The Contemplation of Beauty

8x10 Trompe l'oeil 

Still Life and Hudson Valley Landscape

"I wist not what to wish, yet sure, thought I

If so much excellence abide below,

How excellent is He that dwells on high!

Whose power and beauty by his works we know;

Sure he is goodness, wisdom, glory, light,

That has this underworld so richly dight:

More heaven than earth was here, no winter no night."

--Ann Bradstreet excerpt from Contemplations

Still Life with Prudhon Academie

Drawing on board

Under-painting

Block-in first color layer

second layer

Final Layer

Simple new still life, my ubiquitous pewter pot (this is the third or fourth painting to feature it) and a Prudhon academie. Giving credence to the adage "well begun is half done"  I'm moving quickly through this painting, which is good because I have my next still life in mind already and I need to start it before cherries are out of season.  Its 11x14, I'm starting to really enjoy working smaller, mostly because I can complete them faster, which suits my ever-present readiness for the next painting (which in my head is always better than the one I'm working on).

Gathering Flowers

24x36 Maybe this one should be titled "check out how much I've improved".  I repainted a painting I did in the fall of 2010.  I was never really happy with it so I decided to fix it, and so much was wrong that fixing it turned into completely repainting it.  It's a portrait of my cousin picking flowers on my Grandmother's farm.  The bottom photo is what I painted earlier, the likeness wasn't very good, the proportions were off, the background was boring and I didn't finish it very well.  Now I have a much better likeness, the pose is still a little stiff, but I couldn't do much about that, so I changed the background to give it some rhythm.  I also fixed the proportions, made her taller and gave her a smaller head, I also changed the position of the hands.  Basically the only thing I kept was the bush in the bottom left.

Still Life with Vermeer

My most recent still life, so recent it might not even be done yet.  I'm having trouble getting a decent picture, because of all of the dark values, I'm getting a lot of glare.  The top picture is in better focus and has less glare, but because I put a spotlight right on it, the top figure looks brighter than the cloth, so the bottom picture is more accurate that way.  I'm going to fool around some more and see if I can get a better picture. But anyway, it is 14x18 oil on panel as usual.  The picture in the background is Vermeer's Christ in the house of Martha and Mary.

(IN)organic: oil on copper

Here's a fun one I did a while back. I took copper sheeting and nailed it to a 1x8 piece of oak. The copper is so soft that I just wrapped it around the edges almost like wrapping canvas. Then I took a scouring pad and went to town on it, roughing up the surface so the paint would adhere, and distressed the edges, pounding it with a hammer. I laid flake white down for the "paper", clouding it out as I went up. The technical drawing is a helicopter part, and then I placed the Lily over, going past the paper into the cloudy part to emphasize the natural/organic.

Portrait of Dan Mitchell

I painted my father in law this summer, which was great because I seem to paint women most often, so it was a great change of pace. I'm going to have to re-post pictures, because I ended up fiddling with it a little more since I took this. It's 18x24, my usual oil on linen affixed to a board.

Master Copies

I've decided to start doing master copies to start learning more from master artists. I was going to order really high quality prints from The Art Renewal Center, but they ended up being really pricey, so I just ordered some from Allposters.com. My first is a 12x12 copy of Bougereau detail.

I'm working with a limited palette of white, black, raw umber, cad red, cad yellow, and ultramarine blue.

Expecting Persephone

"Expecting Persephone" 24x30 oil and 22 kt gold and copper leaf on linen. This was a real learning painting for me. I struggled through a number of spots and even though I am not entirely satisfied with it (really when am I ever?) I am proud of myself for pushing through some big problems and I learned alot. To see the in progress photos:http://leahrmitchell.blogspot.com/2011/03/expecting-persephone.html

Dragon Fan

Well, I've finally finished a couple of paintings. Here is "The Dragon Fan" 16x20 oil on linen. For all of the in progress photos look at http://leahrmitchell.blogspot.com/2011/02/dragon-fan.html

Andre Reading

I asked one of my brothers to sit for me recently, he was on spring break from grad school, he agreed to do it, but had a ton of homework so he read while I painted it. It was a really comfortable time of reading and painting and chatting and I hope that comes through in the painting. It is oil on canvas, 22x28 (I think) and I spent between 6 and 8 hours on it.

Hanging the Wash

18x24 oil on linen. This Painting is currently in the winter show at the Water Street Studios gallery. I painted this one off a photograph Joe took of Verity and I hanging the sheets on the line while we were on vacation at my grandmother's farm. Don't worry it's not a self portrait, for all of you thinking "hey, isn't her hair darker and isn't she a bit heftier than that?" I've always liked genre paintings, especially mothers and children. Rather than try for a tightly rendered finished version, I did this alla prima and tried to keep a fresh feeling to the brush strokes. Available at Water Street Studios in Batavia: 950.00

Here's a link to the blog of another artist at Water Street who does wonderful vintage inspired mixed media work Rebecca Ersfeld for Vintage Living.

