Corner of Sunshine

Today's Sun Day Art blog post is in honor of my father and mother-in-law who are preparing to sell their beautiful home in San Miguel De Allende, Mexico. 

I love finding spots where the sun is slipping around a corner.  It makes me want to soak in the moment because I know I can't hold on to it.  This sunlit corner caught my eye when we were visiting my father and mother-in-law.  The warm tile, clay pots, and stucco walls filled the corner with glowing reflected light, as well as the direct sunlight filtered through the flowers.  Ten minutes later, the allure of this corner had slipped away until another day...

I chose to crop the photo so that the focus was on the fleeting sunlight.

Starting with a little 6x6 study, one of the (very) subtle things that I enjoyed about this composition was the way the white plastic chair serves to soften and add interest to the bottom left corner.

Corner of Sunshine, 6x6 Oil, sold

And here's a larger 20x20 version.  Love that sunlight!

Corner of Sunshine, 20x20 Oil, sold

Me and my dad :)

A Time to Begin...

This year, 2013, is the perfect year to begin something I have long avoided doing ... starting an art blog.  Before starting my blog, however, I wanted to make sure that I truly had something to say and I've finally decided that the answer to that is definitely "YES!"  Hopefully you will agree :)  So here it is ... time to begin my Sunday posts by a painter of sunlit moments ...

Something that I love seeing from other artists is the reference image that inspired their painting (especially if it was painted on location). It helps me to understand the choices they had to make in designing their composition and emphasizing what they saw as important.  One thing I've learned as an artist is that we all "see" in very different ways!

So I am beginning my blog by "shedding light" on how I see and why I paint...

First up is a photo I took of a poinsettia peeking around a corner in Mexico. What I loved about this image was the interesting shadow cast by the poinsettia.  But my eye kept being pulled from the shadow to the silhouette of the background tree.

So I cropped the tree from view and found the composition much more relaxing...

In my final composition I cropped the foreground so that the shadow would serve as an "entry point" for the eye, and I joined the two cast shadows so that they wouldn't be competing elements.  My favorite part of painting this scene was playing with the warm light through the red flowers reflected into the cool shadow on the patio.  It was something that I had to see by being there since it definitely doesn't come through in the photograph!

Poinsettia in the Sun, 16x20 Oil, SOLD