Food and Wine

"It's What I Eat For Breakfast" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Aquabord, 5" x 7". Copyright ©2012 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

The idea for painting breakfast comes from Carol Marine’s Paint Your Breakfast Challenge on Daily Paintworks. For me, breakfast is the same every morning: 4% fat cottage cheese mixed with freshly ground flax seed and a variety of oils  – flax, hemp, fish, and coconut. I like the stuff, but my husband can barely choke it down, so for his sake we top it with berries.

A few in-progress images archived along the way:

"Portrait of a Parisian Waitress" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Gessobord, 14" x 18". Copyright ©2011 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

I couldn’t resist painting  a portrait of this lovely waitress from a photo taken by artist/photographer/traveler/blogger Lee Brown. Lee generously lends some of his travel photos to artists in the context of his ADNW painting challenges. Participants get one month to submit their interpretations of his image.  There’s some cool stuff already posted. Go see it here.

I don’t know what I liked more – the quality of the light, or the shape of her hair and all those wispy tendrils. Both were tons of fun to paint.

"Every Stroke Counts" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Multimedia Artboard, 5" x 5". Copyright ©2011 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

A little exercise never hurts. This painting exercise called the Limited Stroke Challenge was posted by artist Nancy Colella on Daily Paintworks. It’s purpose is twofold:  She wanted us to use every stroke efficiently, and to remind us not to be stingy with the paint. Nancy says, “The result will be a rather abstract, simple painting with wonderful surface quality and a “effortless” feel!”

(The part about being stingy with the paint made me think about how varied the goals of artists can be. Artists who paint primarily to sell originals can pile on the paint, creating beautiful textures that beg to be touched. Artists like me, who paint with reproduction in mind, have to think about how the piece will scan, and how it will look in print. Thick, juicy strokes can look cheesy in a flat print.)

We were told to plan in advance how many strokes we thought we’d need to create the painting, then paint it in that many strokes. Hash marks keep a running tally. By definition, a stroke ends when the brush is lifted. Some people did some amazing work in under 30 or 40 strokes, but having done a few 100 stroke paintings with great difficulty, I knew my limitations! I felt it was a sufficient challenge to assign myself a maximum of 75 strokes.  I went over a tiny bit, using 78, because there were some things at the end that I HAD to fix. If I’d had another 25 strokes, I could have fixed the drawing enough to be happy with it.

78 strokes from start to finish. Each stroke is recorded by a hash mark on the paper. You can see how I was falling apart at the end by how my hash marks trail off the paper. Oh, and that's tea in the cup, not coffee, because I was in the tea-drinking portion of my day. The coffee part of my day ends around noon, then I switch to fully caffeinated tea. Later, it's decaf tea. After that, wine. Maybe if I'd waited for the wine part of the day, the painting would have been looser.

UPDATE:

It was bothering me. There were things I had to fix before I could move on to the next painting. So I did. The drawing is still a little wonky, but it’s better than it was:

"Every Stroke Counts" (final) by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Multimedia Artboard, 5" x 5". Copyright ©2011 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

"Chocolate Eclair" by Lesley Spanos. Oil painting on acrylic-toned canvas panel, 5" x 5". Copyright ©2009 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

How many starving children can be fed with one chocolate eclair? I’m listing this little painting on The Daily Paintworks Help the Children of Africa Challenge. Proceeds from the sale will be donated to World Vision to help feed drought-stricken children in Africa.

Here’s how it works:
The painting is up for auction on the Daily Paintworks site. When the seven day auction is over, the winning bidder pays me via the DPW auction website. Then I send 100% of the donation to World Vision, and a receipt as proof of donation to the buyer. Buyer gets the painting, and I get the tax deduction. I’m throwing in free shipping anywhere in the United States.

I want to make sure this painting sells because any amount is helpful, so I’m starting the auction at a low, low price of only $30!

"Cherries and Blue Cheese" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Aquabord, 6" x 6". Copyright ©2011 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

This was my lunch a couple of days ago – a small wedge of Castello-Rosenborg Danish Blue Cheese and some ripe cherries. It was a miserably hot day when I took my plate outside to photograph it, which made the cheese get all melty. Mmmm!

These cherries are painted larger than life. Here are some images taken along the way:

"Crinkle Fries" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Gessobord, 6" x 6". Copyright ©2011 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

Here’s another painting of something I can’t eat. I loved these things when I still ate white potatoes.

These days I have a new love – sweet potato fries! OMG, they are so good! Much tastier than white potato fries, and they barely raise my blood sugar. I serve them with a garlicky dipping sauce made with Greek yogurt. Yum!

A few images from along the way: