Fellow artist Nancy Rhodes Harper

Had the great pleasure of seeing my friend Nancy Rhodes Harper yesterday (briefly) as she stopped in town to deliver new paintings to the Renaissance Gallery. 
  Nancy is a great example of what happens if you keep your head down and keep on working, no matter what.  She's always been a good painter, and she works every day to improve it, and to improve her business networking. What a gal!


 see her work here:
http://theateliergalleries.com/section/329902_Nancy_Harper.html

on the Forgotten Coast

My daughter Elizabeth and I decided to take a quick trip to the beach.  We are staying in Port St. Joe, Fl, not far from Apalachicola.  It just so happens that this week is the Forgotten Coast paintout.  Went to watch the sunset from the marina tonight and there was a group there, painting the sunset and noctournes. Fun! I've never watched anyone try to do a noctourne before, looked kind of tricky to me. Richard Oversmith was one of the painters, I have liked what I've seen of his work. Also ran into Lori Putnam and Dawn Whitelaw at the wet painting display.  Beautiful area here, very quiet.  I've gotten LOTS of boat pictures, there are shrimp boats and oyster boats everywhere. 

Turtle Creek

 There are beach people, and there are mountain people.  I'm a mountain person, myself. I love the cool green-ness of it in the summer, and the sound of a noisy creek.   Today's painting, 6 x8 on panel.
http://www.annestickney.com

WPSE show

Thinking good thoughts about all my painter friends who are in the Corse Gallery's Women Painters of the Southeast Show! Wishing you lots of fun, and many red dots!

Website work...

I finally got busy last night and signed up for a new website, and managed to upload the first few pages! I'm kinda hard headed about websites- I don't like most of the template things most people use, I want to design my own. I'm really liking this Web Plus x5 I got- it's from England. You can actually CALL them if you have a question, and some person with an adorable British accent will help you. "No problem, luv!"
http://www.annestickney.com

Maybe one of these days I'll get a handle on painting roses. These came out better than usual- I find the white ones to be particularly difficult, for some reason. A 6 x 8.
I'm having fits over things not drying. The colder weather seems to keep them wet forever. I try to avoid Liquin, but I'm thinking I may have to use it if I want things to dry before June or so.

Throw'im Back

I was in the mood to do some figures today- watched a new video by Peggy Kroll Roberts last night. Some good info there on painting the figure.

This one is 6 x 6 on primed masonite.

Give me a hand, here

decided to work on my drawing today, not able to get out paints right now. (I'm supposed to be doing tax forms- yecch!) But wait, art is my JOB, isn't it? Let the taxes wait a few more minutes.
Anyway, if you feel like you haven't done anything difficult lately, draw some hands and feet. Good grief. No wonder people charge more to include them in portraits.

Down In the Valley

This beautiful little valley could be anywhere, but it happens to be just inside Rocky Mountain National Park. It's hard for me to believe that anyone ranched there, but they did. (In -15 weather?? they must have been hiding from someone-). Anyway, it was a beautiful early evening, with slanty sunlight and long shadows. This is 6 x 8, oil. I'm thinking I need to stick with 8 x 10 for my smallest size, maybe- these itty bitty ones actually seem to take longer than a larger one.

NIMBY (not in my backyard-)

Well, actually- it IS in my backyard. This is, after all, Alabama. We've had this old 1939 log truck forever. Not the original owners, however. It's been here so long the pine trees are growing all around and through it. I admire it for its' goofy rounded 1930's styling- makes me think of cartoon cars.
Fortunately we have two acres, so it's hidden away in the back.

6 x 8 on panel.

Little Red

Almost the same setup, but not quite. I'm loving painting these daisies. They're my favorite flower- they always look so happy, clean and white. They used to grow in the lawn at Dad's house, and he'd laugh at me for mowing around the clumps of daisies because I could not bear to cut them down. 6 x 6 oil

I'm a little teapot...

Had a group of ladies over at the gallery to paint yesterday, so I set up this deceptively challenging still life. This antique pot has an iridescent pink finish on it that will drive you
nuts trying to capture its nuances. Such a fun challenge! 8 x10, oil.

and a pink carnation...

Decided it had been too long since I had painted some flowers, so I skipped on down to the florist down the street and bought these. Fluffy flowers like these are so difficult for me: give me a lily any day- it only has six petals! Enjoyed the silver cup, though- it was my father in laws baby cup, dated 1907, and it's a little tarnished inside, so it's yellowish in there. Fun, fun, to paint.

It's 6 x6- I think I'm going to switch to non textured surfaces for these tiny ones, Carol Marine is right, the texture looks HUGE on a little painting.

studio plans !

Last night I found a great sample program on the web to draw some studio plans with- yaaay! It's called SmartDraw, and you get a free seven day trial.
Pictures didn't post in the order I thought they would, so this is interior, looking toward back door. There will also be a large shelf above the back door, which will provide up to 16 feet wide by 4ft high additional storage. (ceiling open to the rafters-)

Second one is overhead view, the rectangles are skylights. Planning on daylight flourescents running the length of the inside, plus plenty of outlets

for important things like the computer and coffee pot. (if this place had a bathroom, I could live here-) Pink dots are outlets, building is 24 feet long.

Last one is the front view. No, that area over door doesn't slant back, it's flat. The white line shows where a shed roof will go, over a four foot porch. I really wanted a double french or sliding glass door, but I'm not sure if that wouldn't be too much, structurally, for the SIPS to support. (structurally insulated panels- prefab-). Getting very excited about this project now- will post pictures of the cross section of the SIPS tomorrow so you can see what I'm talking about. You can check out the SIPS thing by googling eco-panels.

PLEASE, if you have any input, ideas, problems, anything else that I might not have thought of, let me know your thoughts, I would so appreciate it!

Studio: It's a start

This is to be the site for my new studio.We have had some of the big pine trees cut down, and the stumps ground. Next comes the rest of the site prep, grading and building the support pillars that will hold the building up.

We will be building the studio with a new kind of building system called SIPS- structural insulated panels. It is supposed to be very energy efficient and goes up quite fast- each panel will be about 4 feet wide by 8 tall for the walls, and a cathedral ceiling.

I'm planning on 16 x 24 feet. No, no skylights, sorry, they are bad about leaking. Here is the builder: google eco-panels

Will post a pix of a sample of the panels they use soon. I'm planning on posting about this as we go along, as I found only one or two blogs on this topic on the internet. Hope it helps someone else!

Can not WAIT to have a place to work again!