Purple Skies

Purple Skies. Oil on panel, 8" x 8". $175. Click to buy.

Last weekend was Yuletide, and what a great show! So many original paintings, giclées and books found new homes. I'm so grateful to everyone who came and supported me and the other amazing artists.

But many paintings are still looking for their forever homes, and I've been promising for a while that small original works would be available online. So starting with Purple Skies, above, a new painting will appear each day here and on Daily Paintworks.

All of the paintings are done in oil on masonite panels, and are ready to frame. Please be aware that the color may vary from monitor to monitor. For instance, Purple Skies looks over saturated on this blog (on my monitor)---the background is really a muted periwinkle blue.

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Aviation & Mixology Book Release

Aviation. Oil on panel, 12" x 12". ©2014 Sheila M. Evans.

It's a wrap! I've resurfaced to announce that my art and cocktail recipe book, "Mixology: the Art of Classic Cocktails" is finally finished.

Aviation is one of nineteen vintage recipes represented in the book along with the original paintings they inspired. The book is available for online order here.

The official book release party is tonight, and after that I have a week to get ready for Yuletide, a holiday arts and crafts festival at Spokane's Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture. After that, at long last, paintings will begin to appear on Daily Paintworks. And they will be for sale.

It takes a long time and an unbelievable amount of effort to assemble a complete new body of work along with a book. It's a relief to finally feel caught up (sort of). But I can't wait to get started on the next book!

Martini

Original oil on panel, 12" x 12".

First of all, I owe a big Thank You to our friends Richard and Kate Vander Wende. They graciously hosted Martini and Vesper night. I was a bit nervous about testing these recipes, since I have never particularly enjoyed martinis. But now all that has changed.

Here's how Richard did it: he chose the gin well (Sun Gun Club Gin). He set a bottle of vermouth on the counter, shook the gin with ice, poured it into glasses, and garnished with a delicious Picholine olive. Perfection. We did try a version where vermouth actually went into the glasses at about a 10:1 gin to vermouth ratio. It was slightly different, but no one could really see the point.

There are those who say that a Martini must contain vermouth to qualify as a Martini. But there are many creative ways to handle this… Richard's proximity method is one. You might also hold up the bottle of vermouth so that light shines through it onto the drink, look at the vermouth from across the room, or just catch its reflection in the shaker as I've done here. 

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Strainer, Grapefruit, Glass

$100. Click to buy.

Strainer, Grapefruit, Glass. Original oil on panel, 6" x 6".

The purple and blue glasses were too much fun to put away. I wanted to work on simplifying them more, and I really like how the colors came out. This time I added a fantastic antique strainer I found at one of the Hillyard shops. The marbled handle looks like horn or tortoiseshell, but is made of Bakelite. Not that you can tell from half an inch of it, but I will tackle it again in the future. I expected the springy bit to be horrible to paint, but it was the easiest part of the whole thing.

Mixed Drinks

Sold.

Mixed Drinks. Original oil on panel, 6" x 6".

Back to my purple glass and serving tray. More glass work this time, with a great pale blue champagne coupe from United Hillyard Antique Mall. Hillyard antique dealers seem to have collected most of the vintage glassware. Almost too many choices. The mixing spoon came from the same place, and has a jigger and bottle opener on the other end. Too cool!

Lemon Jigger

Sold.

This is one of the pieces I was really happy about. I went on another massive prop shop, this time filling in with some new items. After several sessions painting lightly-tinted, faceted glass, this smooth, deep aubergine glass was a ton of fun! The jigger was an interesting challenge, but I like the look. I was especially happy to finally have dared paint the antique serving tray I found at the Velveteen Rabbit Antiques. I loved the warm tarnished highlights and the deeply tinted reflections.