Goat-Day 5

© Ellen Blonder

Painting a white goat is so tricky. All day I've been pushing the darker tones. I'll have to revisit the fur once some of the plants are painted in. This is a slightly cropped view.

Goat-Day 4

© Ellen Blonder

Working on the goat's face, and it's hard to keep those eyes that far apart. Makes me wonder what they see.

Goat-Day 3

© Ellen Blonder

This looks very rough still, but laying in the dark values will help me keep the goat from being too light overall. I'm adding a pair of Brazilian cardinals to the foreground, among my favorite birds on the island.

Goat-Day 2

 © Ellen Blonder

Instead of my usual procedure of painting in the featured animal, I need to work out the values all around the almost-all white goat.

Goat-Day 1

© Ellen Blonder

The goat that I painted in the large Kauai painting (see March 16, 2011 post) deserved to be painted again in greater detail. Here he is on a 20 x 20-inch canvas.

Prints for Sale

© Ellen Blonder

After months of planning, I'm happy to announce the opening of my store on etsy.com. I'll be selling giclee prints of my artwork. Many of the pieces I've been posting in progress are now available for purchase. Come visit, give me feedback, and tell your friends.

Cotswolds Bouquet

© Ellen Blonder

More Memory Lane. As I went through an old travel folder, I found this sketch of a bouquet, there to greet us in a house we rented in the Costswolds in 1997. The unusual mix of colors made me think at first that the flowers and leaves were artificial.

Menorca 1981

© Ellen Blonder

Leafing through my sketches from my 1981 European trip (see yesterday's post), I came across this, from our stay on Menorca. I seem to have sketched as much about the food as the landscape.

Freiburg 1981

© Ellen Blonder

My sister Julie just told me they're going to Freiburg, Germany, this summer, which prompted me to find my sketches from my overnight stay there in 1981. We stayed at the Kreuz Gasthaus, and the building at the bottom was outside our window. The  five-inch-long room key impressed me enough to sketch it. The chickens in the backyard produced the eggs for our breakfast. I hope it hasn't changed.

Happy Almost-Spring

© Ellen Blonder

Back on the drizzly mainland, eagerly awaiting spring. Here's an unpublished watercolor I did for a peach cookbook proposal a while back.

Kauai Painting Revisited-Day 7

© Ellen Blonder

I'll still need to add details to the palm fronds in the distance and define the background foliage a bit, but this painting finally works better.

Kauai Painting Revisited-Day 6

© Ellen Blonder

The palm fronds will need more work, but they're all painted in. They're really too big for the tree, but I like how they hold the painting in.

Kauai Painting Revisited-Day 5

© Ellen Blonder
Underpainted the palm fronds today to mark out where they are before going back to add shadows, highlights and sharpen overlaps. I actually saw the goats eating palm fronds that had been cut down. How do they do that?

Kauai Painting Revisited-Days 3 and 4

© Ellen Blonder

© Ellen Blonder

We encountered a magnificent goat on a recent drive, and I thought he might enjoy the scenery. I also added some clouds to the sky, but many will be obscured when I paint in the palm leaves.

Kauai Painting Revisited-Day 2

© Ellen Blonder

It's going to look rough for a while, but I already like the layout better. Funny, the main tree that was painted first before (see in progress below) is the one thing that made this painting not work for me now.

 © Ellen Blonder

 © Ellen Blonder

Kauai Painting Revisited-Day 1

© Ellen Blonder

One of my best art teachers in college often stated, "Never think something you've done is so good that you can't do it again," meaning that it was so precious it was beyond improvement. The main tree in this painting has been bugging me since I finished it last year (see post). I thought I was finished, and I didn't have the heart then to paint it out after so many hours working on it. Today, I was finally of a different mood, and I already feel better about it.