Amy Mann's painting a day: "Poblano Pepper", oil on canvas panel, 6"x8"

Sunday, July 6, 2008

"Poblano Pepper", oil on canvas panel, 6"x8"

This is the first of my "painting a day" paintings. There are so many daily painters out there, I thought one more couldn't hurt. I've been having "painter's block", so I thought committing to doing a painting a day would unstick me. This is the first, they are bound to improve from here.

4 comments:

LeighS said...: Hi Amy!
thanks for the intro to your blogspot...I don't think I'd seen it before. LOVED seeing your work from Yellowstone, Maine & Canada!! I'll email you soon to catch up & send you a few pics from our recent trip to Rockport ME.
xoxox,
Leigh; July 7, 2008 at 5:58 AM
Unknown said...: Hey Amy,

Way to go -- I'll be looking forward to your daily paintings. My go at painting as often as possible (what, two years ago?!? Yikes!) really helped me a lot.

Your pepper looks good -- but it seems to be a bit of a departure from your previous style. It's been a while since I've seen anything you've done, though...

Keep up the good work!; July 7, 2008 at 2:45 PM
Ewolf.girl said...: Love the Poblano Pepper, Amy! Thanks for sharing these. I'll look forward to seeing the progression.; July 8, 2008 at 9:19 PM
Katherine said...: hey amy - this pepper needs to be in my kitchen or perhaps my office. i am happy to see you making progress on your daily work, and i am happy to see small painting. i love the intimacy a small painting allows.

kate s; July 11, 2008 at 8:10 PM

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A Painting a Day?

Well, OK, if you're paying attention, you've probably noticed that I don't actually post a painting a day. What with two teenagers, a dirty house, errands to run, meals to cook, etc, I can't always devote the studio time. But I'm trying!

These little paintings (all 6"x8", because I have a whole box of that size canvas board) are done in one sitting, usually about 1 1/2-2 hours. I mix all my colors from a limited palette of Permalba White, camium yellow, cadmium red light, cadmium red dark, alizarine permanent, ultramarine blue, manganese blue, and dioxazine purple. I'll occasionally reach for other tube colors, but for the most part I mix everything from these. I don't have any black, so I have to mix that, and I mix all my greens and most of my violets and grays (the dioxazine purple I mostly use to mix rich browns in combination with cad yellow.)

Since the paintings are done in one sitting, the paint is always wet, so I have to lay it down thickly and with a light touch to avoid picking up what's underneath, if I want to cover over something or make a correction. Premixing my palette results in fairly large piles of premixed colors, so I can just scoop up a big brushful of paint. I do my premixing with palette knives, which saves a lot of paint from going to waste.

The objects I am painting are shown life-size or larger, and very close up for the most part. I am very interested in color, as you may have guessed. I try to match the color that I see, and I spend a lot of time looking at different areas of the setup through a paper-punch sized hole in a gray card, a "color isolator". This helps immensely in figuring out what color something is.

For all the paintings, you can click on the image for a larger, more detailed view.

Amy Mann's painting a day

Sunday, July 6, 2008

"Poblano Pepper", oil on canvas panel, 6"x8"

4 comments:

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