Doreen E. Lepore

Fresh off the easel

| Doreen E. Lepore

More beach paintings! This time I’ve included a picture of each painting in their frames. These are small works, all 6×8 – oil on panel, and look great in wide white molding frames – the width of the molding is about 3 1/2 inches.

The brilliant blue is compliments of Gamblin – go to www.gamblincolors.com and click on Torrit Grey to see the paintings that were submitted. This year all Torritt Grey participants (remember the Torritt Birds http://hobesoundartist.com/2012/09/29/torrit-bird/) received a free tube of “Cote d’Azure” along with another tube (mine was white). The backstory is that their master paint maker, Matt and his wife Liz  went to France for their honeymoon and the water inspired this color. The color is perfect for Florida, hope they keep making it!

The paintings are all down at a small, new boutique in Hobe Sound; Juno Shoe Girl on S. Dixie Hwy.  The shop has a beachy theme and my beach paintings have sold well there. You can find more information about Juno Shoe Girl here: http://junoshoegirl.com/

2013 Sketchbook Project – Frogology

| Doreen E. Lepore

My 2013 Sketchbook Project is called Frogology because it’s about Frogs. Most of the frogs in the book are extinct and on the back cover there is a list of frogs that are missing. I wasn’t able to scan the whole list but the website is written there where you can read the list for yourselves.

Again, I used mostly watercolor crayons and ink. Some drawings are in colored pencil and the last is graphite. It was a fun sketchbook to do because the frogs are colorful and fun to draw. It also felt good to give the frog issue attention. The cover is brightly printed fabric.

 

More Sales!!!

| Doreen E. Lepore

My apologies for not keeping up with my blog however I started the year way under the weather and it really put be very far behind in every aspect of my life.  Plus, there have been way to many non art activities that I’ve been forced into by people who don’t appreciate my time nearly as much as I do.

But the good news is that there have been more sales that I’m happy to report and hopefully, I’ll get back to painting soon.

White City Water Lilies
White City Water Lilies
Jupiter Lighthouse
Jupiter Lighthouse
Caution Flag
Caution Flag – Oil – 5×7
Hobe Sound Life Guard Station
Oil on panel – plein air knife painting – 12×16

 

First Umbrella

first umbrella

 

Nanowrimo and PiBoIdMo

| Doreen E. Lepore

The month of November is always hectic and to add to the usual hecticness is Nanowrimo [National Novel Writing Month]and now PiBoIdMo [Picture Book Idea Month], both of which I wanted to participate in.  This year was more difficult because I had to take precious time out because of a hand injury, which is healing now, thank goodness.

As usual, I didn’t finish Nanowrimo but am okay with that because I did finish PiBoIdMo.

Picture Book Idea Month
Picture Book Idea Month

piboidmo12winnerlarge

It’s been difficult to get the badge inserted somewhere so I’m posting it here now.

The creator of PiBoIdMo is Tara Lazar and she hosted daily guest posts on her blog which were very insightful and inspiring:  http://taralazar.com/

The idea is to come up with an idea a day for the month of November.  Since it wasn’t necessary to actually write the whole book every day, it was do-able and I exceeded the goal.  Some of the ideas might actually pan out.  I sure hope so.  In the mean time I’m still working on a tree frog book, now with several more ideas to follow.

Thanks to Tara and all her guest authors and illustrators.

Caruso
Caruso

P.S.  Last night’s fortune cookie:  “Right now there’s an energy pushing you in a new direction.”

Torrit Bird

| Doreen E. Lepore
Torrit Bird
Torrit Bird – oil on panel – 5×7 – for the annual Gamblin Torrit Grey contest
Torrit Bird Too - 6x8 oil on panel
Torrit Bird Too – 6×8 oil on panel – not entered in the annual Gamblin Torrit Grey contest

Each year the Gamblin paint company cleans their filter and makes paint out of the pigment they collect.  They put it in a tube and when you buy their paint, you receive a free tube of this random grey paint.  The color can be different every year.  They call it Torrit Grey. (I believe Torrit is the filtering system.)  Also every year Gamblin paint company holds a contest and you can see the rules for yourself at their website:  www.gamblincolors.com.  There is a link there to see past shows and winners.

Basically you must paint with the current year torrit grey paint and you can use any white and a black.

My Torrit Bird paintings were painted with just the torrit grey and white – Gamblin’s Flake White Replacement.

Even though they allow you to enter 3 works, I only entered the top bird – he was my favorite.

 

Worldwide Paintout

| Doreen E. Lepore
Jupiter Inlet
Jupiter Inlet, DuBois Park, 14×11 Oil on Panel

Done last weekend for the 10th annual world wide paint out.  Went down to DuBois Park and set up toward the inlet.

DuBois Park facing inlet
DuBois Park facing inlet – notice the partiers to my right – they never even offered me a hot dog – not that I eat hot dogs.

It was a nice day but there was a storm coming in from the ocean.  That gave me a great cloud to work on though. It sprinkled a little while I was there but as soon as it started to thunder I packed up and left.

 

My tree frog obsession

| Doreen E. Lepore
Aunt Lily
Aunt Lily – pencil drawing

Lately, I’ve been working on tree frog drawings and paintings because I’m totally obsessed with frogs.  Well, I’ve always liked frogs and I’m not really totally obsessed but actually trying to write and illustrate a children’s book about tree frogs.

This drawing is just my idea for a character I call Aunt Lily.

While researching the tree frogs I came upon disturbing information about our amphibian population and if you are a facebook friend, I’ve posted this organization on there a couple of times and want to put their link here too.

Amphibian Rescue

http://amphibianrescue.org/

Also, here is a very informative video that you can watch in full on PBS.org – “Frogs – The Thin Green Line”

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/frogs-the-thin-green-line/video-full-episode/4882/

Hopefully you don’t get bored with the subject of frogs, but they are in serious danger from many environmental factors and a devastating fungus that has recently killed off way too many frogs.  The situation needs as much attention as it can get.