I like the deep colors

MAGIC happens when you stick to it and you’re not afraid.  AFRAID of painting, you say? Yes, sometimes it’s just good enough to let it go but you know there are “issues.”  I don't mean to imply that I created a masterpiece but I actually do have a feeling of completion that I can get when I challenge myself to stay with it until I can walk past her and not feel the urge to change something and I don’t cringe..  She was a little lopsided in the chair and the left side of the painting has the steep line of her arm unbroken so I had to make sure the other side had some balance and I had to get that not only with color but with value. There are color changes in the value range and I think that harmonizes as well as balances out her figure on the 12 x 16 canvas (3/4) Ratio. When I’m painting my mind is flashing between the two dimensional composition of the surface and then flips to the third dimension as I try to make the shoulder round into the background and make sure the pressure points of her body are touched with shades of a warm color so it suggests a real breathing person. 

This is a photograph of a young woman that I have done in the past but I always feel that I’m missing something either in the composition or in the color harmonies. In my more experienced years, I find it rewarding to revisit compositions I’ve done in the past.  My head KNOWS the dress is a deep blue and when I go down that road I just can’t seem to pull it together. It becomes too cool. Winslow Homer’s watercolors are masterful and dealing with what they call “local color” and the effect of the sun on it. It seems so simple, blue dress with the sun (yellow) on it makes it appear green….ah but the correct green and the sun isn’t the only thing enveloping the surface of the dress. On the other side of the sun there is the blue sky and perhaps a sullen cloud that are leaving a mark.  Anyway it’s a challenge so I combined the blue and a sunlit green and then found myself a little more comfortable taking the painting to a warmer direction everywhere. Of course I have factor in the wicker!  I do think figures sparkle in a warm palette and I am going to incorporate some version of yellow into most of my colors for awhile and try to make warmer vibrations coming off the surface of the canvas.  That area down in the lower left needed to be dark but a little lighter than the chair and when I mixed the yellow ochre into the magenta it not only darkened it but created a little bit of a vibration.  Often this is accomplished by mixing the complement or split completment into the color.

As I sit and stand at the easel while painting on this my mind visits a day several years ago, not too many, when I drove down from Napa to the Legion of Honor museum where they were having an exhibit of Anders Zorn paintings and pastels. If you don’t know him, do look him up. He painted mostly with 4 colors and two of them were black and white!  The other two were yellow ochre and some shade of red. Many people say it was cadmium red.  I personally can’t get cadmium red to do much. It seems dull. I should give it another try, though. My favorites are the light version of it and also I like the grumbacher red which is a cooler version.  There are definitely paintings of his that are in those limited four colors but when he does an outdoor scene he is able to get a green.  Yellow ochre and black will make a green but it’s a warm pea type green whereas he achieves a blue green when he’s painting vegetation near the water and my guess he’s going with a viridian. I must look and see if viridian was used in his day.  The history of color is so enlightening when you try to decipher the paintings in the historical context.   

Well I will close for now. I like this painting and I did put it in my online store if you’re interested www.sallyrosenbaumfineart.com and also www.sallyrosenbaumartgroup.com.  It’s also available as a cover on writing books sold exclusively on amazon. Www.amazon.com/author/sallyrosenbaumfineart. Until next time when I give some serious thought to painting a very very large painting.

It's a very pleasant day here in Long Beach. I wake up to a window in front of me sans window covering (just pure sky) and a beautiful arched window to my right with a gigantic painting leaning in front of it to shield me from a possible passerby on the street below. Both windows open inwardly and are still the original dark wood from 1932. How beautiful it would be to swing them open into the room and let the moist warm breezes from the nearby ocean wake me each morning. I probably could figure it out but I HAVE CATS that dominate me. I am fearful of them lunging or climbing the screen and it giving way as it's old and rusty and they would crash to the ground one story below. They are indoor cats and run the household. Once in a while I will supervise an "opening." As the day breaks, I have already completed a few sketches (procreate) and checked facebook, instagram, a very very brief glance at the news of the day (which ususally makes me throw up), played and won the nytimes CONNECTIONS and WORDLE and I AM ready to rumble...oops I mean ready to paint. I have read the mantra that I wrote a few days ago......(slightly edited to protect the author from embarrassment) It goes: "During these last 6 months of 2024 i will receive $x from sales of paintings, books on kdp and stock increases. I am excited and creative and ideas will come to me in my sleep and while driving and in the course of each day. I will expand my customer base and find buyers from the internet. My health will inspire energy and creativity. I will work on the computer, on the easel and in my brain to come up with great ideas that will manifest into inspiration right away. I will film ideas and I won’t worry about them being perfect. I will just get them out there. The shoot, the ideas, the process. I will write in my book as I learn INDESIGN 10 pages a day." There you have it....good to visualize the day, the work, the goals. NOW, I still have to figure out the size of the painting

