Showing posts with label Utah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Utah. Show all posts

Monday, April 13, 2015

Six Sisters and a Dog Painting

Patience is a Beggar's Virtue by Catherine Darling Hostetter


Do you have a sister? I do and a very good one at that! Saturday I was planning on going to a Utah Watercolor Paint-out in Salt Lake City. They were going to paint train cars. I don't really have a set up for plein air (painting outdoors), so I was looking through all my stuff for something to use (like a folding chair, folding table etc). It wasn't long before I heard my phone ring and guess who? My sister Debbie!

She was calling to see if I wanted to go to "What a Woman Wants" at the South Towne Expo Center. My sister is a lot of fun, and I love hanging out with her, so I said yes!
We planned on going at 10:00 am and I figured I could make it to the paint-out which was at 1:00 pm.

So what does a woman want? Apparently the vendors there thought clothing, jewelry, crafty decorations and essential oils was what was wanted. It was fun to look at all the stuff. I have an art show in a couple of weeks, so I also looked at the way the vendors displayed their merchandise.

The WWW show featured guest presenters on stage. One that interested my sister and I were "Six Sisters". They are sisters that grew up in Utah and when they began to reach adulthood and some were getting married and moving out of state. To keep in touch with each other they began sixsistersstuff.com blog. They shared recipes and craft projects and soon they noticed they had a following.

Since their blog start in 2011, they have published cookbooks, do blog conferences and I don't know, sounds like they have a lot of fun together. I can understand this having a fun sister myself. Only in their case it's "the more the merrier"!

Anyhoo, on Saturday they demonstrated some of their recipes. One that I thought was interesting and tasty (they served samples afterwards) was the Funfetti Cake Batter Dip If you like to lick the bowl when you bake a cake, this dip is for you! You dip Vanilla wafers in the dip. Yum!

To make a long story a little shorter, I didn't make it to the paint-out. No worries though, there is always one another day.

I mentioned a dog painting in my title, didn't I? My artist friend, Sandi Olson curates an art display at Great Harvest in Sugar House. She asked me to pick up my aspen painting from the last show and to bring in an animal painting. It inspired me to paint a new painting for the show, a cute black lab-mix.

I titled the painting: Patience is a Beggar's Virtue



If you are a Salt Lake City local, and love animal paintings visit 
Great Harvest in Sugar House at 21st and 21st. 
Be sure and check out the Six Sisters blog for lots of yummy looking recipes.







Saturday, February 14, 2015

Daily Paintings 3 & 4: Trial and Error


I am continuing painting in watercolor. Since these daily paintings are studes, I have been painting on Canson 140 lb. paper. This is not my preference of papers, but I had a pad of this paper so why not use it! I have a few sheets of the really good stuff, but thought I would use it for the Spring Show for the Utah Watercolor Society.

The Canson paper is not too bad though, better than some papers. This Canson is not bad if you don't over work it, and if you like to lift color, it is good for that. All in all, I figure if I can learn to paint successfully on this paper, I should do ok on the better paper. Is that logical?

So on day three, I painted 3 sheep. I did them with a little landscape behind them. I am not big on doing landscapes, but I have a many friends that are excellent plein air painters, and they go to plein air paint outs and have a lot of fun... so I decided I needed to practice painting landscapes so I could do some plein air this summer.

As I did the landscape, I really overworked it. It turned out ok, but it's not my favorite painting. I will show it to you anyway, just because I feel kind of obligated since it's one of my daily paintings.


Three Sheep
6"x 10"


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You can be sure that I will be working on landscapes again... You know, practice makes perfect, or so I hope! But for Valentines Day I am not going to do a landscape!

Oh by the way, I forgot to mention that I may not post daily paintings everyday, just because I figure it is more important to get the painting done for the day, and sometimes that doesn't leave time to blog about it. So today is a double whammy!

Watercolor takes a lot of thought, and I decided that my daily painting for today I would put down color and try not to go back to it,so I don't over work it.

I drew another sheep, a big woolly one and since the paper is great for lifting, I decided I would do some lifting. I like the way this one turned out. I still overworked the trees in the background though. *sigh*.


Fancy  Ewe
8" x 10"


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Monday, November 11, 2013

Blind Leading the Blind

Each year the Springville Museum of Art holds a juried show that focuses on Religious art. This year I created a painting titled "Blind Leading the Blind". My reference is from the teachings of Christ in Luke 6:39 (KJV).



It is painted in acrylic and is 24" x 30" x 2" on gallery wrapped canvas. I took it down to Springville on Saturday. The show will be juried this week and of course I am hoping it will get in.

I like to include words or quotes in my art occasionally. In this painting I put a quote that I thought was pretty profound. It reads:

"The world today is in serious trouble. It is struggling for survival in a sea of selfishness, hate, greed and sin. They travel and cry for peace but do not want peace in righteousness."

To me that translates to this; many in the world have a bad case of spiritual blindness turning from the true source that gives us light and knowledge.

The leader of the group appears quite confident as he leads his followers. I came very close to adding the words coming from his mouth: "the ditch is this way" (see Luke 6:39). I think that we are not totally blind when we make choices and I think neither is this guy. The women in the center is labeled as trusting in the arm of flesh. The fellow behind her appears to be not only spiritually blind but deaf as well.

I often take a photo of my paintings, but my camera battery was dead so I had to borrow one. Apparently this camera is sensitive to capturing good pics of people because when I snapped a shot of the painting, a message appeared. It read: "Did someone blink?"

It made me chuckle and say; no they're just blind.








Monday, October 01, 2012

I Have a Show Mid October!

I am busily painting for my show at Local Colors. The theme is 'Falling' (tis the season, fa la la!) and I decided my interpretation of the theme is Falling for Salt Lake. I chose that because recently I painted the gigantimus Snelgrove Ice Cream Cones located in Sugar House. I have loved them since I was 5 years old! I imagined what it would be like to lick a cone that size. So it was only natural that I painted somebody to lick it! 


I had such fun painting this that I decided to do my whole show of  icons and landmarks unique to the Salt Lake Valley, and of course they will be tainted with a whimsical twist. I will give you a sneak preview here on my blog as I get my paintings done. I am on my fifth one right now. If you have any suggestions for SLC landmarks for me to paint, let me know!

The show opens Friday, October 19 at Local Colors gallery, 1054 E. 2100 S. SLC. 
There will also be a drawing to enter for a painting.. more on that later!