Day 28 of the 30 in 30 - Llama Brush My Teeth

Every room in the house deserves artwork on the walls, including the bathroom! And while Degas' bathers are an obvious choice, what about Llamas brushing their teeth? This gal is sure to bring a sparkle to your smile... :)

Seriously though, this painting has a little more integrity than all that .. beneath it's silly exterior is an ongoing exploration of white on white, a value experiment I've been playing with for the past few months. :) So, I'll explain a bit more where this white on white thing is coming from..

Awhile back I began noticing that the artwork I was attracted to when I looked at other people's art tended to have a soft, quiet feel to it... with subtle colors and value shifts. I began to realize that my artwork tended to be just the opposite of quiet and soft.  Nothing wrong with that, but really, it was all quite bold and in-your-face...  the difference continued to become more and more apparent and I started feeling like my paintings were shouting, where as the softer artwork I would find myself looking at was whispering to me and I wanted to be able to paint like that too..  I decided I needed to try to tone my art down some... Not because I didn't like my own style of painting, but because it was obviously different and a challenge to me. This is early on in my soft experiments, but for some reason, painting white things on a white background (or mostly white) is helping me to understand subtleties better...I still paint my loud yip yaps.. because I love to paint that way.. but I'm loving these softer paintings too... It's always good to broaden the painting vocabulary.. 

Llama Brush My Teeth, oil, 8"x8", click here to purchase

Day 25 of the 30 in 30 challenge - Bird Bath

So this is another entry into my mini series of Visual idioms... I guess 'Bird Bath' is a kind of idiom..?Coming up with titles an be difficult. Sometimes more difficult than doing the painting itself!  But with this painting, as well as 2 others I recently did (Duck Tape and Rabbit Ears) the title came first.  Then I had to decide what kind of bird and what kind of bath... 

The bath was a no brainer.  I've painted claw foot tubs before and they are a lot of fun.. They come in all kinds of colors and have the best lines.  The bird took a bit more thinking.  I first looked up "what are the biggest birds in the world?".  I wanted a big guy, I knew.  I looked at ostriches, cassowaries (blue heads...), rheas and turkeys.. None of them quite worked.  In searching, I started to come across pelicans and remembered another pelican I had once painted.  The pelican I had painted previously had actually befriended a woman who lived on a house boat.  The story goes that she came across him and I think he was injured.  She cared for him and then come time for him to migrate, he did.  She didn't know if she would ever see him again.  Lo and behold, the following season, the pelican came back to her.  As far as I know, he comes back every season and hangs out on her house boat with her.  I love that so much.. So the decision was made.  Time to paint another pelican.  

As an aside, the nautical flag is the flag that symbolizes Charlie (C) and also means "Yes".  Always good to include a bit of the positive, I thought, and, maybe it's just me, but this pelican could definitely pass for a Charlie. :)

Bird Bath, Oil, 10"x10", click here to purchase