I am in my 30th year of making art my full time pursuit and what better way to be sure it has a prominent place in my day than for me to be economically dependent upon it. At least that is somewhat of a guarantee for me. If I didn't have to let go of paintings and "sell" them I would probably never finish one. I love to start ideas and as soon as something starts to "gel" in my mind, whether it's the composition, the subject, the color harmony or the rendering, I am ready to move on to the next white surface. Having to complete paintings has been instrumental in establishing for me what they call a "body of work." From the very beginning when I chose this path I knew the importance of a "body of work." I had worked with clay previously and knew the importance of making gradual growth with changes, improvements or alterations in my work. In pottery, using the same three glazes and using the same clay body will create a continuity that visually establishes a recognizable "body of work" and establish mastery and confidence. In painting, it can be many variables. It can be brush stroke, composition, subject matter, treatment, and color and more. Clearly there can be many factors but change should be slow. The artist that starts with drawing, rushes through watercolors, gets out the staple gun and stretches a canvas for oil paint and finishes up the month with pastels is going to have a harder time finding their voice than the artist who uses a methodical approach of organic change over a lengthy period of time. This is not just because the audience isn't ready for the variety. It's because the artist isn't absorbing the media into her/his inner creative mind and physical body and letting them work in harmony and with harmony. The manifestation of the artwork is a dance the artist does with his/her mind and the materials of he/she has chosen to master. A deft understanding of abilities mixed with the chosen, "matter" can only be generated by repetition. I once asked my therapist to sum me up. What was my style? What did I have to say? And the response was well we won't know until the end after you've lived your life. That was a truly unsatisfactory answer for me at 40 but I do now understand that is the way it is. It's nothing to worry about. It will take care of itself. It just is. Climb one mountain at a time and leave your mark. Take that knowledge with you when you start your ascent on the next one. Here's a recent painting YES another girl writing.

Hydrangeas in September

It's been a while since I did a "shoot." The pandemic, selling my house, the moving, the looking for a new place all got in the way of organizing and orchestrating a shoot. My lovely neighbor has volunteered to be my model so I've got some new ones in the wings. I went shopping and discovered the local "nursery" and found yellow daisies. Thank you Trader Joes' for the lovely hydrangeas. I got out my "go to" chair from the garage in storage....(small house here) and then had my model come out. The spot was in shade until voila! the sun came over the tree and illuminated her outfit, the table and the flowers. There will be many from this shoot.....I really like the sweater tied around her neck and the hair is new for me. She's not hiding under a hat! I just got the notebook that I designed for amazon in the mail and it's available if you type in Sally Rosenbaum woman's journal ...there are over a 100......so you may have to scan through a few pages to find this one. Thanks for checking in! I also have an AUTHOR PAGE where I am lining up the writing books for you to see on one easy page. www.amazon.com/author/sallyrosenbaumfineart https://youtu.be/jgaPms2VvB0

I am so excited about publishing such beautiful resolution photos of my paintings on writing books. They are easy to use, strong and, of course, with an image of someone reading or writing on the cover....inspirational. You can buy one or collect a set from a series. I always photograph my paintings with a high resolution camera and save them all. Generally I photograph with a canon 80d and will divide the painting into halves or fourths depending on the size and then stitch the photos together with photshop. That way I get a large file suitable for printing or sending to fineartamerica where many of my paintings go....(Ijust signed with ICANVAS too) Again, with the help of Photoshop, I sized them for the 7 x 10 and 8.5 x 11 covers and created the composition notebooks. This week I added this one in the 7 x 10 size which was in demand for fitting in purses. I have lots of women taking classes, managing shopping lists, writing common book annotations and this fits the bill beautifully. If you try one, please write me and let me know what you think. The only complaint I heard was that the word composition across the front as the title should be removed, so I did. I see them more as Women's journals....a place to write most anything. I am falling in love again with writing and paper and PENS! This one is available as of last week and of course if you have amazon prime the shipping is free...It arrives in 24-48 hours.

Go to amazon link

I just have to pause for a day on art posts and show you this adorable new member of the fammily. We lost our little precious dog about two months ago. Ricky and the dog were best buds and now we are sad and alone ........so.......good idea....we got a new kitten. If you've ever tried to introduce a young kitten to an older cat you know it has to be done carefully. Well after a week of separation they got wind of each other. Another week went by and all of a sudden as I was sitting on the bed out of the corner of my eye I saw the little one jump up and start his approach to the 9 year old. I happened to be reading on my ipad at the moment so I could just click the camera record button and got the who interaction. It's adorable. I posted it on the youtube station and give you a link here to see how cute it is. You can fast forward through my "talking" if you want to get to the cute part. Enjoy. MEANWHILE I'm working on an abstract and it's HARD !

