Tag Archives: gray

That’s the Mustard

Clearly I need more practice at this! I watched a video about blending, which I didn’t really need to do any for this painting of a field of mustard that’s on my way to work (or home, depending). I was drawn to paint the field because it glows yellow green right now and I wanted to capture that. I don’t think I did, really, so I tried it a couple of times with pastels and still not really there for me. Oh well. I’ll keep plugging away at it. Maybe when I look at it again tomorrow it will seem better than it does today. This happens to me a lot.

In other news

Hey, at least I’ve licked my picture hanging system problem! Actually, Steve was once again a really big help. He wields all the tools with consummate skill, I must say.

We spent part of the weekend and yesterday putting up electrical conduit. I’m going to suspend the art in the James Street Gallery from it using picture hanging wire, braces and STAS picture hooks. Sweet!

A big thank you to my friend Liz for giving me the idea to do it this way. It’s saving me a ton of money and it’s going to look pretty cool.

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Clouds Roll In

Today’s sky painting is the 3rd in a series of 21 that I’m doing as a result of a wonderful mini workshop with Karen Margulis.

Clouds Roll In is taken from a photo from an afternoon at the beach, probably at Mickler’s Landing but it might also be from a bit farther south at Guana Beach. Both places are fairly close by and Steve and I like to get out to walk along the surf as often as we can. On this day, I got lucky because there were big clouds on the horizon. Looks like there was a little rain coming down out over the water.

I am enjoying the process of creating my own grays using tertiary and secondary colors layered on top of each other. This painting was done on Canson mi teintes paper.

pastel painting of towering clouds over the ocean.

Clouds Roll In, 5×8″ pastel on Canson paper by Marie Marfia. $75, unframed. Contact me to purchase.

Stretched Thin – Wave Portrait No. 144

Stretched Thin-Wave Portrait No. 144, 5×7″ pastel painting of a wave in purple, gray and blue by Marie Marfia.

This is how I feel when I am in the middle of a project, in this case, re-doing my website, and I’m not familiar with the software, and there are too many choices, and the directions I’m following are three years old, so nothing matches, and I decide, screw it, I’m just going to do what I want, and all the while in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “I just want the work to already be done. I hate learning new things. Just leave me alone in my corner, sitting in a puddle of ignorance. I’m tired of all if it!”

This painting occurred to me while I was doing yoga of all things. I thought it was about feeling transparent, but it turned out to be about feeling inadequate to the task at hand.

Here are the progress pictures. I included a picture of the pastels I used for this painting.