Art By Tali Landsman

We are finally going to India. We will be back on February 24th. 2009 I will try to blog as I can during the trip. Take care all! have fun and peace to all!

This is the new piece in the "Sketchbook" series that I've just started. I like the "leap of faith" that the figure is taking. I will name it "I believe I can soar". I made the upper hand larger than what is proportionate for the body, but this is intentional. Tomorrow, when I will be closing my studio before out trip to India, I will spray the charcoal drawing with fixative. The next step will be to draw the sketchbook grid and keep on working on it.

You probably heard many times before that painting is all about problem solving. It is so very true. "Problems" during the process of painting, is suddenly becoming aware that something just "doesn't work". It may be a form that was drawn incorrectly, a disproportion, a wrong perspective, colors that don't "sit" well together etc. Spending time in front of the canvas and trying to figure what is the best way to fix these issues, can be very rewarding. It is important to pay close attention to every corner and area of the canvas equally. Regardless of how minuscule it is, it is advisable to scan it all with the same scrutiny and attention to details. I had a great day in the studio today, working and reworking on a large painting.

I have been doing a lot of paperwork in the last two days. Applying to shows, galleries and getting together a large order of paints and canvases for a commission that I got. I was commissioned to paint 12 large paintings for an art collector. This will take me some time, especially with my upcoming trip to India and then to New Zealand. But I am excited for the opportunity and my mind is buzzing with ideas that I am itching to put on the canvases.

Today was a short day in the studio. I photographed more art and posted it on my web site and completed the piece showing above. I will name it "I rise". I also finish the painting "A Boy with his toys." I added some swirls and circles of paint. I am in the process of applying to galleries and submitting work to competitions. It is a time consuming process that bring up a lot of self doubts and fear of criticism. But I am planning to be strong and not thin skinned and to take what comes with a level head. It is no use putting your emotions on the butcher block. And if fear paralyzes us, we simply do not move ahead, beside, my art is fabulous!

We are having the most peculiar weather here in Colorado. It has started to rain on Friday and it has been raining on and off all weekend. It is a rarity that it rains in the middle of winter, so high up in the mountains. Usually it simply snows. Instead of skiing, we went swimming yesterday. This is our last week in Colorado before our trip to India. We will be leaving next Sunday and will be exploring Rajasthan for three weeks. I can hardly wait. At times, it feels like I run in a small circle between my studio, my office, the kitchen, shower, up to vail to ski and back on the wheel again. I welcome the change in routine. It will be our first trip to India. I have been intrigued by the country for years, but never took the opportunity to go there. I plan to blog as often as I can and to post images of the trip.

Oh, the delights of dealing with UPS freight.... Yesterday morning I spoke to the UPS Freight truck driver. He promised that he will come by to pick up the large art by the afternoon. Needless to say he did not show up or called. When we called the UPS office early this morning, we were told his truck is full and he has no room for our boxes. He has to drive to Denver to unload. We were promised a pick up tomorrow afternoon. We shall wait and see.

This is the painting from the Sketchbook series that I am currently working on. If you look closely, you can see that I have entered some boxers among the toys. It is so interesting to draw boxing matches. They twist their bodies into interesting positions and they look so painterly with their large shorts, long laced boots and colorful gloves. This painting is still in progress. I have to enter a lot of doodling all around the symbols and toys. Today I am waiting for the UPS Freight truck to come and pick up the large boxes to be shipped to the collector in Florida. We are having trouble getting the Freight company to drive up our road. It is a gravel road, and even though it did no snow for awhile, the semi-trailers do not like our narrow road that snakes around the creek and has only a few spots for them to make a U-turn on. We tried to shovel the snow blocking our van, thinking that we can drive the boxes to the UPS depot, but our van does not have a four wheels drive and it procee...

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day and very mild. We drove to the slopes of Vail and had a great time skiing in the sunny day. Today I continued painting the "Sketchbook Series" in the studio. I have been looking at the piece I've started for over a week, contemplating how to proceed with it. Today seemed to be a good day with a lot of fluidity. I added colors to the toys around the central figure, that I only outlined before. I also painted the boxers that I entered in ink before. I only painted their boxer shorts, their gloves and long laced shoes. I left their bodies in black and white. Tomorrow we plan to go skiing again since it is Martin Luther King's day. But I plan to pack a painting for a collector that won my art auction that ended yesterday.

I have painted in the studio all day. I am running out of some oil paints and I plan to take the long weekend off. I have placed a rush order of more oil paints, but it will not arrive before the middle to the end of next week. But I need the break anyway. I find that I am planing paintings in my mind all evening, hours after I left the studio. Even before bed time, I see globs of paints, colors and compositions in my mind's eye. This weekend we intend to go skiing, to lay around on the sofa, read and basically waste time. I am not very good at wasting time any more. I used to be an expert at it, but now I sometimes work for 12 hours a day or more. Granted, it is a creative and invigorating work, but still it is lovely to have a quiet mind with not much ideas or errands to memorize.

