my paintings get tight anyway. I know that happens to a lot of us, but why? Why is it so hard to leave things a little less refined?

I love the look of paint just doing its thing. My favorite paintings look like piles of paint up close, and something real from a distance. The kind of paintings that keep me walking up to the wall, then back ten feet, over and over, trying to see how the artist created his magic.

I don’t know if I could ever achieve that look, but if I don’t try, I won’t for sure. So on this one I forced myself to keep it loose by using only big brushes and unmixed paint. I think the smallest brush I used here was a #10. What a mess I made! I got paint everywhere – on my hands, on my sleeves, on my coffee mug. Did you know that Shout Ultra Gel laundry stain remover is really good at getting wet oil paint out of clothing? I didn’t until today. It has a little brush attachment on the end that rubs the paint right out. My long-sleeved black T-shirt once again has black sleeves!

The reference is from the Wet Canvas image reference library, and was posted for a challenge on the landscape forum. I’m still working up the nerve to post my version over there.

I was painting so quickly and was so covered in paint, I only got one in-progress shot. For what it’s worth, here it is:

Chocolate Caramel Lava Cake

Lesley Spanos — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:14:59 +0000

The hubby has fully embraced the idea of me painting desserts and him eating them. Thanks to his enthusiastic purchases, I already have hundreds of dessert photos and a backlog of subjects awaiting me! There was this chocolate caramel lava cake he brought home last week, followed by an individual heart cake dipped in white chocolate and swirled with dark chocolate. Then there was the decadent chocolate mousse multi-serving heart-shaped layer cake we both picked out on Valentine’s Day. It had some pretty glazed berries on top that caught the light beautifully, so I’m really looking forward to painting that one sometime this week.

As always, here are some shots taken along the way:

The canvas, toned with acrylics. I toned a handful of these a couple of weeks ago, which is why all the recent ones have been pretty much the same color. This one’s a little dark. I find I like them best when they’re a couple of steps lighter than my darkest shadow color.

The drawing is done with waterproof ink, directly on the canvas.

That bit of caramel on the top was a PITA to do, but I learned a lot and next time it will be easier. What I wasn’t getting at first is that it’s a little translucent, and a tiny bit of light shines through it.

Because the underpainting was too dark, I had to scrub in a halo of light around the cake so it wouldn’t be lost in the background.

This was my first fork. Yes, I was a virgin, but now that I have forked, I must admit that I liked it! It was much less painful than I thought it would be. Just a matter of observing the colors and painting what I saw.

I’ve also been forced to scrub a haze of lighter color on the foreground.

Note to self: Next time make the underpainting lighter!

Added some highlights, and we’re done! It actually looks much better in person than it does in a photo. We’re going to keep this one – I promised it to the hubby for Valentine’s Day.

Tiramisu

Lesley Spanos — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:00:11 +0000

My husband tells me he’s “on board 100%” with the idea of me painting more desserts. He gets to eat them, I get to photograph and paint them. Years ago, it would have driven me insane to look at something like this and not eat it, but now I find I really am over sugar.

So for our latest effort he brought home this Tiramisu. As Tiramisu goes, it wasn’t the most attractive, but he said it tasted great.

Here are some images taken along the way:

Once again, I started with an acrylic underpainting on one of my homemade 5 x 5″ canvas panels. I could buy panels, but they’d cost more and I wouldn’t have the same kind of control I have with these. If I make them myself, I can make any size I want, and I know exactly what kind of materials were used.

The drawing is done in ink, and the Tiramisu is painted in oils.

I thought the chocolate-covered coffee bean would be the hardest part, but also the most gratifying if I could get it right. It turns out the coffee bean was easy. It was the whipped cream that was hard! I fussed with it quite a bit before deciding I’d done as much as I could with it.

Looking back, I think maybe I should have rounded the cake pieces so they looked more like the biscuits traditionally used, rather than sharp-edged cut strips of cake our bakery used as a shortcut. Sometimes I follow the photo too closely and forget that it’s my painting, and I can build my painted Tiramisu any way I want.

I’m enjoying these little desserts so much, I’m already planning a series of them so I can group a couple dozen of them together on a poster. My only worry is that my husband will gain 20 lbs if I keep painting this stuff.