Monday, February 16, 2009

Tulip oil painting and nude figure sculpture

"Tulip" 2.5x2.5 oil on canvas
Well Linda, here's the tulip I was painting while on the phone with you! I'm terrible! This was the freshest bloom left of my husband's lovely tulip bouquet that he came home with last Friday. It was so artsy with lanky stems that drooped down and each tipped with tulip in a beautiful red shade. We normally just go out to nice dinner for Valentines, but this year I got flowers, chocolates, a very thoughtful card, even some cash, dinner and show! Well we passed on the show since they were all goofy ones at the theater. :-p

I originally had a teenie landscape on this canvas because the view across my window was inviting with the sun hitting the pine trees and the house across the lake. Though I actually finished it, I decided the canvas was best saved for another still life so I took a napkin and wiped it off! I was just as pleased to satisfy my urge to paint the scene as I was to save the canvas for another piece! You see from the glare that it still have left over light source from my window.

It took a while to get started today as usual. But today was even more inconvenient because we had to clean up the house for company all weekend long lol When we clean up, things get thrown all over the place so it takes a some thinking to re-locate the usual items that are normally within my reach.

This is my only sculpture and I'm glad I took a couple photos before I ended up giving it to the model. It's 10 inches tall. I enjoyed it so much, working from a live model that had to be turned on a revolving stand every 20 minutes. We had to work fast! And when some of us weren't quite ready to let go of the view, we pushed our sculpting stands that were on wheels to find the same view again! I do wonder how much of that hectic energy is transferred to the poor model that had to maintain the pose and attitude. Not bad for my first sculpure, it would be so much fun to pick it up again at some point hopefully before I'm 100 years old.

15 comments:

  1. your tulip just glows! And that sculpture is amazing! Was this a class? What's the material? tell me more!

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  2. Thanks Hillary! I couldn't capture the glowing red where the petals were backlit...if I were painting in acrylics, it might have been napthol crimson or something. But I guess this rendition isn't so bad after all :) The sculpting class with Don Treadway when I was in California.

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  3. Lovely tulip! Glad that you had a wonderful Valentine's day. I love this sculpture. Great posture. She is a lucky model!

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  4. Love the rich colors of the tulip! Lovely sculpture, wish I could find time to do some also!

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  5. Erika, that was a good sculpture. I've taken a lot of sculpture classes and I was never very good at it--straight realism-- even though I was used to working with clay. I hope you get the opportunity to sculpt again, should that be something you wish to do.

    The tulip is excellent and glowing.

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  6. Hi Akiko, I really enjoyed working with the mode...I think this was 2 days of work lol but I was happy to give her the sculpture because I didn't have the time to finish it and get it fired (I was leaving the state).

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  7. Gail thanks! What artist wouldn't enjoy building with their hands right? It's a medium each one of us should try out!

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  8. Theresa gosh I never would have thought you of all people wouldn't be good at it. You paint figures so well. I must say, when I get a chance to do it again, I would consider leaning more toward stylizing it a little; I think I would have enjoyed it more.

    Glad you like my li'l tulip :)

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  9. 'allo, china doll...I, too, enjoy sculpting. However not enough to finish them...foundry, bronze, blah, blah. I can't even get paintings framed!

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  10. What a bright and beautiful tulip! I love the sculpture! You should keep it up! A teacher once told me that it was good to take up sculpture because it makes you a better painter as well.

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  11. Red gawd I would have just wanted to finish the piece and got it fired. I know how expensive foundries are ...but I actually like the ceramic look more. Yeah, this industry is expensive lol

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  12. Hi Michelle! I bet I'd be able to confirm what your teacher said had I stuck with it longer, but I have a feeling he was correct! Welcome to my blog! :)

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Thank you for taking the time to comment ~Erika