It is done! I have finished packing the majority of the art to be shipped to the collector in Florida. On Tuesday the UPS freight truck will be picking up the very large boxes from my studio. Needless to say I did not paint today. I spent the day wrapping, packing, boxing, taping and sticking labels on very large boxes. Tomorrow if we will not go skiing, I will go back to the studio to continue painting. I have primed and brought into the studio more medium size canvases and boards to paint on. For now, I am taking a break from the "Sketchbook Series", to paint the landscapes in thick oils. They will have to dry for a long time, and I want to be ready for the summer art shows. I am not sure about the economy, which is unpredictable, but I want to have a good selection of strong work in case the shows will turned out to be good.

This morning I woke up to a snow storm. At first I felt a bit worried because I was expecting the delivery of my packing supplies. Usually we do not get freight deliveries on very stormy days, but today everything went fine. I started packing the larger art, making sure to prevent any possible damage. In the studio I continued painting in thick oils. It gives me a nice break from the very labor intensive "Sketchbook Series". I also worked on my web site and added more images to the "Landscapes In Oils" section.

I spent the day in the studio painting the series of the landscapes of Israel. It is such a pleasure to play with the thick oils again. It provides me a nice break from the Sketchbook series. I also spent some time photographing the paintings that I had finished.

Today in the late afternoon as we were preparing to drive to Glenwood Springs, I got a box of flowers. Not just any flowers, but a lovely bouquet of fresh sunflowers. They were sent to me by an art collector from Wichita Kansas who commissioned a painting from me last month. It was such a lovely gesture to receive flowers from a collector in the middle of winter and it really touched me. Patrick, if you are reading this- THANK YOU SO MUCH! I got another commission to do for a lady this week. She said that she loved and lost a painting she bought from me in 2002. This happened many times before. I am not sure what are her circumstances, but I do get emails from collectors who get divorced and either the husband or the wife took the art. In fact, I just sold a painting to a client from Jacksonville whose wife took the original art in a divorce. Being divorced myself (before Jules), my heart goes out to them and to the challenges they face. It is always emotionally draining to break a bon...

Yesterday was a very productive day in the studio. I was asked by an art collector to make some sketches for a proposal of 12 large oil paintings of the landscape of the Golan and Galilee in Northern Israel. Instead of making sketches with pencil, ink or watercolors, I decided to do small paintings in thick oils. This will be easier to photograph, place in the proposal, and later on, frame and sell as individual paintings. There was always a very good reception of my landscapes in oils. I printed photographs of this part of Israel which is known to resemble Tuscany. It got similar visual elements with the farm fields, the cypress trees, the rolling hills and mountains and it has the same glorious Mediterranean sun. I set up a large table in my studio and spread on it my large tubes of oil, my brushes and knifes. I decided to paint on small triple primed Masonite boards. They take the thick oil very well and are easy to work with. The oils just glides on them. Now they are too wet to ph...

I am waiting for a large delivery of large bubble wraps and corrugated wraps to continue shipping more painting to the collector from Florida who bought 29 paintings. Until the shipment arrives, I am back to the studio to paint. Yesterday, a telephone cable in our area accidentally got cut and as a result we had no phone lines and no DSL Internet until midnight. This was bad news for Jules who could not work all day, but I spent the day in the studio paintings. I started a new piece of the "Sketchbook Series". I drew a large male form in the center of the canvas. I was wondering why do I draw more male figures than females? but the truth is that I am looking for complex gesture, something challenging to draw and I do not really care if it is a female or a male. It just happens that I have references of male figures in interesting and challenging posture. It is so much less exciting for me to draw a figure in a simple posture. I am looking for a challenge.

Overnight, another snow storm left mounds of snow at our door front. It is so pretty now in Colorado. The landscape takes on a black and white tone quality. The evergreen trees look black from a distance and the aspens that shed their leaves radiate different shades of gray. The snow accumulating on roofs, trees and mountains is a glistening white. The down side is the slippery roads. Daily we see people slide into the embankment or the highway dividers. Somehow people do not slow down and end up standing stunned by their wrecked vehicles.

I spent the day packing paintings to ship to my art collector in Florida. It is amazing how long it takes to carefully pack the art. But I was very productive and was able to pack and box 12 paintings. After the weekend, I will be able to place a large order or bubble wrap, tape and boxes to finish packing the larger paintings. It seems like everyone is taking a long New Year's weekend. We plan to go skiing. We have been home for more than a week, both of us with a bit of the flu. It would be nice to be on the mountains, outside and physically active. We will be dropping the boxes at UPS on our way to the slops.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." -Scott Adams This sums up some days in the studio. There are days that it feels like one cannot do anything right. A line that seems so easy, is taking a wrong shape as the hand quiver. A color that looks right on the palette, seems so wrong on the canvas. On other days, when I feel more connected, I fix a lot of mistakes that could be fixed. "Happy accidents" are those mistakes that takes the painting in another or better direction. I still have a long way to go in loosening control and relaxing into the process. The "Artist's Sketchbook" series is a great tool for me to do just that. I leave the mistakes, doodle over them or simply cross them over and go to another part of the canvas and try again.