Last painting for the October show is done

Refuge

22"x30" Ink and colored pencil on archival cotton paper $500
You can purchase this painting HERE.

I just put the last touches on my last new painting for the show next month. Time to put the pencils away for a while. I'll be posting the announcement for the show this week. I wanted to use different colors from the reds of the last two. There was actually another new painting but it took a nose dive a couple weeks ago. I may be able to rescue part of it, but almost half of it is ruined.

It happens. The colored pencils are only so forgiving. I may try it again; I did like the composition. But not right now.

I'm getting ready to embark on the set of illustrations I want to do for my book Take The Wind Up With You. I have a list of about 15 ideas, but I've really got to work on my eagle- and mouse-rendering skills. I haven't done any action drawing since my horse-drawing days, sixty years ago. I'm thinking of doing them digitally, if I can manage that. Wish I could channel N. C. Wyeth.

Red Rock Canyons

Red Canyon

22"x30" Ink & colored pencil on archival paper $500
You can purchase this painting HERE.

We're in the second painting season of the year, the one where it's too hot to work outside, and I'm working on inks as well as acrylics. I wanted to try a different theme with the inks, so I decided to try some of my canyon images from Zion National Park. I was hoping the angular nature of the rock cliffs would work well within the limitations of my process. I also wanted to explore some different color schemes than I've used before.

Canyon Night

22"x30" Ink & colored pencil on archival paper $500
You can purchase this painting HERE.

The second one I did, I wanted to make into a night scene. It took me several weeks and a couple different tries to get the colors right, but I'm happy now.

Light as expansion

Light As Expansion

Still pretty busy, but I did manage to finish up the fifth in my series of the 22 Dimensions of Light—it's the fifth dimension!—Light As Expansion. Expansion, the opposite of contraction, the energy to grow larger, to increase, to be in that phase of creation where the focus is on adding, extending, becoming more of what you already are.

The weather is warming up, and I'm starting to really look forward to getting out into my garden to paint again, but first I have to get out into my garden to work—and there's plenty to do right now. Fortunately we're looking at a week of dry weather with nice temperatures, so maybe the next time it gets warm, I can drag the painting stuff out and start playing again. Meanwhile, I've amassed a huge backlog of great photos of local scenery, so when I'm done with my current projects and can start painting again, I've got plenty of material to work with.

Anyway, back to work. Thanks for looking!

Twenty-two dimensions of Light

I've started a new series of mixed media abstracts. It's an attempt to show twenty-two dimensions of the fundamental energy of the universe—Light. I finished Radiance last month, and I'm working on the second one now. I'm not sure how far I'll get; twenty-two is a large number, but I have come up with twenty-five possible descriptors. The mathematics of the cosmos has always intrigued me, even though I never got past beginning calculus, and it's been a real treat to see how far astrophysics has come during my lifetime. If I had done better in school, I would have loved to be in on that work. At my age, I figure if I can even contemplate the existence of twenty-two different dimensions, that'll be an excellent workout for my brain...which needs all the exercise it can get.

I've spent the last two rain-free spells re-photographing all the large works I have on hand with my new, better camera, and this weekend I finished getting those images up on my new gallery at Fine Art America, an on-demand reproduction and printing house. All of those paintings are now available for purchase as reproductions in a wide range of sizes from greeting cards to 30"x40", on half a dozen different surfaces from paper to metal. As far as general quality of artwork at FAA, it's the most impressive online gallery I've seen; in just a few hours of poking around I've found several artists whose work is astonishingly beautiful and original. My gallery is at:

 https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/2-patricia-ryan.html

I'm also happy to now have good images of some of my favorite paintings from years past.

A little moonlight

I finished this painting a month ago, but I've been too distracted with the beginning of gardening season to get it outside to take a photo of it. It's my second attempt to use my wet-surface ink technique on a canvas panel, and I feel like this one is a lot more successful because I was able to retain almost all of the textures created in the wet surface inking process. I did almost ruin it trying to use acrylic paints to enhance the textures, but I was able to stop myself in time and remove them, then continue using the inks. The difference in results is attributable to the transparency of the inks.

 I would like it a bit better if the colors had been lighter, but this one just came out dark and I don't yet have a way to fix that. Maybe in the future.