Oil Paintings 4 & 5 -- "Loose Cut Flowers"

 I spent 4 or 5 days (1-2 hours a day) 

painting the one on the left.  I decided it would

be a good exercise to do the same thing in just one hour.

I named them "Loose Cut Flowers" and "Looser Cut Flowers".

 And which one did I enjoy the most?  Looser one.

And which one do I think looks the best?  Looser one.

 

This is the "tighter" one.  And really,

the only parts that I was actually happy with were these two flowers.

8-10 hours for "eh".

 I like the palette knife background of the looser one,

and paper wrapping (three minutes instead of

an hour and three minutes.)

 This is my favorite flower on the looser painting.

I think if I spend more time pre-planning,

doing the background color well,

and doing composition well -- it will pay off,

and I can get away with loser painting.

"Chiaroscuro"

"January Promise"

"Besties"

Oil Painting #3 -- "Bleeding Hearts"

"Bleeding Hearts"

For years I have bought old books,

torn off the covers (don't judge!)

and sold "book bundles" in my booth.

Alas, I finally have a purpose for the covers.

LOVE how it looks.

January Trail Trek

We had some awesome sunny and 65 degrees

weather last weekend.  One of the things we did

Saturday was to go for a walk on a trail near our house.

It was my first time to explore it.

There were many interesting sights,

like these fungus growths on a dead tree --

the hues of color were awesome.
I may be painting this later on.

 And how about these fairy steps going up

this tree?

This is an opening to a cave (now with locked entrance)

which I strongly suspect was the origin of much of the cave

rock on the outside of our house, because this cave is the closest one to our house.

We know that much of the rock on the exterior of our house

originated in a cave, and we actually have stalagmites incorporated into the design

(obviously the house was built before regulations on such things).

Oil Painting #2 -- "Mrs. Grosbeak"

"Mrs. Grosbeak"

8x10 on canvas board

Took me three days -- about 1-2 hrs per day.

I was especially happy with the beak and eye,

not so much with the feet or background.

I hope to do many birds and flowers native to Missouri.

2019 Oil Painting Adventure and Some Blog Changes

A new year, and time for some changes...
The original purpose of this blog was to document my junking.  Buying, repurposing, sometimes keeping and mostly selling antiques.  But this last year we were working on two "antique" houses, and I felt that qualified under a "vintage blog".  Like me, it is time that this blog evolved.  I see it as encompassing four categories in the future: vintage, outdoor, art, home.  As if that isn't enough mishmash, I am going to stick in random photographs whenever there is a "lull".  A kind of "365 project" to fill in between regular posts.

We still have some work to do on our Stonecrest home.  We have much work to do on the grounds of Stonecrest, but we feel like we have 20 or 30 years to do it in.  I will still be buying and selling antiques. And I feel like I have time now to pursue some interests which I have pushed aside for decades.   The first of those that I am going to tackle is oil painting.


When I was in high school I was introduced to oil painting, and I loved it.  I was lucky enough to take some oil painting classes in college too, but was too poor to afford oil painting after getting married.  We still are not rich, but I just ordered a whole set of oil paints ($150), linseed oil ($8), an inspirational painting book ($15), and some canvas boards ($24). Merry Christmas to me! WOOHOO!

"Cone"

My first oil painting in decades.

Imagine my delight in finding out that they now produce oil paints that clean up with soap and water!
And no toxic fumes!

My original plan was to take a painting class at a local university, but financially that proved impractical.  So, I am going to order a book, and focus on watching free on-line tutorials.  I will have to be self motivated.  I hope to do a couple small canvases a week, just to get in the habit of painting some each day.  Hopefully I will have more "results" to show soon.

Vintage Danish Marbled Cover Books

 Last Saturday morning my husband told me I should check

garage / estate sales.  I informed him that the first week of January 

was not the optimum time for these, but grudgingly looked at Craigs List anyway.

 You know what comes next, right?

A big old antiques sale about 15 minutes from us,

it was already a couple hours past their opening.

 We still scooped up quite a bit, (more on the rest of the haul later).

One of the items we picked up were these books.

I think they were still there because they were all

written in Danish.

