#macarons

Day 2. Macarons

Here’s another sweet treat, Macarons, that is more healthy than most. It has a delicate palette (and flavors!) that makes it an interesting composition. In that sense, it’s a slight departure from the more vibrant subjects I often paint.

 

“Macarons from DelRey Shop, Antwerp” by Beverly Shipko, Oil painting, 16 x 20 inches on cradled wood panel

And now it’s true confession time. This is a larger 16 x 20″ version of a small 5 x 7″ Challenge painting that I did in 2015. You can see the differences in scale below. It certainly took a lot longer than a few days to paint (try weeks!) because of the size, details, and the individually mixed macaron colors.

I recently finished Macarons and thought this was the perfect time for its debut – especially since it certainly was a challenge!

Macarons required a lot of patience. The more I looked, the more I saw. Every time I put more detail in on one macaron, I had to add more to the surrounding macarons. At times, it felt like this was the painting that was never going to end. Finally I reached a point when I knew it was time to stop (confirmed by Bonnie when she exclaimed “Done!” after work), although the temptation to keep going was strong.

Thank you to Betty Heller for thinking of me and taking the original photo at DelRey shop in Antwerp.

My intention was to keep Macarons in reserve for a day when I wouldn’t be able to paint, which happened yesterday when we spent a chunk of the day with Noelle, a good friend from my Kraft General Foods days, and her family in New Jersey. It’s one our our holiday traditions. I wish I had celebrated this painting in style by bringing macarons for dessert, but I didn’t think about it until just now.

See you tomorrow for Day 3. Time to paint!

Day 27. Macarons

This quiet pastel painting is quite a contrast to the bold, graphic paintings from Day 24 Salmon in Red, White and Black and Day 25 Classic 1959 Dodge, which is maybe what I needed.

"Macarons" by Beverly Shipko, Oil on cradled wood panel, 5 x 7 inches

“Macarons” by Beverly Shipko, Oil on cradled wood panel, 5 x 7 inches

Thank you, Betty Heller, for sending me the photo for Macarons after your trip to Belgium, which was taken at the inimitable DelRey shop in Antwerp. It’s a beautiful composition and I’ve been looking at it for about a year, but that’s all – looking…. until now.

Despite the fact that I had never painted a single macaron, I plunged ahead with this rather ambitious painting of 24 macaron (not macaroon, so Bonnie tells me). I hesitated before starting, but knew I was painting well (practice makes perfect). With the official Challenge ending soon, I knew it wouldn’t be the end of the world if this took 2 days – and it did. Besides, I’m already 3 days behind, so what’s another day. Here’s where I started and ended the first day.

DSCN5845

DSCN5864

After painting 10 macarons yesterday, today went a little easier. It’s funny how I started seeing these as mouths (especially the ones with the dark frosting). I just plodded along, experimenting with subtle differences in colors to try and capture soft tones, which is something different for me. Near the end, I started working on the light and shadows to bring life to the piece.

This is definitely a painting I wouldn’t have tried without the Challenge. And it took almost a month of intense painting before I felt confident enough to tackle it.

I took a risk and it paid off. Having said that, tomorrow I’ll be working on something a little less risky. I’ll try and get 2-3 more paintings in before making a collage of all my Challenge work, which I’ll post here.

The collage will be a great opportunities to look back with me at all that I accomplished in September. I hope you’ll join me.