Still life "PEWTER" 5X7

This year one of my plans is to do a number of small still lifes (5X7 8X10) with just one or two simple items, in order to push my skills and require a greater attention to detail. This is one of those. I picked just a simple pewter pitcher that I worked a very limited palette on. Available: 197.00

Two Recent Still Lifes

Here are two still lifes that I recently completed. (oil on linen of course) The top is 18x24, I painted it over last summer and had to take it down when I moved studios. It is based around the small robin in the front, that is my mother's and has always sat out at her house as long as I can remember. Compositionally I'm not so sure how strong it is and there are a couple of areas that didn't I didn't finish as highly as I would like to, but it is a a definite step forward from my last large still life. Directly under it is an 8x10 still life of a tea pot that my Dad brought home from China years ago. I'm trying to do a number of small still lifes over the next year or so that are specifically for a growth in my technical skills, I'm trying to finish each one to a higher level. Tea pot still life is available: 450.00

Composition in Red and Green

8X10 Oil on linen. I'm afraid that my photography skills are somewhat lacking, this photo doesn't quite do the painting justice, but it will have to do. I just finished this painting today and overall, I'm pleased with it.

I ended up taking it off the easel a little sooner than I would have liked, but as I tried to get more and more detail into the finishing process, I realised that I had made some fatal errors in paint application early on. The surface of the paint was too rough and choppy to put in the fine detail that I wanted.

Although I have always been aware that the early layers of a painting are of utmost importance to later work, I suffer a terrible impatience that generally works itself out in hurried brush strokes when I should be the most careful. So as a result I have a painting that is nice, but not quite as finished as I was striving for.

I have decided to paint a series of small still lifes this winter, 8X10 - 11X14 with 1-3 items in them. My goal is to bring each one to a higher level of finish than the previous. When I am satisfied that I am consistently producing work of the quality I want, I will then paint another larger more complicated still life.

My Little Corner of the World

30X40 Genre painting "My little corner of the World" I painted this from a series of photographs that I had my husband take of the kids and me in the kitchen. This is the first painting of this kind that I have ever done, which is why it is unfinished. I've never tried to compose and paint so much from my imagination. So I took it to a level that I felt I had learned all I could from it and would benefit from taking it down and starting something new.

So much of my work right now is simply about learning, my main goal is to improve with each painting I make, tackling different subject matter and continuing to grow my techniques. Because this was the first of its kind I went big, as big as I could, a 30x40 canvas is about the maximum I can comfortably paint in my laundry room/studio. I have an if you're going to fail, fail big sort of philosophy, and while I never expect to fail, a first painting never lives up to my expectations.

Most of my problems in this painting came from relying so heavily on my imagination, and the rest of the issues came from my process, or lack there of.

I started out strong, I made ten or more thumbnail sketches to solidify my concept and composition, I then fleshed it out to make a complete drawing which then I turned in to the full size drawing that I later transferred to canvas. After transferring the drawing in charcoal, I inked it in with india ink and a small brush. Then I blocked in all of the values in burnt umber.

Here's where my process started to break down, rather than continuing to work in an orderly manner with a defined palette and system, I went all over the place, using different palettes and different techniques in different areas of the painting. This lack of process took its toll resulting in a product that I couldn't finish and a choppy look over all rather than a cohesive, rhythmic painting.

Overall, I can't be terribly displeased with the painting, I learned alot and hey, you've got to start somewhere.

Gibbon's Decline and Fall

Fresh off the easel... Still life: "Gibbon's Decline and Fall" Oil on linen adhered to laminated foam core.

Ok, I just pulled this off the easel last week and am sufficiently un-annoyed enough to write about it now. This is the first large (24x30) still life I have been able to do since last summer. I started it in January and have just now finished. For the most part I am pleased with the progress I made in this one, it is not as highly finished as I had originally planned, but sometimes you just have to stop.

Edward Gibbon's 6 volumes, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" Have long been of importance to historians and scholars, not only because of the historic information contained within, but because Gibbon himself was one of the first "modern" historians. The ponderous nature of the set also makes it a bit of an accomplishment to actually read. I bought a nice copy of the set about 6 years back, and this still life set up is the closest I've ever gotten to actually opening one of them.

Gibbon himself is central to the composition, tiding atop the volumes that have forever secured his place in the esteem of bibliophiles and historians everywhere. He is flanked by a globe, signifying the Roman Empire that was considered the whole world, an empty oil lamp for the decent into the dark ages that the world went into after the fall of the Roman Empire and a potpourie holder that shows the potpourie of nations that had been subjegated by Rome that with its fall returned to their own cultural signifigance.

I painted it over the course of several months, working a little bit at a time when I am able. I went for a simple triangular composition in the set up and used two light sources. I actually never made any preliminary drawings on paper, I did however do a charcoal drawing on the canvas using the sight size method, which I find is my preffered method when it comes to still lifes that I want to finish further than a sketch. I also did a small color study to decide on the color scheme and overall color composition.

After finishing the drawing, I blocked in all of the shapes with a single tone wash, the proceded to paint directly. This painting is three layers, not including the drawing and wash. Because I decided to pull it off the easel early, I didn't use much in the way of medium that I would have used otherwise. The first layer of paint was somewhat thinned with turp, the second was paint straight from the tube, and the third I thinned slightly with a linseed and turp medium in a 1:5 ratio.

With this painting I just felt the need to tackle something large, for my next still life, I am going to work much smaller and simpler so that I can finish it to the degree that I want in the time that I have.