Here’s today’s flowers. I’m going to scrape the paint off and then bring it back again. I’ve noticed that with flowers the painting takes on a lighter quality when I scrape. Here goes… I’ll bring it back tomorrow.
Soft Flowers
Thank you for the nice comments yesterday. My phone is glitchy so I haven’t had a chance to respond to some of them. Your feedback was encouraging.
Here’s today’s flowers. I’m going to let them dry and then decide what I will do to them next. I felt like it was a promising and more relaxed start.
Ranunculus
11X14 oil on canvas
Today I went to the florist and bought myself a bouquet to use as a still life. It smells so good.
What do you think? Should i keep going down this floral road or stop? Honest feedback is hard to hear but always helpful. I was trying to get out of my husband what he thought and he couldn’t give me a good answer for that question.
Our conversation went like this.
Me: What do you think of this painting?
Him: It’s nice.
Me: (not sure what I said) I probably just kept looking at him.
Him: It’s a pretty subject so it’s pretty.
Me: But is it pretty as a painting?
Then we decided it was the prettiest pretty painting ever. And we were both joking.
He’s a chemist, art doesn’t come easy to him. But I’m not sure it come so easy to anyone.
Cabbage Roses
Such pretty flowers with such a strange name. 8X8″ oil on canvas.
This is another study for a piece I’ve been asked to do. Today I used the colors I already had on my canvas from work I was doing on some figures. I only added some green.
The family portrait with 7 figures that I’ve been working on is nearly done. But I’ll need to get permission to show it. So we will see. But I think it looks nice and a good likeness of each kid. It’s been a hard project. If anyone asks if it was hard to do, I will say yes. I have a hard time focusing my eyes after working on it for a few hours. Very small precise features.
Flowers
4X4″ oil on canvas
I got a request/commission for a painting of a boquet of flowers. I painted a bouquet last year but that’s the only one I’ve ever done, so I thought I’d spend a little time working out flowers. I think it will be a fun challenge. I’ll go buy some flowers on Monday and set up a still life for myself. I wasn’t looking at anything when I painted this, other than the many images in my head of other still life paintings I’ve seen. And I suppose the memory of actual flowers.
🐰
Abstracted Rabbit
4X5″ oil on canvas
It’s funny. Sometimes when I paint I will look at an image on my phone as a reference image and then paint on a canvas. But the dimensions of my phone are different than the canvas so things get shortened or elongated. I visually divide my phone image into quarters and sometimes I even paint marks on the screen of my phone as references. And I end up with a rabbit, or whatever, that is much shorter or longer than the image I’m looking at. Make sense? I just let it happen, it’s kind of funny to me. And really, what does it matter? It doesn’t.
And, as soon as all my little January paintings are dry I’m going to take them in and have them scanned so I have a good digital image. Then I will list them all on Etsy, I’ll keep you posted.
I just created a Jill Millard Artwork Facebook page. Come follow along!
I may have set it up correctly.
And… I am having this Winter Tree painting framed so I can donate it to my sons high school action fundraiser. It was had to choose which painting to donate. So I had a friend with excellent taste come over to pick one. She chose the tree. I felt like it might be a little too scary. I painted it about a year ago. I love seeing those funny rhino portraits hanging up. 
Ballet 3
48X36″ oil on canvas
I finished my new ballet painting today. I took this image on a day when parents were invited to sit in and watch the class.
Dog Portrait Commission
My first doggie portrait! I take that back, it’s my 5th. LOL
8X10″ oil on canvas
Better in Black and White
Sometimes paintings look better in black and white, this is for sure one of those cases.
I’m going to take a second shot at this one when it dries.
I thought I’d share a bit of my Critterscape process. Nothing groundbreaking, I sketch with paint and then paint. I once heard someone say that they make a lot of lines when they sketch, because one of them will be right. That’s my approach.
Jill Millward Artwork 