PUTTING MY PAINTINGS ON THE COVER of books

Once again I am letting you know how excited I am about my latest project, putting my high resolution images on the cover of notebooks and planners. I made a video where I show you a few of the 100s that I've posted. I am also becoming a more organized person with my appointment and project management notebook. I love digital things but I have found that anything I post disappears into the depths of the internet. Digital planners are of couse good for tickle notifications but I genuinely like writing things down and enjoy being able to turn pages and see the past and the future. LOOK on your amazon account and type in sally rosenbaumm composition books or planners

Alizarin crimson, indian yellow and prussian blue AGAIN

This is an 8 x 10 image from a photograph I took ages ago......33 years ago to be exact. It's mind boggling how time works. I started with an indian yellow toned canvas and then outlined the figure with the blue. I then began to block in the shapes within the figure and without the figure. Keeping the palette simple once agains keeps you as the artist simply asking the simple questions. Is it warmer (add more yellow) or cooler (add more red) than what it's next to. The other important question will be Is it lighter or darker. Everytime you add a color to another color it diminishes it's brightness unless of course you're adding white which again can work to cool it down. WITH such a limited palette you get the hang of it really easily. When I was photographing subjects and scenes to paint I would generally ask them (in this case I did the choosing) to wear white. It's of course super reflective and you can make the painting sparkle with the reflected lights. This is still available for sale on website www.sallyrosenbaumartgroup.com and as a print, or greeting card on FINEARTAMERICA https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/1-sally-rosenbaum/shop

Painting a dog is not so hard

I thought it would be impossible to paint a dog. I don't know why. But it really turns out to be an exercise in placement. You have to get the nose and the eyes in the right place and much of the rest is following the outline carefully to get the right shape of that particular dog. I am extremely recently partial to dachshunds because my son got one "BIRDIE" two years ago and she is quite the diva. She isn't black like this one. She is red and I have painted her silliness many times. It's fun. It's a good way to warm up.

Limited palette: Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine blue, and Indian Yellow

This is another limited palette painting. It's very very fun to do many and line them all up and see how similar and different they appear all at the same time. In the beginning during the "lay in" stage it's easy to say oh I'll never get the colors to pop or stand out but the longer you create you "soup" (the combination of colors you're mixing on your palette) the more the tiniest differentiations start to appear and add definition to your canvas. I am now convinced that this is the way to learn. 1. You realize that a painting is about the canvas not the image or the photograph 2 You are striving toward harmony 3. You are actively experiencing at a very simple and effective level the differences between darker or lighter and the other important question, warmer or cooler, or brighter or duller. Your mind is not confounded but a vast array of colors with so many different values. If you must add more colors, wait until you've laid in the main idea to your satisfaction and use the 4th color carefully to enhance.

The Limited Palette always Impresses

I picked up a photo of a young woman I had painted once upon a time and thought I'd like to explore it further. I've always absolutely loved the artwork of Toulouse Lautrec. The subject matter of the dancing show girls, the night life of the French bougousie, and the dedication of the young toulouse have always intrigued me. Looking closely at it I know he uses a lot of yellow and alizarin crimson and maybe some blue, maybe some green. So I put blobs of alizarin, Indian yellow and Ultramarine blue along with titanium white on my glass palette and using a small brush and the red I sketched her in. THis is the final result. After a while I felt like I was simply doing a value study but the limitations of color make it much easier than being overwhelmed with a full palette. It facilitated the ease of asking the simple questions that propel us around the canvas. Is this space lighter or darker, warmer or cooler. Easy peasy. I am going to continue this little exercise for a while. I find that limited palettes are kinder to the eye and the harmony is automatic.

I have now had the pleasure of selling these composition books and the response I am getting is "LOVELY" and quick shipment from amazon. They are indeed a bargain if you have amazon prime and do not have to go through the rigmarole of shipping costs etc. I am so fortunate that I always documented my paintings with as high of a resolution as I could afford. At first it was a matter of actually driving the painting an hour away to a "Lab" where they took 4 x 5 transparencies. Then we were digitizing the transparencies. After that and the driving I decided to invest in an epson art scanner which did a very good job but was limited to a 12 x 16 glass panel. I learned that I could do larger paintings by scanning the painting section by section. I then found a way to "stitch" the pieces together on photoshop and had quite a high resolution "large" file which was perfectly suitable for prints and products. I speak about "stitching" the pieces together. I did it one segment at a time and then blurred the edges with the clone stamp. HOWEVER LET ME TELL YOU ....I found out a few years back that photoshop (the most amazing editing software around) has a feature under edit called automate and merge cells which will do it automatically. GAME CHANGER! THAT is still the procedure I use but I have a 24 mp canon and I still divide the canvas into fourths or sixths and then use the camera instead of the massive scanner. I use photoshop to automate the stitching. I have large files of my favorite paintings or seminal works that were part of a series. I am loading them all onto Amazon and making the 120 page college ruled books. They are pretty elegant and hey! you don't need just one, you need many. As handy as digital notetaking and planning is, the pleasure of scanning through written pages will never be replaced. AND as you all know the act of writing things down is therapeutic for the brain and helpful for the mere process of memorization. I am so pleased with how these turned out AND the price point: Here are a few. There are many more that you will see if you search Sally Rosenbaum Disclaimer.. I receive a small commission if you click and buy.