Pears in Bowl, Pastel Drawing

Pears in Bowl, Pastel Drawing Pastel on Canson Paper, approx. 8.5" x 8.5" Available at $20.00 plus $5.00 shipping. I am toying with pastels, reading about them, playing with them. This one was done in some Rembrant soft pastel, and some PanPastels, which I am really enjoying. It was done from a photo shared in one of my Flickr artist groups, Drawings From Other Member's Photographs. There are several Flickr groups along these same lines, which is a really nice way to find good references, without going through pages and pages of images.

Blue Hydrangea Foursome - SOLD

Blue Hydrangea Foursome Oil on Stretched Canvas, 12" x 12" SOLD at $60.00 plus shipping. I am posting this one again, so it will get picked up by the DP gallery, I hope. Sometimes the program sees a similar painting and passes it by. We'll see.

Blue Hydrangea Threesome - SOLD

Blue Hydrangea Threesome Oil on Stretched Canvas, 12" x 12" SOLD at $60.00 plus shipping. This was the second of two blue hydrangeas paintings I did this weekend. I love painting them, you can play with light. One of my new collectors, who is also an old high school friend, mentioned hydrangeas, so there you go. This one has more lavender in it, and the tone in the leaves is cool.

Blue Hydrangea Foursome - SOLD

Blue Hydrangea Foursome Oil on Stretched Canvas, 12" x 12" SOLD at $60.00 plus shipping. This was the first of two hydrangea paintings I did over the weekend. The blooms are clearly blue, with touches of lavender, and the leaves are warm toned.

Pansies on Blue - SOLD

Pansies on Blue Oil on Stretched Canvas, 8" x 10" SOLD at $40.00 plus shipping. This one is actually a piece I finished last weekend, but my computer and my camera have had a falling out, and aren't speaking at the moment. I had to load my photos onto a disk to get this one posted, and who knows how it will all get untangled. Meanwhile, I am painting, but my posting might be even more sporadic than it is at the moment. "Oh, la" as my friend, B. would say.

Oil Painting for Beginners Class

The Spring session of my online class for beginners in oil is taking enrollments now. Our start date is March 18. The cost this session is $75.00. The class runs for six weeks, with a week off for Easter, and a possible extra week, if students want or need it. This puts us done at the end of April. Lessons are posted once a week to our Yahoo group, where students can download and/or print them to save. Along with instructions, there are exercises and homework, always optional. We have a Flickr group, where students can post their exercises and homework, for comments from fellow students and myself. This will be the 4th session of this class, and I continue to add more information as we go along. My students have given me much positive response, and I've offered enough instruction and resources so everybody stays challenged. If you'd like to see the general outline of the lessons (towards the bottom of the description), here's a link to our Yahoo group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OilPaintingOnline/ or for more details, please email me with your questions, to NelVanL@aol.com I'm planning on a fun class, jumping us into some spring painting!

Pansies on Pink - SOLD

Pansies on Pink
Oil on Stretched Canvas, 10" x 10"
SOLD at $50.00 plus shipping.

I'm not sure about your monitor, but on mine these purple pansies look blue. They are actually more purple on a pale pink background.

Pears Redux - SOLD

Pears Redux Oil on Stretched Canvas, 8" x 8" SOLD at $35.00 plus shipping. I was not completely happy with the pears from last weekend, so used my new light and got more contrast, which always helps. Ah, much better.

Promise Pansies - SOLD

Promise Pansies

Oil on Stretched Canvas, 8" x 8"

SOLD at $35.00 plus shipping.

I was in the Home Depot today, looking at lights to make more value contrast in my still life work, and of course, they snagged me with a cart of lovely pansies. They promise spring! I didn't really capture the color and depth of the petals, but that's what more painting is for. Still, a sweet little painting. Don't you just love pansies?

