Drinking coffee, lots of coffee

I got another group of tiny frames from my gallery. There is not a lot of room to play with in a 3 x 5 frame, so I did pretty much the same thing I did the last time- painted a few espresso cups. Of course one of the reasons was that the last three I did sold almost immediately. It is fun trying to create interesting designs and abstractions in such a tiny space. I use the table cloth the cup, the spoon and the resulting shadows to make something that feels good in the space.
I often glue linen canvas to a board for something this small. This time I just used shellac on cherry plywood. This seals the wood from the oil paint and gives a smooth surface to paint on. It gave me a pretty warm background to paint onto. I figured as much, but I was not too fond of the surface as I found it too slick, and pretty frustrating to paint on. I will probably go back to canvas in the future. The time spent on these varied pretty widely. The green one was completed in an hour and a half. The blue one gave me fits, and took quite a bit longer.



Espresso with Blue, 5x3, oil on wood



Espresso with Pink, 5x3, oil on wood



Espresso with Green, 5x3, oil on wood

They are all available at Rottinghaus Gallery in O'Bryonville. You can't miss it as there is an awesome painting of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the window. If you go in and mention my name to the gallery owner when you buy one of my paintings, they will make you an acutal sandwich. Supplies are limited.