Brande Arno Art

6 x 6 inches, Oil on Gessoboard Sold I really loosened up with mixing and applying the greens in this piece.  

6 x 6 inches, Oil on Gessoboard Sold - Thank You! Still have the cuteness bug running the studio.  I may never get serious again.  I love cute animals and  I think piglets are second only to puppies in the cuteness scale.  Really enjoyed painting this piglet.

4 x 4 inches, Oil on Gessoboard  Sold - Thank you! Was in the mood to paint something cute today. 

5 x 7 inches, Oil on Gessoboard Donated to Bethany House Sunflowers.  When in full bloom, its hard to believe they start from small seeds.  About 5 minutes from my house is the little village of East Bloomfield where, talented green thumbs who know how to make the most of a quarter acre live.   On these quarter acres, you'll find small sunflower patches as backdrops to colorful flowerbeds or lining the sidewalk leading to the porch, or even horseshoeing the rural-route mailboxes. Stunning and much inspiration for this artist.  

8 x 8 inches, Oil on Gessoboard A few weeks ago, while driving from point A to point B,  I was blessed by a stunning view of a field of simple wildflowers.  Perhaps it was the contrast of the rich dark woods behind the field, or maybe it was the aged texture of the fence posts, or maybe the vast amount of Queen Anne's Lace reminded me of early snow.   I pulled over and took a few pictures. Today, I composed this painting from the pictures.  The composition is simple, but the rich contrast, the aged fence posts and the snow blanket of Queen Anne's Lace all live peacefully in this painting.  

8 x 8 inches, Oil on Gessoboard- Sold There is something good and wholesome to work a field and harvest hay and wheat.  Humans get sustenance from the bread made with wheat.  Farmers feed the hay to horses and other barn animals.  I remember working the field on a wagon behind the baling machine. Pulling up the fresh bales and dragging them behind me, so the adult could lift and stack them in rows.  Good hard work that gave me an appetite.  I was a skinny kid, so having an appetite for supper was a rare occurrence. I painted this field with the bales nestled in, still part of the field.  I drove by the field recently and the bales are gone.  Stubble of hay remain with the job to protect and feed the soil during our winter season.  And in March, while it is still cold enough to keep me inside, the farmer of this field will be turning the stubble back into the ground. The soil will be laid bare and warmed to make ready for the spring sowing.

5 x 5 inches, Oil on Gessoboard $ 75. Website Purchase When the weather gets cold, I set up bird feeders and watch how the chickadees do their day's work.   They seem to know that the other birdies of the neighborhood also need to get to the feeder because they take a seed and then fly to a branch to eat it.  Sometimes, they have to wait longer than they should for another turn because the finches like to park at the perch to make piggies of themselves.

4 x 4 inches - NFAC Nibblefest Art Contest Sold This little piece was painted today for the Nibblefest Art Contest and like always, starts on the 20th of the month and bidding starts at only .99 cents.  I probably over did it eating tea biscuits while painting this.

4 x 4 inches, Oil on Gessoboard Click for Purchase This painting was a personal challenge for me.  The challenge was to make every stroke of my palette knife and brush count and that means thinking before painting.  I was hoping that I'd get through the entire painting without any scrapes, but that didn't happen.  However, the amount of scrapes was greatly reduced, so I'm happy.  I also continued with my exploration of mixing browns from Yellow, Red and Blue.

12 x 16 inches, Oil on Gessoboard, - Sold My good friend and I were on our way to a grocery shopping trip when she spied this hay field.  The freshly bundled hay bales announcing a hard day of work for a local farmer.  I asked her to pull over so I could get a few pictures. She not only pulled over, but she wanted to commission me to do a painting of said field.  I enjoyed every minute of this painting.  The bales are more stagnant in real life, so I had to change that up a bit for the composition's sake.  My friend is rather literal, so I didn't have as much creative license in the composition area.  But I had fun with mixing color and brushwork, which I think comes through in this piece.

6 x 6 inches, Oil on Gessoboard $ 95.  For Purchase The inspiration for this painting comes from the Daily Paintwork's cow challenge.  I went to Morgue File and got a wonderful photo reference to work from.   I hoped to capture the heifer's muscles and still keep the brushwork fluid.  But this painting needed more, it needed richer browns than I could mix with my favorite tube brown.   So I mixed my own from a red, blue and yellow.    

4 x 4 inches, Oil on Gessoboard Click to Bid It's been quite the summer and like most everyone else, I feel it's flying by.  I've been busy on a commission that I hope to finish tomorrow.  However, I did take a break from the commission to paint this little gal.