Robie Benve Art

                                              5"x5" Acrylic on Canvas    What’s the point of buying fresh flowers and not painting them? Hopefully I’ll be able to make one painting a day while they are still fresh!  :) This is my first attempt. I drew the flowers with pencil, then painted a purple background around and yellow on the flowers and leaves, and I painted over that.  I let some of the purple base-color show through.

"Gondola Veneziana"      11"x14"  Acrylic on Canvas Panel Venice holds a very special spot in my heart: I grew up few miles from it, and I went to the University in Venice. I've always enjoyed the city and its atmosphere, so rich of history and architecture, so artistic, and so poetic. Painting Venice can be intimidating. There are many things that are different from what our eye would expect. Lines in Venice are never straight. Walls, sidewalks and buildings have almost organic structure: they curve, soar and lean, in a harmonious way.   When I saw the A Day Not Wasted blog posted a painting challenge with a Venetian Gondola, I thought this was my chance to break the ice and start painting my beautiful Venice. Though the reference picture is darker than the Venice I like to remember, I needed the incentive to get started on my first painting of Venice, and it worked. I tried to brighten up the colors a little and added some flowers on the

I'm working on a new painting. My reference is from a picture of my beloved Venice, which I never dared to paint before. The picture has been provided by the "A day Not Wasted" blog, and it's a little dark, so I'm trying to paint the scene making it brighter, but I got to a point of dissatisfaction, and now I'm re-working it. Oh brother! I'm a little scared about this one, but two thoughts keep me going. The first is that it's all good exercise, no matter what. The second is that I'm finally breaking the ice painting Venice, and that's a great thing for me. :)

"Coffee Jar" 9"x12" Acrylic on Canvas Panel                                    I always found painting a still life challenging, and I usually avoid painting one, so when I saw the challenge on the Paint And Draw Together blog, I was at the same time intimidated and excited to try. It as been hard to decide when the painting was finished. There is a fine line between keeping painting and improving my work and declaring the painting finished. When are details good enough so I can say “done”? Most often, I keep feeling like I need to change something, to improve a color value or a shape. This painting was no exception. Even now I would go back and modify things, the background for example. But I decided to stop. I put my signature on it, and that’s the symbolic roadblock. Now if I want to change something, I need to start from scratch and redo the whole thing.  :)