Painting Fruit with some Fernando Botero Influence

 Top to Bottom Two New Original Oil Paintings on Cradled Canvas:  5" x 5" x 1 1/2" 

1.  Fat Lemon - with final color glaze 

2.  Fat Pomegranate - with final color glaze 

3.  Lemon, before the final glaze, with the original model.  Like Fernando Botero's paintings, the final product seems to have expanded!  Link to Botero Museum in Bogota, Columbia for examples of his work (which I love):   https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/museo-botero-bogota 

4.  Pomegranate with its model

Collaborative Painting

Top to Bottom

1.  Finished still life "Brayer with a Jar of Paintbrushes" oil on stretched canvas 16" x 20" x 3/4"

2.  Sketch of Cole Taylor June of 2016 which Wilson painted

3.  Sketch of Wilson Taylor June of 2016 which Wilson painted

4.  Sketch of wall with outlet and window July 2016 which Wilson scribbled on

5.  Sketch of Cole and Wilson July of 2014 where Wilson added the bodies and did the coloring

The bottom four pictures were the inspiration for the top oil painting.  I loved doing art with my grandsons where I would get to a point and they would take over.  Often the results made the pictures much better!  So, without the benefit of having my grandsons around, I pretended my Brayer had a life of its own, and it got into the action after I finished my still life painting, by smearing blue paint on the finished canvas.  

Upping my Game with New Product Designs at Zazzle

 Lucy Autrey Wilson Redcrow Art on Zazzle

October Oil Painting Progress

 Top to Bottom

1.  Pomegranate:  Needs one more thin glaze layer

2.  New birds escaping a raptor against a fire haze sky.  Underpainting stage 2

3.  Paintbrushes in bottle with some refinements.  At least one more pass coming up

4.  Bird in a tree with a Full Moon.  Underpainting.

Ode to California in 1963

Will California ever again be

The state I remember fond ely

From 1963?

Photo taken by E.A. Autrey in Santa Barbara, 1963.  Poem inspired by another day inside with my air filter running full blast because of the Red Flag warning, and the EPA PM2.5 (particulate matter) >150 (safe is under 50.)  But I'm one of the lucky ones; Santa Rosa PM2.5 is >250 and Cloverdale is >400.  If Covid doesn't destroy ones lungs, the bad air will.  

Some good links on air quality below:

https://www.airnow.gov/aqi/aqi-basics/extremely-high-levels-of-pm25/

https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1/mAQI/a10/cC0#8.2/38.785/-122.977

Oil Paintings Progress Report

 Three Crows now finished.  Oil on canvas 11" h x 14" w

Still Life Art Brushes & Roller in process (step 2 finished):  16" h x 20" w

Orange Weather Blues

The Neighborhood Mannequin Has Gotten Political

 Top photo from September, shot in the Orange Fire Ash Fog.  Vote democratic to save the environment, before the rest of the country looks like the burning down west coast.

Bottom photo from March, when the sun was shining and the sky was Blue in California.  Mannequin Bunny has since seen the light!

Scary Story

Quilting During Covid - helps me keep my Sanity

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1.  Latest, finished in August, using all silk scraps with some added collage silk birds:  "Silk Scraps Birds" quilt front 48 1/2" W x 68" H

2.  Silk back of "Silk Scraps Birds" quilt

3.  Quilted face masks using original designed fabrics and original art bird applique

4.  Quilt finished at the beginning of the Stay at Home Covid experience in March:  "Two Birds" with wool punch birds and original design Running Artist Model fabric.  45" w x 62 3/4" H

All done in time to cozy up in winter.  Looking forward to cooler weather since it is 106 degrees F right now.  Crazy year, between Covid, fire, heat and rancid politics.  

Oh How He Lied

An Eclectic Collection of Recent Art Influenced by These Strange Times

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1.  Pencil Drawing "Doomsday Clock" influenced by Laurie Lipton's much more fabulous pencil drawings.  Done in an art Zoom session with 11 year old grandson. 9"H x 12"W
2.  Paper collage in my on going series of "Strange Journey" works 11"x14"
3.  Small ink and watercolor "Apple Nose."  Not sure what to draw, I picked an apple from the backyard and the rest just happened.  6"w x 9"H
4.  Cradled paper collage on board:  "Big and Little Fish" "9"H x 12" w x 1 1/2"
5.  Small cradled paper collage on Stretched canvas "Little Fish" "4"H x 5"w x 1 1/2"

Rachmaninoff Meditation

More New Collage Art, Using Die Cuts and Cut Outs, Among Other Things

An eclectic mix of new Mixed Media entertainment.