 All with leather spines and corners.

 All with these gorgeous marbled boards (covers).

All written between 1864 - 1940.

All going on ebay this week.

Finishing Touches On The Dining Room

Above is a realtor shot of the dining room before we bought the house.
I am still in shock over how different it looks now.  See the rest of the dining room updates here.
Notice the "pass-through" from the dining room to the kitchen.  It really visually
chopped up the already small dining room wall.

 So we closed it off the pass-though recently,

 and it really opened up the space.

 

It allowed for a "real" piece of furniture without making the space seem bunchy.

 And...I finally found a place for my yellowware collection.

 We dug the shelf out of the garage,

and we had the (super heavy) 1880s brackets

laying around OUTSIDE.  

Tiny Living Room Tour

 Our living room is tiny.  I knew the first time that I

looked at it, it would be a challenge.  A positive is the

large archway leading in from the dining room.  It keeps

the l.r. from appearing too closed off.  The chairs on either side of the "TV nook"

are the hickory ones on which we had to wage war with wood eating bugs, read about that here. 

And of course we had to battle the ugly eyesore of a bookshelf 

which you can read about here.

 I finally got to hang my large clock made out of junk,

read about how that was made here.

This week we finally got the antique bird prints hung

on either side of the "TV nook".  Hanging anything

on these walls involves using anchors.

 This is the south wall. We have some awesome

artwork, I was glad to have a big wall to display it on.

I had purchased the console table for just a few bucks,

but we had to replace the top.

The whole living room has a tree and bird theme.

Many of our prints are done by a friend of ours (one of his on the right.)

The one on the left was by an artist who came by our booth at an antique

show, he showed us his nest pen and ink, and we ended up trading him for it.

 North wall, which is the front of the house.
You can see the front porch arches out the window.

 Our tiny love seat, lots of togetherness now.
We had to get rid of THREE full-sized couches when we moved here.
I didn't know if I was going to get to keep the coffee table,
it is a hand carved monster.  But paring down the
size of everything else gave us the space we needed for it.
It kind of anchors the room, and continues to be my
favorite piece of furniture.

Pine Siding Stained With White Wash Tutorial

We lived with an ugly bookshelf in the living room and office for several painful months.  It was originally a large window in the living room, but then an addition was added to the other side.  Whoever did it decided to split the window area evenly between the two rooms for bookshelves -- which left the living room shelf only about 3.5" deep.  Hard to find books that tiny. It looked disjointed and the stone sucked all of the light out of the room. Above is a realtor photo, before we bought the house.


We finally found someone brave enough to tear it all out and do something outstanding in the living room (see  that post HERE).  That left the office side, which we decided we just wanted a regular flat wall, not the stone wall. The contractor recommended yellow pine siding, which looks like the ever-popular ship lap. That was a great suggestion, except for the nauseating yellow hue of the wood.  I knew in my heart that I had to do a white wash on it, but was not looking forward to the mess.

I used the same watered down paint that I had used in THIS tutorial post. The paint / water ratio is the same. The technique is a little different because the yellow pine siding was already on the interior wall.  If you have an extra piece of siding, it would be great to do some "off the wall" practicing. I hit all of the dark places once first before trying the all-over technique.  (above is after I did the all-over to the top boards.)

The mess really wasn't as bad as I had anticipated.  I wiped the brush on the side of the paint can 3-4 times before applying and that really kept the splatter to a minimum.  The thinner paint also was easier to apply in the narrow horizontal cracks.  I would say that it is important to do a whole horizontal "board" from left to right, instead of top to bottom. All brush strokes should be as straight and horizontal as possible. You don't want it to show where you stopped and let paint dry, and then started again.  It means moving the ladder around more, but it gives it a more professional look.
It is also important to look back over areas that are completed to make sure there are no drips.  Just do a horizontal brush over any drips. If an area looks too light, go ahead and put another stroke of paint over it.

 When we were done the wall was so gorgeous that my husband was hesitant to hang the ceiling tile pieces that we had planned for decoration.  But after getting them up, we were both pleased.

 (You've got to love those colors and all of that chippy goodness!)