Robie Benve Art

"Lily Pond Study" 6" x 6" (15.2 cm x 15.2cm) Acrylic on Canvas Panel I painted this for the Artistic Sentiments painting challenge. Thank you Dana Marie for another nice painting opportunity. An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching. Mohandas Gandhi

"Poppy-ing up Tulips" 9" x 12" Acrylic on Canvas Panel colorful paintings I know they look like poppies, but they are tulips, acting like poppies and tricking my mind up to the very end! I tried to simplify shapes and I played with colors and lines.  What started as a suburban front yard scene, ended up as a Tuscan landscape, and a quite colorful one for that matter! Style-wise, I can see I'm heading somewhere, and I kind of like the direction. Color, shapes, and lines that kind of make sense but don't have to be realistic. What's that called? Folk art? Contemporary? Not sure. BTW, the laptop is still out of order but the Tractor (see previous post) stepped up to the task and accepted to run my camera's software, which can do some very basic image editing, and here you have it! .. and the Tractor earns its respect! :))

Look at me... Such an innocent face!  ;) I am suspect number one in the case of attempted murder of my husband's laptop.  His beloved MacBook Pro is badly agonizing, not able to even open a browser, and apparently it's very likely my fault even if I don't recall doing anything bad to it. But I was the one spending more time during the day using it, so I see his point. Currently I can only use " the tractor ", the old beyond imagination pc that we keep for the children, but they refuse to use because it's too slow, and whose loud noise when processing, reminds me of a farm tractor. I so hope that we can fix the laptop AND show my innocence! (but most of all fix it!) Until then I will be much limited in my posting since the tractor does not have any image editing software, and not even microsoft office. I think the solution is simple: guilty or not, I need to get my own computer! :))

--> Tulipani Rossi 6” x 6” (15.2 cm x 15.2cm) Acrylic on Canvas Panel What is your favorite color?  Mine is blue. I love a nice bright blue! But on canvas, I love red, oh yeah!   Powerful, joyful and intense. These guys' red is even brighter than it looks here. Maybe one day I'll load a better photo. (Today I took at least 20 shots, and not was great!) Something about these tulips: they tricked me! The whole time I had the feeling I was painting poppies, I even had a cute name for the poppy painting, then I came to reality and had to face the fact tat they were tulips! So I settled for making them Italian, like their mama. :)

 "Sunflower bunch #1" 3” x 3” (7.6 cm x 7.6 cm) Today I got my old watercolors out, and embarked in some small paintings. I hadn’t used watercolors for years, but amazingly none of the colors had dried! Everything was in great condition… the only rusty thing are my skills. Lol I did a couple of versions of this sunflower bunch, a great exercise to get the juices flowing. If you have tips for me on how to get better results, please share them in the comments. Thanks! :)   "Sunflower bunch #2" 3” x 3” (7.6 cm x 7.6 cm)

"Trieste - value study" 6” x 6” (15.2 cm x 15.2cm) Acrylic on Canvas Panel I rendered a photo I took last summer in Italy using only 4 values. Lots of squinting and comparing. The fun was to try to paint shapes instead of details. The other cool part was mixing my own black and grays. Fun fun with this value challenge by the DPW .

--> "Garden Roses #2" 6” x 6” (15.2 cm x 15.2cm)  Acrylic on Canvas Panel --> I'm liking doing these limited palette quick studies! I was trying to complete it in 60 minutes like the previous ones, but at that point I wasn't even close to presentable! Probably due to the fact that I was en plain air, in a sunny and windy day. So I continued inside, where I probably put another hour into it. Painted using ultramarine blue, cadmium red, cadmium yellow, and white. 

After many questions from friends and family about whether I was selling my work, and after listening to the Artists Helping Artists Blogtalk radio by Dreama Tolle Perry and Leslie Saeta giving advice to painters and artists, I decided to do it. Canvas prints and greeting cards from some of my paintings are now available for purchase at http://fineartamerica.com . AND I also created a Facebook page "Robie Benve Art". After much thinking about it, I got over the worries of not having a big portfolio, or not being good enough  and kind of jumped into it. What if I don't sell a thing?? It's ok. :)) I'm not painting to make money, I'm painting because it makes me happy. Having my work accessible to the public is an extra stimulus to do my best and try to get better.