Long Still Life - SOLD

Long Still Life Oil on Canvas Panel, 15" x 30" Revised and SOLD at 60.00 plus shipping. There are some things I really like about this one, some things I wish I had done differently, but I had to set it up in two stages, so the composition lacks some finesse. I like the color harmony a lot, I like the objects themselves, I like the shine through the glass on that back pear (that worked), and I like the new funky mug. A bit of an experiment working this large.

Pears Times Three - NA

Pears Times Three Oil on Stretched Canvas, 8" x 8" Not Available, see revised version of February 27. This started out life as a painting of my little granddaughter's tiny little gold shoesies. But oh, man, I could not get them to look gold at all, at all. So it got wiped and turned into pears. There are a couple of things I like about this one: the double coating of the foreground and background, and the turquouse in the shading. But I am thnking about composition, and how I need to work harder on coming up with more interesting arrangements and combinations. More pizazz, more originality, more interesting. So...then I played around with some cool stuff I've been picking up for still life...please see next post.

Pears Everywhere WIP

WIP, Pears Everywhere Oil on Canvas Panel, 15" x 30" I started on this one, with a more interesting composition. Some neat new things I've picked up to use for still life work. I like the little pigs. Now to decide whether or not to make an edge at the back, and change the color of the wall or just what.

Sun in the Treetops - SOLD

Sun in the Treetops Oil on Stretched Canvas, 10" x 10" SOLD at $40.00 plus shipping. There was such a nice combination of shadow and sunshine on my view this afternoon (out my window) that I wanted to try to catch a little of the feeling of it. I think partly successful. I've wiped another painting, seems I forget how to paint when I'm not at it every day. Though it feels so good to be painting that I don't even really mind a wipe out.

Snow on the Ground - SOLD

Snow on the Ground Oil on Stretched Canvas, 10" x 10" SOLD at $35.00 plus shipping. One of my collectors missed out on the Snow Scenes I did recently, but today it wasn't falling, and there was this lovely bit of green peeking through. If the collector prefers falling snow, I'll do another and this one will become available.

The Radlo Barn in Barre - SOLD

The Radlo Barn in Barre Oil on Canvas Panel, 8" x 10" SOLD at $35.00 plus shipping. This one was formerly called "Glimpse" and I've always liked it. Today I brightened the sky and softened the dirt road shadows, now I like it even better. Nice to have some things on hand to rework.

Polished Pear - SOLD

Polished Pear Oil on Canvas Panel, 6" x 8" SOLD, for PB I did this one today to replace a piece that I thought I had but couldn't find. Yes, I'm better at creating than I am at record keeping, organizing, shipping....and keeping track of my "inventory." I try, though, but it's that right brain, left brain thing, or so I tell myself.

String of Lights 4 - SOLD

String of Lights 4 Oil on Gallery Wrapped Canvas, 11" x 14" SOLD. I had a request for two of these, which never got shown on the blog, so I thought I'd pop one of them up today. Nice to show off a little, I know you'll indulge me. Nothing new today. I have posted some more Metro sketches on my sketching blog, the link is on the sidebar.

Winter Snow...More - SOLD

Winter Snow...More Oil on Stretched Canvas, 10" x 10" SOLD at $35.00 plus shipping. We've had another snowstorm, and still drifting. The world is white, with shades of umber and grey, just lovely, as long as you have power and heat inside and don't have to go anywhere.

Cows in Landscape - SOLD

Cows in Landscape Oil on Canvas Panel, 9" x 12" SOLD at $30.00 plus shipping. There are many blogs and sites that one can use for resources. I'm thinking of the Different Strokes project by Karin Jurick. This one is from The Monthly Sketch Project blog, which I just recently discovered through a mention by someone in Kate Johnson's alumni group. I really liked the photo, and moved some cows around for this quick oil sketch.

Watercolor Peonies - SOLD

Watercolor Peonies

Watercolor on Arches paper, 22" x 30"

Image area 21" x 28"

SOLD at $150 plus shipping. Detail shown.

That's a lot of petals. Painted on a full sheet of watercolor paper, mostly during our snowstorm of February 2010 in the DC area. I've cropped the top version, but it can be matted in closer still.