50 Paintings in 50 days

New photo this morning, I corrected some of the elements of the painting. Please feel free to critique my paintings by posting a comment. I'm not really happy with the corrections and how the paint was absorbed with this painting and the shadow beneath the soul is wrong, there that's my critique. I'm cooking some rabbit skin glue right now so I can put on the panels then I will put gesso on top and see how that works. I will also do a set of panels with PVA seizing and with acrylic marble dust, I love to experiment. Thank you, Elizabeth

50 paintings in 50 days No.1

At first I wanted to start at least five, but then I figured I was going to get jumbled, so I decided to stick with one at a time. I started at 8:00 p.m. with a 30 minute break and I was able to finish the yellow shoe. Although the panel was prepped with gesso twice, it's absorbing all the oil. I will take the picture over in the morning when the lighting is better, for now mission accomplished. It's not as difficult as I thought, but then again it's just the first one. The most difficult part was getting all the pictures together and once that was done I took them, after the disc jumped out of my purse at work, to the photo lab only to find out the disc was blank. It's amazing how many trials and tribulations I've had to go through just to get to this step. As I was doing research I found what I thought were different and somewhat sexy shoes, but the more research I did, it became clear that by comparison they were conservative.

Acceptance is a powerful thing

I couldn't wait for the 20st Art Gallery to call me, so I called about 2:00 pm to check if I had been ACCEPTED, they said to call back in an hour, one of the judges was late and they were still adding up all the points. I called back at 3:30 pm and the lady said, "You made it". So I went and picked up my 52 6x6 inch panels (2 mistakes allowed, Yikes!). I emailed all my friends and told them to RESERVE THIS DATE: APRIL 11, 2009 we are in. Now the hard part... it's 11:13 pm and I have been working on fixing this blog so I can post my progress in an effort to make it difficult for me to procrastinate, I'm shaming myself into success. The painting of the above shoes, well that is one of my flops, not impressive at all, they were eliminated from the competition. Last week when I turned the application in (with the painting of Pink Marabou), they said there were 80 or more applicants so far. Look below this blog to check out my other paintings. More to follow...

You must be my lucky star

This is the third painting I completed to turn in to the 20th Street Art Gallery in Sacramento. I used a solvent/medium (it's supposed to make it dry in as few as three hours), since I only had about 48 hours for it to dry before turning it in to the gallery. When I woke up in the morning I checked and to my surprise, it wasn't dry. I remembered leaving paintings in my car in 100 degree weather and they would dry in a couple of days, so I thought heat makes them dry fast and then I thought oven. I researched the Internet and some people had tryed, however they mentioned 350 degrees for 15 minutes and you have to babysit the painting, I thought explosion! they also mentioned the paintings had turned brown. Since I had to go to work, I decided what made it brown was the high heat (wrong). I left my painting in the oven while I went to work, low setting 140 degrees for three hours. I came home and ...brown, the color of Cafe Latte. My only choice was to turn in Pink Marabou. A couple of problems, I didn't use drying medium and the painting was still wet and tacky to the touch. The other problem; it had dirt stains from the fan I had pulled from the basement to make it dry faster. I took a needle and went to work removing all the specs carefully. It looked fair, not great, but what choice did I have? This pair of Dolce & Gabanna shoes were worn by Madonna from 1992-1994, perhaps when she was singing "You must be my lucky star". Not so lucky for me they ended up baked and brown.

Pink Marabou

I submitted my application last Wednesday to 20Th Street Art Gallery for a show called 50 Paintings in 50 Days and by Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009 I will find out if I have been accepted. If I get accepted you will be able to see my progress on this blog. The painting theme I submitted is "My Girlfriend's Shoes" the credit for the title goes to Sherri Adams, Deputy D.A., whose shoes are fascinating and of the latest style. My sample painting is Pink Marabou and it was the second shoe painting I completed for this show. I'm sure that if I have to paint 50 shoes I will be cured of buying any more shoes for a long time, resulting in tremendous savings.

The artists begin painting February 1 and must submit all 50 paintings March 25. The show will be on exhibition in Sacramento's second Saturday art walk April 8.