Late Afternoon Streetcar Ride...Oil Painting New Orleans

Late Afternoon Streetcar Ride.....16x20.....oil on canvas.....$350

I like the way this turned out.  My goal was to make the streetcar the star and not noodle around with the background too much.  My favorite things about this painting are the colors and the fact that the headlight looks like it is actually lit.  

Baker's Half Dozen....Oysters....oil painting

Baker's Half Dozen.....16x20....Oil.....$350

This is a fun painting that I did for my upcoming outdoor shows.  I think oysters are cool to paint, but very hard to capture.  They are such a funky, interesting food that I couldn't resist.  I have been on a seafood kick lately.  More to come soon.

Oil Painting of New Orleans Streetcar in the Garden District...

The streetcar is finally finished. I worked on it yesterday and today. This one is 40x30" and I really love it! In person, in this view, the streetcar looks like it is coming out of the painting straight into your living room.

I don't know about everyone else, but every now and then I look around and think, "You know, I really am an artist now." For years, when someone would call me an artist I would say, "I just dabble" or "I'm just artsy". So it was a big step when I finally would say that "Yes, I am an artist." And I still have trouble believing it.

I have attended lots of art shows and talked to lots of other artists over the last couple of years and I have found that (with one exception, and I speak of Bob Tompkins) no matter how big an artist gets they still are insecure about their work in some way. It truly amazes me to talk to someone that I think is way on down the road to success and hear them say that they were really worried about this, or that they feel out of place compared to this or that artist, or something to that effect. Once I realized that everyone else had doubts, too, it made me know that I may never feel like I have "made it". And that's probably a good thing. You never need to feel like you don't need to keep learning, trying to get better or improving yourself...expecially in this job.

I tried unsuccessfully, to find the author of this quote, as it is one of my favorites. If anyone knows the author, please let me know and I will give credit where credit is due. But for now...

"Simply to be and artist is to have achieved success."

New Orleans streetcar in the Garden District...

For those of you who are following this saga, I have heard from the owner of the other streetcar and he is pleased with the result. I was so glad to hear from him, you just sort of stop breathing and wonder, until you can hear the final verdict. We will just have to wait for it to finish drying and I will send it on to him.

I am embarking on my second streetcar commission now. These are two progress photos. The first one is the drawing and the beginning of the block-in of the sky.

The second one is living proof that I am a bad girl. I am (according to every good artist I know) supposed to block in and get some color on the whole canvas before I finish the detail work on anything in the painting. As you can see in this second photo I did not follow that rule on this one. As they say, rules are made to be broken and this one was. I love this painting and the way it is headed. It is one of those that is just falling onto the canvas. The great artists that I admire (in this style of work, not in other styles necessarily) are able to put two or three strokes on a canvas and represent an entire treetop. The idea is to put the paint on once and leave it. As Brian Simon says, "Let the paint be paint". I tend to fuss with it too much sometimes. This one is starting to get some of the bold strokes that I aspire to. And in talking with the owner, we agreed that the focus needs to be the streetcar, the trees next and then the houses sort of a hint of mood in the background. We want to see that we are going through the Garden District and are not down on Canal Street, but we don't want to see the doorknob on every house.

I am glad this one is going to someone that I like a lot and is nearby, because I may want to visit it. People ask me if I have a hard time letting go of my paintings and normally the answer is no because that is what I paint them for...to go to other places. But every now and then, one of them makes me wish I had more walls.