Monday, June 22, 2009

Ficus on a Cloudy Morning






















This is an oil painting on hardwood, approximately 20"x24".

Yesterday morning, after going to Gelson's to pick up some bagels and lox (because if you give a dad some garlic-scallion cream cheese, he's gonna want the lox and bagels), we went farther east on Green, close to Hill, to an area with larger, undecorated ficus trees. I painted this from one of the photos I took yesterday morning of the trees. (The garlic-scallion cream cheese is my own version of the addictive, Pinnacle Bagel cream cheese. Pinnacle Bagel is in Greenwich Village, so not available for our morning walk.)

In my own version of rule-following, I'm not posting this with the tree sketches from life (see June 20 post) because I used a photograph.

7 comments:

  1. That's an interesting rule - I think your sketching might inform your painting even if was of another tree.

    I love the light coming through a bit in the top right and the touches of red!

    Now I'm hungry for bagels.

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  2. I'm hungry too.

    Your trees are like wandering hands and fingers -- lots of motion, activity, interest.

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  3. I actually prefer a minimal palate. Nice work.

    I had a bagels for breakfast: sans the lox-cheese and garlic.

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  4. Thanks, all. AH, I think wandering hands and fingers is a really good description.

    Katherine, the "rule" I referred to is actually a challenge by Vivien Blackburn to draw trees from life. Because I used a photo reference, even though I was also painting from feeling and personal experience, I decided it didn't really fit her specs.

    This post made me hungry, re-reading it. To add even more, I'll just mention the apricots, including a black velvet apricot, that I just had with a bit of dark chocolate with chile. (I've been obsessed with black velvet apricots for several summers now, and the one I just had was delicious.)

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  5. One more bit of trivia: In Israel, the word for cream cheese is "philadelphia." Bagels and cream cheese are an American thing, not a middle eastern.

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  6. I love the sense of rhythm moving across the surface of the canvas in these.

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  7. Thanks, Shanna. I went and did a little life drawing today, and having done this painting definitely affected my drawing.

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