Comfy Cozy Ray Painting finished!

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A Rainy Morning  © 2013 by Karen Mathison Schmidt, artist

12 x 12 x 1 inches • oil on cradled GessobordTM

private collection • Leonding, Austria

Thank you for all your title suggestions ... they were all great! As I was looking at the finished painting last night I wanted to go with something that would emphasize the feeling of comfy coziness, and what better way to evoke that feeling than to know that while Ray is indulging in a morning snooze in his favorite chair, the rain is pattering on the roof and streaming down the window panes.

One note: I had initially intended for the back of the chair to be a creamy white with the little embroidered flowers, but then I thought that might make the overall look too light, and take away from the feeling of coziness, so I decided instead to emphasize that luscious red underpainting, and I ended up loving it. Now I wish I actually had a luxuriously red chair here in my studio! For now I’ll have to be content  with tossing a red quilt over the back.  :)

One in five million

Why do cats sleep so much? Perhaps they’ve been entrusted with some major cosmic task, an essential law of physics – such as: if there are less than five million cats sleeping at any one time the world will stop spinning. So that when you look at them and think, “what a lazy, good-for-nothing animal,” they are, in fact, working very, very hard.

QUOTE FROM KATE ATKINSON

As Yet Untitled WORK-IN-PROGRESS • 12 x 12 inches • oil on cradled Gessobord

I’m trying to come up with a title for this work-in-progress of Ray ... any suggestions?

A new Louisiana landscape painting

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Misty Morning  © 2013 by Karen Mathison Schmidt, artist

16 x 20 inches • oil on 3/4" cradled GessobordTM

private collection • Richardson, Texas

This bayou is just down the road from us, about half a mile away. I love the way the morning fog makes the distant trees look all soft and hazy.

With this one I was going for a balance between simplifying the shapes and keeping the feeling of wildness. I’ve been studying Susan Sarback’s beautiful paintings and her use of color ... I would love to take one of her workshops. She teaches not too far from where my husband’s parents live in northern California, so maybe one day I’ll get the chance!

Happy painting!

Woo-hoo! Our electricity has been restored!

 ... and Ray is SUPER excited about it.

"Auntie Em! Auntie Em!"

Yesterday morning we had a bad thunderstorm with a tornado that came really close to our house. We are all okay, thankfully, and only very minor damage: the glass panes in the French door leading to the back porch were all broken, all the upstairs doors out onto the front balcony blew open and the wind blew things around upstairs a bit but nothing broken, and a table and some potted plants blew off the front porch, along with a wicker love seat which flew sixty feet or so and landed upside down out by the fence. It lost its back in the fall, so now it's a love bench!

Our neighbors had a piece of roofing tin about the size of a door crash through their dining room window but nobody was hurt.

We are still without power so I'm posting this from my phone. Hopefully we will be back up today and I can post painting progress photos tonight.

Happy Monday!