Stacy Weitz Minch

6x6", oil on canvas panel (sorry for the glare. again) I was hoping to try to capture this beautiful turquoise lake (and even try a sunset!) in paint during our camping trip this weekend, but we got a pretty good rainfall in the evening ;) So the little bit of lake peeking out from behind this stump will have to do, ha.  I quickly sketched this in about an hour while my baby was sleeping--and my sister and her husband set up their camp chairs behind me and made a rather attentive audience while I was painting this, which was sort of interesting (for me, not them, ha ;).  But seriously, I had never seen such turquoise blue water in a lake . It looks like the Caribbean (but don't be fooled--the water is COLD). My sister discovered this hidden gem during an underwater modeling shoot and fell in love with it. Anyway, we had a great weekend hiking with the kids, paddle boarding, getting dirtier than I like to recall, toasting marshmallows while chatting over a sparks-fly...

6x6, water mixable oil on gessobord, 5/16/16 The subject matter likely reflects poorly on my housekeeping prowess. But if I kept a good eye on what was going on in the bottom drawer of the fridge at all times, I never would have ended up with this cute little subject, right? Silver linings...

6x6", oil on canvas panel, 4/20/16 Aside from the steaming bag of dog poop 10 feet away (I really wish I would have spotted it BEFORE setting up, painting, and taking down--such a pleasant day apart from that occasional whiff of what is that!? ;), this was actually pretty fun. (And people, if you bother to pick up the poo, please at least walk it over to the garbage can. Really).  I like painting from life, though like other living things I've encountered, nature doesn't stand still. There's something invigorating about painting in real time, though, as opposed to staring at a static photograph. I really needed a little break from that special kind of tedium. My main focus was trying to match value/color here. Drawing was a bit secondary (and I left out the fence and row of houses on the horizon there. It seems you have to be a bit selective when doing landscape painting--especially when painting this small. There's just so much out there. Note ...

6x6", water mixable oil on gessobord, 4/11/16 I often intend to get much more done during the day than I can realistically accomplish, and yesterday was one of those days. There was that stick of butter smeared all over the floor (so slippery!), the mud dragged in from the back yard, all the weekend laundry to get done, no nap for the little one, and the list goes on. So when 9:45pm came around and I still hadn't done anything artistic throughout the day (though I did work a little bit on improving my plein air setup--the easel I got last year needed a little reinforcing to be functional, especially after my experience last Saturday where everything that could have gone wrong did, ha!)--I decided to just grab an apple and paint for a bit, even though it was late (this one was about a 40 minute study). Apples tend to be my default subject matter. We always have them around (we eat a TON of apples around here), and they're quick little studies. Not too intensive on th...

6x6", water mixable oil on gessobord, 3/28/16 (sorry for the grainy photo. I'm having the hardest time getting well lighted photos that aren't full of glare lately). There are about a thousand of these things hanging around my house (okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but it feels like a thousand). And altogether way too much candy for the composure of two little ones ;) This was kind of an interesting exercise in color mixing. I don't usually paint things with such uniform, saturated colors. And it took a few little experiments to get the colors right (especially the green!). Painting is really hard, and I have to wonder if I will ever feel like I know what I'm doing? I've been a little discouraged about it lately (and haven't been doing much of it). But it doesn't matter. I'm just going to keep on trying--and giving myself little pep talks all the while (I really wish I didn't have to do that, but I do. So I will).  ...

6x6", water mixable oil on gessobord, 2/29/16 I caught my kids' cold this weekend, so I haven't been feeling very well. And when the cold medicine wore off at about 5AM, I found myself awake and sandwiched in between two sleeping kids on our queen sized bed (I don't think it's recommended for 4 people ;). So I decided to just get up and go do a little painting while the house was quiet (it didn't last long!).  This painting was done from a photograph that I found on morguefile.com. I have a hard time painting from photographs. There's just not enough (or maybe too much?) information to create a feeling of three dimensional depth, and I guess I just don't have enough experience painting from life yet to successfully add (or subtract) the info that would pull off the illusion. So it may not be a masterpiece, but hey, at least I painted. With a cold. At 5AM! Painting is one of those things that the more you learn about it, the less you feel like...

6x6", water mixable oil on canvas board, 1/15/16 I've been drawing a lot of people lately, and let me just say that strawberries are much easier to draw. Thank you, little guys, for not looking totally deformed if my line is off by 1/32 of an inch. It's kinda nice ;). 

