My Violin and Piano painting

Here is a painting I completed recently. It is of my violin and piano and painted entirely from life. I set up in the lounge with palette and easel and worked on it every day for a week. The violin is one I was given on my 18th birthday full of enthusiasm to learn, but as painting has taken over I have had to drop many things in order to give that priority. Still, no excuse really, I should practice sometime! 

But I do play the piano every day. The music in the painting is Chopin's nocturne no.2, one of my favorite pieces at the moment. Though you would find it hard to tell from my loose rendering of the notes!

Music Piece 16":x20"

Here are a few photos taken during the process. Forgive the bad quality of the images; taken with my phone.

Yes I have two pianos! Lucky girl, though the one I'm painting is atrociously out  of tune.

I loved painting the piano keys, so much fun figuring out how to bring them to life with as few strokes as possible.

The Finished Still Life!

     Here is the finished painting that I was working on back in January. You can see photos of it in progress in previous posts here (Painting again!) and here (A Dramatic Change in the progress). This painting was heaps of fun and I want to something similar again soon.

I love painting from life and am thinking allot about plein air painting, and am inspired by all the amazing artists I am privileged to learn from on the internet. I just have to figure out some kind of portable painting set up and get out there! (Oh, for a Pochade Box of my own...!)

A Dramatic Change in the progress

Today my painting went form this...

To this...

I was falling quickly out of love with my first composition as both objects were calling for all the attention and I became confused about my subject. And then when I came to painting the white cloth things just got so bad that the little jug was the only thing worth saving, so I painted over the rest and picked a rose from the garden.

It is still unfinished, the rose is just sketched in for now and I still have to work on the jug. (The problem with painting from life is that shapes change if you move just a little bit! But I'm happy with where it's going and I may add something below the jug on the right to break up that diagonal line the composition has taken. 

Painting again!

Well! Since Christmas and over New Years I've been in a whirl of family and boats and sunshine, and now I'm finally trying to get back into routine.

 Yesterday I was suddenly inspired to paint a still life after watching a How to set up a still life Video, which shows it takes a long time to set up a good composition. I spent most of the day setting up my makeshift shadow box which you can see in the photo above. There is another lamp behind my easel which is lighting my little set up.

I only had an hour to paint, after I had done that so this is how I left it yesterday. Must go and do as much painting as I can today for I won't have much time in the rest of the week.

The last Rose of Summer (Or Autumn!)

     I painted this in one afternoon during the week. I had been working on another painting with reference only from my imagination and it wasn't going so well so I washed the old paint of my piece of  frame glass I use for a palate, picked the last rose in the garden, mixed fresh colours and began to paint. I learnt how to make another shade of brown. All the colours I have in oils are the primaries plus white which is probably a good thing to teach me colour mixing, but it dose feel a bit limited at times. 

 

    I had been wanting to paint a rose in a loose painterly style for a while and from life; fortunately there was still one small pink rose on the bush for me. The box was once my grandmother's sewing box. I didn't spend much time arranging because I just wanted to paint, so a set the box on my desk and placed the rose on it 'any old how' and began. It is on a 10x10 inch canvass, a square shape which I have never used before. Apparently composition is hard to get right in a square, as you can probably tell!