A Very Cool Experience, WIP, Fruit Salad

Yesterday I had a fascinating experience. The staff photographer for the style magazine came out to take the photos for the article. Oddly, I had met him two years ago when he was an intern for a local paper. He took photos of me for a newspaper story then. I felt very comfortable with him and he is a very sweet young man. We spent a couple of happy hours doing the photo shoot. He told me all about his career as a photographer and some of the interesting stories about the people he meets. He also does free lance photography. I will definitely recommend him to anyone in north central Florida who needs a photographer. He was meticulous in every stage of the shoot, carefully staging each shot. I can't wait to see the article. I will be able to get copies of the photos after the article comes out. I had no idea it would be so complicated. He brought in all kinds of awesome cameras and lights,etc. What blast!! Here are the photos I took of him working.



Aaron's camera is quite a bit more sophistocated than mine :>)



This is his big umbrella light thingie. It is run off a big battery.



Aaron arrives.



Aaron brings in his equipment.






The WIP continues. It is in the ugly stage now. I was pretty busy, so I haven't gotten very far on it yet.







I've been thinking it might be fun to do some casein studies again, using paper. I go back and forth on this medium from joy to frustration. It is beautiful medium with terrific flow, great color and very fine detail capability. I actually think it is can be superior to acrylic in handling. It does not have the value shift that acrylic has, and the color saturation is good. The problem for me is uneven varnishing. I like a sheen surface to my work
and parts of the painting will take the varnish and other parts won't. I think doing them on paper and mounting it to board so it can be framed with glass will possibly correct this but I hate framing with glass. I was a pastellist for years and that is one reason I gave it up.

I also like to do oils on gessoed paper too. Perhaps Gouache would do as well. There seems to be a renewed interest in gouache these days as a study medium at least on the art forums. I like it too, but not as much a casein and acrylic. Acrylic works nicely on watercolor paper. I bought a couple of watercolor canvas pads but I don't like them for watercolors. I think I will use them with the casein and see how it goes. Casein dries very hard and is inflexible, so it must be adhered to a rigid surface. Mounting the paper on board should take care of that.

I have a new commission project for the summer. I'm excited about it. I'm going to be doing two fairly large landscape paintings of West Virginia. I've never been there but I would love to go. I imagine it is much like North Carolina, where I paint once a year.

Today's Recipe:

Fruit Salad

1 bunch seedless grapes
1/2 pint strawberries
1/4 pint blueberries
2 peaches cut in bite sized pieces
1 pineapple cut in chunks
2 apples pealed and cut into bite sized pieces
1/2 fresh melon cut in bite sized pieces

Juice of two lemons
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon crushed mint leaves or chopped fresh mint leaves
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Mix sugar/mint,vanilla, and lemon juice. Mix carefully into the fruit in a large bowl.

You can use any kind of fresh fruit in season.