Art, writing, travels
I wanted to make a painting for my nephew but he doesn’t have a pet so instead I painted his celebrity crush, Kylie Jenner. Hopefully he likes his Xmas present as much as I enjoyed making it. I was kind of sick of doing pet portraits anyhow and this now makes me to want to paint more beautiful people. I’d love to get more practice painting people and it seems perfect to start by painting strangers before people I actually know, so I can avoid offending anyone in case I do a terrible job!
Posting my latest paintings…a pair of dog portraits for my nieces of their adorable shih tzus for Christmas. It was the first time I painted 2 paintings at the same time. I enjoyed being able to go back and forth between the canvases. When I was bored with one, I could work on the other. The key to doing this is to use the same palette for both. In this case, I used a palette of titanium white, ivory black, burnt umber, cadmium yellow, and French ultramarine.
I was very excited today to try out my new ‘pochade box’ for painting ‘en plein air’ (outdoors). I’m looking forward to bringing it on my travels. I love that I have to paint kind of faster and looser than I normally would. I’d love to keep loosening up the brush strokes and get more impressionistic or even abstract over time. Today’s painting was made with a limited palette of burnt umber, phthalo blue, cadmium yellow, permanent rose, and titanium white.
This is my first tiny painting. It measures only 4″ x 4″. Sometimes when I haven’t painted in a while I feel overwhelmed looking at a big empty white canvas and I feel like I just don’t have the time, energy, or talent to do anything with it. But when I saw these teeny tiny canvases at the art supply, I knew they’d help for those moments and ease me back into painting after extended breaks.
It was also fun to paint with a limited palette of only 4 colors (titanium white, cobalt blue, lemon yellow, and burnt umber)Â and alla prima (meaning “at first attempt”). Normally I take days to weeks to finish a painting. Very satisfying to finish a painting in an hour!
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St. John has some cute little shops and galleries that feature art from local artists. Below are a few paintings that I loved (…and are making me feel like painting something tropical). The first is by artist Lisa Etre, the second is by Ayn Riehle, and the last 2 are by artist Kristen Maize. They can all be found at the Bajo el Sol gallery, in case any of you has a beach house to decorate. 😉
I had the great pleasure of seeing the Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibit at MFA Boston with my son on Mother’s Day. 😊 The photos don’t do them justice, especially in terms of scale, but these were a few of my favorite works.
Excited that my painting “Living Room” was selected to be part of the latest juried show at 6 Bridges Gallery in Maynard, MA with other local artists. The show is called “Habitat” and will be up until February 6th!
Out in the Berkshires this weekend and visited the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA yesterday, full of classic American art. He spent many years illustrating covers of the magazine the Saturday Evening Post and made over 4000(!) paintings. I love how he captured expressions on people’s faces and told an entire story in one picture. Also the amount of detail is really incredible.
Excited to participate in my first gallery exhibit! I joined the Nashua Area Artists’ Association recently and submitted a few works for the fall show in their member gallery. Quite fun to see my art in the world and check out other artists’ works.
Kirti Patel 
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