Sunday, October 7, 2012

Where do I begin?

How can I feel like I have so much to tell you, yet I can't even begin to tell you what's going on?  It's been very busy at the studio, at home, and everywhere in between!

So I will share what I can through photos...and share the long version for another day :)

New Woodstock paintings in the works...



The Barber Shop and Tea Party Restaurant on Main Street


Our Wednesday Evening figure group has been awesome every week - fabulous artists and amazing models.  These are a couple of my recent pieces.  The red ones are watercolor pencil on Wallis paper (12 x 18) and the brown one is oil on canvas (12 x 16)


This is the work board of one of my students for the Value Class that I ran last month.  It was a focus on value, not hue.  If your values are correct, used in good proportions as well, your paintings will be more successful.  It was a great class that I look forward to having again!


One afternoon I set up a nice yellow pear in a little turquoise dish, with the light from the window creating a beautiful sunlight pattern.  From this shot you'd think I had made a great painting.  Well...you'd be wrong.  It turned out muddy and overworked.  It got painted over.


This painting of a small striped pumpkin turned out much better.  Please ignore what looks like my finger in the upper left corner...

I'm also spending a lot of time researching and implementing a special diet for my son Jack.  It's based on the Feingold diet - the biggest aspect being eliminating artificial food coloring (which we've been doing for a while) artificial preservatives, and various other foods that tend to exacerbate his poor behavior.  While just focusing on food coloring was working for a while, it seems like he still has problems after eating foods that you would think would be ok - such as orange juice, apples or apple juice, milk, grapes, peaches, fresh pineapple, and almonds.  It's a continuous experiment, finding foods that are not only as all natural as possible, but don't contain those foods that may trigger emotional outbursts (yes...all children have behavior issues at some point...but these meltdowns are beyond definition).  If you have any experience with the Feingold diet, or any other elimination diet and behavior, I would love to hear your feedback!  

4 comments:

maventheavenger aka jamie said...

hmmm...I don't have experience with the Feingold diet, but I started doing the paleo diet in May to see if it would help my chronic fatigue. It has helped a million times over and in ways I wasn't expecting too. There's a lot of people doing it for a lot of reasons, and I would recommend it to anyone. Check out Mark's Daily Apple or PaleoMom (she's super sciency).

Basically, the diet focused around eating whole unprocessed foods. Meats, healthy meat or fats/oils (coconut, avocado, olive, grass fed butter), vegetables, fruits, and minimal nuts are good. You cut out pretty much everything else: grains, soy, corn, most dairy, and peanuts. The Paleo Mom site also talks a lot about the Auto Immune Protocol which is cutting out a few more known inflammatory foods whch can trigger some people's health negatively.

Good luck! Let me know if you have any other questions.

Ron said...

You have been busy!
absolutely love the 'process' pics! The red watercolor are my favorites. Look forward to seeing more!
Good luck with the diet! It's really hard to manuvre around all the artificail garbage that is put in everything now a days.

Rose Welty said...

My brother went on the Feingold diet years ago - for behavioral issues. It did work. To this day, he is very careful about what he eats because it really changes how he feels. He used to eat leftovers for breakfast - sounds weird, but it did make a huge difference to get processed things out of his diet. Hope it helps your son, those were difficult times in our family.

suzanneberry said...

sorry no info, but love you work! good luck with the diet and Jack.