6x6", water mixable oil on gessobord, 12/6/15 My daughter really wanted a watermelon when she saw them at the grocery store the other day, and it really wasn't very good... but at least the color was nice ;)

Both 6x6", acrylic on canvas panel, 12/3/15 5AM is too early to be painting (or doing anything for that matter), but when the baby wakes me up at 4 and I can't fall back asleep (worst time of the night to wake up, dontcha know?--fyi, I have lots of Minnesota relatives ;), well I might as well take advantage of the quiet house. These little studies were exercises in speed, really. They are both in acrylic, which is some crazy weird stuff. After painting with oil for a while, acrylic really throws me for a loop. You have to race the brush from the palette to the canvas, just so it doesn't dry in the meantime ;) And the paints I have aren't the heavy body kind, so they seem to have almost the consistency of, maybe mayonnaise? It's a whole different animal. But it does force me to go for just the essential values and colors and stop right there--acrylics are also very shiny and hard to get a good shot of without glare, sorry (some pretty distracting glar...

6x6, water mixable oil on canvas panel, 12/2/15 I don't know why I keep trying to paint these roses--the color is impossible. It's making me think I should start on one of those massive color chart projects to see if I can figure out a way to duplicate what I'm seeing ;) Yes. I should, I should, I should. But I don't waaaaant to. It feels too much like homework ;) On another note, flowers. And painting in general. I'm starting to realize that it's all about simplification and holding back (hmmm, not so successful with this painting--I got a little stroke happy with those petals). Which before this year was something I would have never really supposed (doesn't it seem like when you look at a very realistic painting, that there is so much detail work?). But for the painter, it's all about leaving things out and only putting what is absolutely necessary--eliminating the details (where possible) and simplifying the scene into distinct masses for the v...

6x6, water mixable oil on gessobord, 12/1/15 This little apple balanced better on its side than upright--which somehow reminded me of that silly spin the bottle game I heard all about in jr. high, but never actually played ;)

6x6", water mixable oil on gessobord, 11/12/15 I could probably paint a pomegranate every day of the year and not get sick of them. I love their rich colors and textures, individual shapes, and characters. I haven't done a lot of painting or drawing the past week... not really sure why. Maybe it's the time change, the change in the weather (brrrr), or burnout from trying to finish that bigger painting last week (I like to start something and get it done ;), or something else altogether, but I've been in sort of a funk the past little while. Having a daily painting habit has made me much more aware of my mental and emotional state, which is probably a good thing... but makes me feel a little neurotic, because I'm much more aware of my shifting moods. It seem like the balance of my life has to be somewhat aligned before I feel like painting, which makes it all the more obvious when something is off (and I've learned it's never a good thing to try ...

This watermelon painting was driving me crazy every time I looked at it--bleh. So I decided to try to bring up some of the values in the melon. I'm always afraid to work back into these little paintings I whip out in an hour or so. I produce them in such a blaze, I'm always afraid I will just ruin them if I touch them again. Case in point, this recent painting of some Bartlett pears, which I tried to develop a little more and ended up totally destroying (sorry, no picture. it went straight to the garbage, which I'm really not sad about since I wasn't happy with it as it was anyway--it probably would have helped to have a reference photo or the pears in front of me again. note taken ;) Anyway, back to the watermelons. I'm happier with the way the flesh of the watermelon looks. But now I'm thinking I should have left the stupid background alone. Dare I try again? Maybe I'll mull it over for a few days before doing anything rash ;) This line fro...

6x6" water mixable oil on board, 10/9/15 I haven't had the best luck picking out watermelon this year, but this one was a winner :) Unfortunately, painting the thing was a little less enjoyable than snacking on it.  I picked up a different brand of paint last time I needed some cadmium red and accidentally got the "hue" (I was in a hurry), and it is truly awful stuff. There were some definite lighter values in the red of the melon, but when I mixed the cad red hue with a little bit of white, it was so chalky pink I was just blown away.  So... anyway. I mixed with yellow instead (to get a lighter value), which resulted in a rather orange-y melon (at least orange is the complement of the blue background, right?). Then I was so preoccupied with the color mixing issues that the drawing got lost along the way (there is something seriously wonky going on with that back piece of melon, ha!).  I will just thank this melon for being an experimental color st...

6x6", water mixable oil on gessobord, 10/8/15 I don't know why I keep painting pears--every time I do, I realize just how frustrating all those tricky color transitions are. There's red and green and blue and brown, and everything in between :/  So... I don't know. I'm not terribly happy with this (since my goal at this point IS to be able to reproduce the way things actually look and this one doesn't quite get there ;), but on the positive side, it probably is the closest I've come to getting all the colors on the pears. Maybe I'll try another one tomorrow and see if I can do any better!

6x6, water mixable oil on canvas board, 9/20/15 They had these adorable pears on sale for 33 cents a pound this week. You just might see them again :)

6x6", water mixable oil on board, 9/16/15 An apple a day, you know ;) Somehow, they are always the most willing subjects, and I find it so challenging to study the shaded side of these dark red apples.