Wendell

Wendell  April 5 1996-October 25 2010

And God asked the feline spirit
Are you ready to come home?
Oh, yes, quite so, replied the precious soul
And, as a cat, you know I am most able
To decide anything for myself.

Are you coming then? asked God.
Soon, replied the whiskered angel
But I must come slowly
For my human friends are troubled
For you see, they need me, quite certainly.

But don't they understand? asked God
That you'll never leave them?
That your souls are intertwined. For all eternity?
That nothing is created or destroyed?
It just is....forever and ever and ever.

Eventually they will understand,
Replied the glorious cat
For I will whisper into their hearts
That I am always with them

I just am....forever and ever and ever.

 Wendell and his baby picture

Our 14 year old Wendell recently become ill and there was no hope for recovery. 

We had to let him go. Our home was filled with joy, amusement, and affection by the huge personality of this wonderful being.

He was the love of our lives.

Value Studies

After my recent workshop with Carol Marine I'm aware that I need to study values to strengthen my paintings. When she had us mix a 'middle' gray, no one got it. All were too dark. So, I mixed and matched values right on my gray scale value chart. If I squint these grays blend into the backgrounds and that's how you know you're right on.  Values and composition are the most important elements of a painting. I also did a color wheel using Prussian Blue, Quinacridone Red and Cad Lemon.

Pour Me a Cup

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I picked up this little teapot in The Mother Load a cool little shop in Bonita, Florida. This is the first painting I've done of it and I think I'll take a page out of my friend and teacher Carol Marine's book and paint the thing until I turn into a teapot. That probably won't happen, of course, but you know what I mean.

I am also holding a 3 hour painting class on Saturday mornings from 10 to 1 through December.  I'll do a demo and then we'll paint from a still life concentrating on good composition, accurate values and carefully placed brushstrokes. Email me at WENDL15@verizon.net to sign up. 

Daily Catch

This is an experiment with a complicated subject. It's done from a photo I took in Woodstock, Vermont last Fall. I can see that some parts are a little fussy and overworked but the area just to the right of the fisherman is my favorite. This is 9x12 on Pintura panel and will be available in my Open Studios Sale November 20and 21.

Lurking

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Tonight I met up with some of my fellow Girls Just Wanna Paint 'homies' and had dinner at a fabulous local restaurant called 'Hola' right here in town. We viewed our collective 'door' paintings and had a fabuluos meal. Here is my latest struggle with reflective surfaces. The lurker is the onion ;) 

Lobster Boat, Green Harbor

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This is the finish of the plein air painting I started a few posts back. I finished it off using artistic license, eliminating unnecessary elements and adding color where I thought it would work. It is most important to remember to edit your paintings while composing the scene. All of the elements must work together to lead the eye through the painting to the focal point. The problem many painters have is to try to literally reproduce the scene, often including confusing or odd elements that just happen to 'be there'. 

Standing By

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I picked up this cool bottle at a yard sale for 50 cents. It has lots of green in it so I used a lavender background and a light teal ground to set it upon. I love to paint white carnations because of the dramatic lights on the petals.

Going Green

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Okay, it's a corny title but it's late and the Red Sox are losing (eliminated) and that's my story and I'm stickin' to it :D

It was fun painting this, anyway.