Brande Arno Art

9 x 12 Inches, Oil on Gessoboard - Sold - Thank you! These trees live in my side yard.  In fact, every time I hang laundry on the clothesline, I look right at them and more times than not think, what a nice painting they'd make.  So finally, I got around to painting them. An artist has to be crazy to paint so much green.  I don't remember where (or from who) I first heard: "If I wasn't crazy, I'd be nuts"   But saying just that applies here.  Really, green can make any artist go crazy because it's second only to orange in the garish and unruly color category.  'Nary a time to use it straight from the tube. No, an artist must mix their greens.  And don't think mixing blue and yellow will get you a nice shade of green.  No, it's NOT that easy.  But, I took on the challenge of green and if you knew how much grey is in the green grass and how much green is in the grey trees... Well let's just say they are very closely related.  Bel

8 x 8 inches, Oil on Gessoboard -NFS There is a lot of imagination in this piece as the most of it is memory painting.  I let the painting take me in a direction I usually don't go with colors.  I enjoyed every minute of painting today and I highly recommend the practice of memory/imagination painting to my artist buddies.

5 x 5 inches, Oil on Gessoboard - $ 75. Click to Buy I'm building a website and have been a little behind with my paintings. It has given me time to re-think what I'm doing as an artist.  I'm leaning towards painting larger studio pieces and plein air one day a week.  Nature and I are a good match because plein air painting really soothes me, even though the challenges are much different than studio painting. I'm also thinking of keeping a pen and wash journal sketchbook and draw random things around the house, to include Cooper & Cookie...my special doggies.  So, there should be more variety in my postings. 

5 x 7 inches, Oil on Panel I'm a You Tube addict.  Mostly because TV isn't what it used to be.  Recently, I found Bella the Hummingbird Live Cam.  Earlier in the week, I did a screen shot save to create this painting of her.  I just took another peek at the web cam, and she now has two little hummer-buggers sleeping in the nest.   Bella Cam here  

8 x 8 inches, Oil on Gessoboard $ 150. Click to buy The other day, my doggy, Cookie was growling at the window, which caused me to look.  I saw a sweet young deer that I think is a yearling.  All alone and beautiful.  Then I remembered I took the cover off my strawberry bed.  So I snapped a few pictures and dashed out the door.  I knew the deer would run and it did, but I rescued my berries. Today's painting is inspired from one of my photos.

8 x 8 inches, oil on panel - NFS I'd like to introduce you to McLovin, who I like to call The King of Hunters Ridge. (Street I live on)  He is a royal feline.  He fears no leashed dog and he owns the pavement.   A few weeks ago, I spied him in this very pose.  I grabbed my phone and snapped a few pictures knowing a painting would be in the future. McLovin is a multi-tasker as he accomplished more than just sunbathing that day.  He not only was sunbathing, but did it in the middle of the road, proving he owns it.   But being the royal feline that he is, he picked the road in front of my house...driving my two dogs inside crazy.  

12 x 16 Inches, Oil on Gessoboard- Sold I've been working on two rather large commissions.  Like any commission, I got into the weeds and when it's all said and done, I feel like I got weed-wacked.  But after hours and hours of  painting and scraping, I'm finally happy and so is the patron.  Whew!   This painting was commissioned because a group of deer waited out a snowstorm in the yard of the patron's neighbor.  Pictures were snapped and I was given them to work with.  I had to use the artist licence.