Brande Arno Art

4 x 4 inches, Oil on Gessoboard -  Click to Bid This piece was painted for the October Creatures of the Night, Nibblesfest Art Contest, or NFAC.  The bidding starts at just .99 cents and is through ebay.  Ends October 27.  Good luck!

4 x 4 inches, Oil on Gessoboard  - $ 75. Purchase This being a foreshortened pose made it difficult to paint the depth.  Especially the cute face.  Had to set it just right on that cute fat little body. 

4 x 4 inches, Oil on Gessoboard  $ 75.- Purchase When pondering what to paint today, another Berkshire piglet came to mind.  I love their markings and the challenge to paint black & white mixing my own blackish tones.  

5 x 5 inches, Oil on Gessoboard  Sold, Thank you I'm brushing up on my plein air skills to get ready for the annual Seneca Lake Plein Air Festival.  The artists arrive at headquarters, which is The Smith Center for the Arts, on Wednesday, September 30.  We paint outdoors on Thursday and Friday.  On Saturday evening is a gala show and sale.   I'm a charter artist and I love this event.  A link for complete details is  Smith Arts In the western part of NY, the weather has been heavenly.  The sun is casting wonderful shadows and the sky is a beautiful shade of blue with clouds that tempt me to just paint them.  In spite of the perfect painting environment, I still had trouble finding a subject to paint.  Mostly due to dangerous parking on the side of busy roads. Below is were I finally decided to paint: Not the best picture, but you get the idea.  Next is how I started: And like always, I didn't snap photos...

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 so...

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.

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.

5 x 7 inches, Oil on Gessoboard -Sold As this painting progressed, I started to feel inspired to use the brush differently.  So I did and I really like how this Tufted Titmouse's Tuft was rendered.  Say that fast!   When I finished painting the Tufted Titmouse's Tuft, it looked like the wind was blowing from behind, thus the title. 

4 x 4 inches, Oil on Gessoboard Click to Bid I really wanted to paint another mouse.  I looked through my sources to come up with an unusual pose.   This mouse is definitely wanting to stop on a dime. I'll be traveling over a long weekend to visit family for a happy occasion.  It's nice to get away, but I know me...I'll be wanting to use my brushes sooner than later.

4 x 4 inches, Oil on Gessoboard - Sold I've been very busy enjoying the company of my granddaughter.  We are doing things like going to the Mall, taking archery lessons, going to the ice cream stand.  She shops the malls just like me:  Get in, get out.  I prefer shopping on-line and having all delivered right to my door. This morning, while she was still sleeping, I was able to sneak in some studio time.  I'm feeling balanced.

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.  ...

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.

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.  

5 x 7 inches, Oil on Gessoboard- $60. Click to Buy My husband and I have dinner date night on Fridays and have three favorite restaurants.  So once every three weeks we visit The Big Bass Brasserie, where they feature first class food, wine and a brew master on site.  A very cozy environment complete with a  Bass in a rather large tank.  He's happy to be swimming and poking around the rocks and artificial greenery in the tank with him. With this painting, I used my picture of said Bass.  I'll post that below.  I changed the angle of the tail to capture movement and I had fun spattering some darker mixtures and making bubbles. I went into this painting knowing that I'd struggle on the water.  I must be oil or something, because water does not let me get close to capturing it.  So I decided the best way to solve that weakness was to make strong verticals for water then add a squiggle here and there.   Strong verticals also ...

4 x 4 inches, Oil on Gessoboard  Bid Now This is the homework for a on-line course and the facebook link is  Here  to show the full homework.  The course link is  Here This will focus on being comfortable talking about my art, the process and inspiration.  Taking advantage of social media, creating a mailing list for newsletters...in other words, get up- to- date. There was inspiration and process noted on the facebook links.  Please click one or both if you're curious.