October, 2015 | Beverly Shipko, Artist

Day 29. Mini Tootsie Roll with Bag

October 8, 2015 by Beverly

I seemed to be hooked on candy.

And just maybe Halloween is top-of-mind from the pumpkin decorations that Bonnie already put up.

“Mini Tootsie Roll with Bag” by Beverly Shipko, Oil painting on cradled wood panel, 5 x 7 inches

Whatever the reason, this was truly a rewarding but demanding painting that took a a few days. After working for several hours, I decided not to rush this since it had a lot of potential.

I wanted to revisit little Tootsie Rolls with it’s bag (that says Midgees on it, which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue). Using a camera as my digital sketchbook, I took 25 photos with the bag before settling on this composition (reminding me of the dramatic angles in 19th century Japanese woodcuts).

It took a while to come to grips with the different scale between the bag and the Tootsie Rolls, and find a dynamic composition using this atypically shaped candy (rather static and awkward from this painter’s perspective).

Less was more in this painting. I settled on a single Tootsie Roll, eliminating both wrapped and unwrapped ones ion various stages of being consumed.

I went right to the sketch, skipping the toned underpainting, and started with the bag – not surprising since I like use the darks to establish the structure. The above photo shows where I was at the end of the first day of painting.

Thanks again to Ed Price, my Northwestern business school buddy, who first planted the seed of painting mini Tootsie Rolls, which weren’t on my radar.

I’m proud of the last two iconic candy paintings, the Day 28 Kit Kat followed by today’s Day 29 Mini-Tootsie Roll with Bag, which are drying together on my mantel. While both have a similar color palette, the approach for each is distinct. Do you have a favorite?

With Jay’s help, there will be a lot more open wrapper “research” around here as Halloween approaches. Photos of your own handiwork all always welcome.

I’m getting a sugar high just thinking about all this candy, so I need a break. Maybe it’s time to go back to painting something more healthy – and finish up Apples and Honey from Day 15, which in the sketch stage.

I’ll decide tomorrow. Until then.

Collage from the 30/30 Challenge

October 5, 2015 by Beverly

Well, I must confess that I have 27 images for my summary “collage”, with 3 paintings left to go.

I thought I had 28 paintings but I couldn’t find the Day 16 painting anywhere. That’s because I skipped Day 16 to celebrate Rosh Hashana (it’s coming back to me now…).

This morning I started by pulling all the images together and resizing them for easy uploading. After experimenting with various templates, I designed my own custom collage layout on picmonkey.com (a useful free site for creating Facebook banners too) to post on Leslie Saeta’s Looking Back on 30 Paintings in September blog before the upload link closed.

This was my favorite collage, which I posted.

As with most computer tasks, it took longer than expected – even though I had done this once before. And I never did figure out how to add the border and caption to the collage like I did after the January Challenge, which you can see here.

Nevertheless, I was so pleased with the layout and myself for all that I had accomplished – until I realized my Mom’s birthday cupcake was missing, as were the drawings. Here are all 27 works in an earlier version using a pic monkey template as the base.

Now I’m going to take a break, order a new LED TV to replace the one that broke 3 weeks ago (back to reality), and try that first layout one more time (the perfectionist in me is showing again). I’ll give it an hour, then I’ll put the collage aside to get to work on another painting.

I have the luxury of painting for 3 more days this week, and am looking forward to it. See you tomorrow.

P.S. At 8pm, here’s what I came up with. Everything is here, and the macaroons are larger, but I think I like the simplicity first one even with its missing images. Probably no one else would even notice, and maybe I’m just talking to myself… Which one would you use on a future postcard?

Day 28. Kit Kat

October 5, 2015 by Beverly

“Give me a break,
Give me a break,
Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat Bar”.

“Kit Kat” by Beverly Shipko, Oil painting on cradled wood panel, 5 x 7 inches

With this Kit Kat painting, I took another trip down memory lane back to my days in advertising at DMB&B in New York City working on the M&M’s Twix Cookie Bars account. For two years, I lived and breathed the candy (ate it too, and gained a few unwanted pounds with all the cases of free candy lying around).

Since both Twix and Kat Kat are made from wafers, they are direct competitors. As a result, I closely monitored Kat Kat marketing activities in the US and Europe. The overseas Kit Kat commercials were really whimsical and silly – much different in tone than American ads.

This Hershey candy felt so familiar that I felt like I was getting reacquainted with an old friend during the entire process.

As I was working, this painting reminded me of another Hershey candy painting, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, from the January Challenge, with its similar orange and brown color palette. That was when I first discovered the myriad of possibilities with opened candy wrappers. I also think the Day 7 Vending Machine painting had a subliminal effect on this choice of subject.

Painting this was just plain fun.

Surprisingly, the most difficult part was the setup because the package didn’t rip open very easily or elegantly. After going through quite a few Kit Kats, I returned to this first bar, which was opened by Bonnie. Thanks, Bonnie!

Now that it’s October, technically the September 30 Painting in 30 Day Challenge is over, but not for me. When Laura was home in mid-September, she suggested a modification this concept to accommodate this exceptionally busy month: 30 Paintings in 40 Days

I will be posting my end-of-Challenge collage tomorrow here and on Leslie Saeta’s blog. However, I will keep going and build on my momentum. I’m painting better than I have for months with all this practice, and I have a few more paintings I want to try before leaving for Philadelphia for the weekend (not to mention the ones that need work).

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Day 27. Macarons

October 1, 2015 by Beverly

This quiet pastel painting is quite a contrast to the bold, graphic paintings from Day 24 Salmon in Red, White and Black and Day 25 Classic 1959 Dodge, which is maybe what I needed.

“Macarons” by Beverly Shipko, Oil on cradled wood panel, 5 x 7 inches

Thank you, Betty Heller, for sending me the photo for Macarons after your trip to Belgium, which was taken at the inimitable DelRey shop in Antwerp. It’s a beautiful composition and I’ve been looking at it for about a year, but that’s all – looking…. until now.

Despite the fact that I had never painted a single macaron, I plunged ahead with this rather ambitious painting of 24 macaron (not macaroon, so Bonnie tells me). I hesitated before starting, but knew I was painting well (practice makes perfect). With the official Challenge ending soon, I knew it wouldn’t be the end of the world if this took 2 days – and it did. Besides, I’m already 3 days behind, so what’s another day. Here’s where I started and ended the first day.

After painting 10 macarons yesterday, today went a little easier. It’s funny how I started seeing these as mouths (especially the ones with the dark frosting). I just plodded along, experimenting with subtle differences in colors to try and capture soft tones, which is something different for me. Near the end, I started working on the light and shadows to bring life to the piece.

This is definitely a painting I wouldn’t have tried without the Challenge. And it took almost a month of intense painting before I felt confident enough to tackle it.

I took a risk and it paid off. Having said that, tomorrow I’ll be working on something a little less risky. I’ll try and get 2-3 more paintings in before making a collage of all my Challenge work, which I’ll post here.

The collage will be a great opportunities to look back with me at all that I accomplished in September. I hope you’ll join me.