Another original repainted to become a new original

Influenced by Piet Mondrian

Getting Back into the Studio

Painting over more Charbonnel oil prints that didn't completely work with pastels and acrylic. 

Night Train

Learning New Music Skills Combined with Color Theory

After years of playing piano, by reading the notes but not understanding any of the basics, I've gotten interested in learning about music theory and composition.  Fortunately, I located two very old music publications that my late, great, mother had in her music library (she was a superb pianist and composer) which are quite useful:  Modern Styles and Harmonic Construction for Popular Piano Playing by Marvin Kahn and The Majors and Their Relatives by Eula Ashworth Lindfors.  I'm also trying to wade through the Idiot's Guide to Music Composition and Music Theory for Dummies. 

This new music interest was generated initially by a desire to clean up the poor recordings of much of my mother's music, which led to trying to learn both Cubase and Adobe Audition software.  Playing with the new software enabled me to add musical elements to my mother's compositions (sound efx, loops, bird songs, etc.), which has led to a desire to try my hand at making my own original music.

Recently, I noticed a similarity between The Color Wheel (a circular guide to mixing color) and The Chord Wheel (a circular tool for composing one's own music).  So I associated a different color to 8 chord tracks in a very simple scale exercise, then sought to create a video using those same colors synced up with the underlying chords.  My late, great father's photography has also been accessed with an old photo of me filling in for Mary, in the tune Mary had a Little Lamb which appears towards the end of the video's soundtrack. 

This short 55 second video is perhaps a bit too mathematical, the music too elementary and the whole not very artistic.  But the new learning effort is taking my mind off of negative Corona Virus news and bad behavior societal displays.  Escaping from time to time into nature, music and art are essential for trying to maintain some form of sanity in these trying times.

Beach Circus Mobile

At Home and Around the Neighborhood During Covid-19 Shelter in Place

Top:  Garden flowers in vase with mask
Middle:  My much younger self, the clown my aunt made about 80 years ago, a lamp, and roses in bloom in the side yard.  Photoshop has much improved photo stacking.  This is a combination of 8 images
Below:  Sam reflected in the window of Brookside, the local elementary school, closed for Corona Virus.  

Project Focusing During Corona Virus Stay At Home Orders

The Attraction to Utility Poles and Lines in Landscape Photography

It's good to have a project, during these days of required social distancing.  I always have too many so am trying to focus on one at a time.  Having recently expanded my interest in making soundtracks, with music recorded by various family members, I'm working on creating more video animations for my YouTube Channel that feature new music scores.  This also requires selecting and editing photos based on a common theme.  By current project is "Utility Lines in the American Landscape."  With over 200 images now selected, it will take some quality time to meld them into something of interest.  Then, more fun, going through reams of recorded music to find a good pairing of sound and image.

Three Oranges

Pastel over offset Charbonnel oil print.  Forever grateful for an orange tree in the backyard!

Original Paintings Over Recent Charbonnel Oil Monoprints

11 x 14 oil monoprints overpainted with pastels, watercolor, ink, acrylic, and one paper collage.

Top to Bottom:
1  Blue Flower with Bugs
2.  Strange Journey - Desert
3.  Yellow Vase, Red Vapor

Sheltering in place due to Corona Virus is a good time to immerse oneself in art.

Shelter in Place brings out the Pioneer in me

Sheltering in place brings out my family's genetic pioneer background: cooking, sewing and managing to survive (so far) independently while enjoying the finer things in life (good food and art).

Latest placements make food taste even better!

Top:  New 3 original "Six Squares" placemats + a photo of the backing.  Squares fabric left over from a quilt in process.  These are 20 x 13 with cotton batting and insulation

Bottom:  Smaller, older placemats (front and back) done on commission. 

Bio Blanket

Since I'm now working on a new quilt, I thought I'd post the last one I finished this past January, after it got delayed a year due to illness.  Above Bio Blanket finished in 2020, based on Frank Miller comic art and biography photos taken by my father, E.A. Autrey, as featured in the Growing Up Autrey book, published with Blurb.  This only goes up to high school.  A great deal happened after that!