Thursday, July 22, 2010

Quick Painting #3: Orange & Easel



This is the 3rd of my recent "quick paintings" - Orange & Easel - 8" x 10" oil on stretched canvas. The blue strap is from my apron that I made myself from some extra denim and canvas (hopefully I translated the denim fabric texture well) This painting took just over 2 hours, time to eat this orange!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Quick Painting #2: Apple

Well, I know I said not every day, at I still know that will be the case but I saw my Granny Smith apple today with a visually pleasing mix of reds and greens and the mason jar with iced coffee that didn't get a spot in the painting yesterday so I thought, what the heck, why not!? So here is number two, my apple and coffee! :) BTW - this one was completed in one sitting under 2 hours.



- Joshua Grabowski

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Quick Painting #1: Banana

There are plenty of groups out there devoted to creating a new painting each day (or as close to it as possible). These types of paintings are typically small, simple still life type pieces which they they post on eBay for immediate sale! Great way to generate some money... and interest to your work! One group in particular, the Daily Painters, are definitely worth taking a look at. Most of these artists are well established artists that are working on major works and using these daily small paintings as a warm up! I'm not going to say that I'll be attempting to paint a new piece each and every day, but I think that I'll be trying to "warm up" with these small studies a couple of days a week. Today, I had a banana to throw in some oatmeal with me in the studio, so I painted the solo banana. I got about 1 1/2 hours of work in before lunch, and finished the last 30 minutes while digesting the subject! MUAHAHA! You can see some of the progress shots below. To liven up the composition, I was going to include a mason jar with some iced coffee I was drinking which you can see the outline of in shots 1 and 2; however, I was already nearing the 2 hour time limit I was trying to set for my self.



Enjoy the banana folks! They are basically one of the cheapest fruits you can find in the grocery store and they are so, so good for you!
- Joshua Grabowski

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Facebook Fan Page

For those of you that aren't already following me on Facebook, I've created a "fan page" for my art. You can check it out here. I've also become a tweeter. Thanks everyone for your support!

-Joshua Grabowski

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Fruit Still Life Series

I've been working on a series of new still life pieces that mainly involve 3 key ingredients: colorful fruit, high-contrasted victorian wallpaper backgrounds, and of course oil paint! (ok maybe the last ingredient is a little bit obvious!) The first piece is the Lemonade Press that I've wrote about before already. After creating this composition, the results inspired me to continue with a series; the second still life that I am working on is on Oranges & A Vase (which I've also wrote about earlier). The third and fourth still life is Blueberries & Yogurt  and Carmel Apples (both are new to the family as of yesterday so there are very rough sketches!). I have a bunch of new canvases tinted with a combination of naples yellow, cadmium red, cadmium orange, and loads of turpenoid w/ a touch of cold pressed linseed oil. Going to shoot for 10 paintings in this series but not sure on the details of the entire vision I have with these...


Hope everyone is doing great! Have a wonderful day! 


SITE UPDATE INFO: I'm working on updating the "under construction" page and including a little more functionality and content. When this new stuff is live on the net, I'll still be working to get full functionality up and running. Prints, online image galleries, contact pages, about pages, THE WORKS! Coming soon! :)


-Joshua Grabowski