Red Barns, 6 x 6 inches, oil on canvas.

The spring is sprung, and I packed up my 8 week old son and went painting with the POPS group (who have a new web site!). I did this painting while he was napping, just to see how it might work out. I love these buttery, bright colors--I often feel as if I am icing a cake. Painting in close color harmony gives me practice in bending a color just a bit to make a big difference. My palette always looks lovely afterwards as well.

Escape Shoes, 14 x 14 inches, oil on canvas.
I just completed this portrait of my skates, which turned out to be a surprisingly difficult drawing task. It was hard to get the perspective of the wheels and trucks correct. I am still not sure that I have done so. This is one of the first paintings that I have completed in my new studio--it is such a pleasure to work there. The new space has windows with natural light!

I know that a few of you are waiting to see more paintings or drawings of my cutie pie here...oddly this painting has a lot to do with him. His dad was watching him, so that I was able to both paint, and and go for an evening skate--my first skating since getting pregnant 10 months ago.

Crazy Garden, 16 x 20 inches, oil on canvas.

I finally had a little time away from my sweet son to work in the studio. This weird piece is done exclusively with my fingers, or rather the tips of my much to large rubber gloves. This appoach makes an interesting and delicate mark--I may do some more of it, but with a stronger subject matter. I am not the first to come up with painting with gloved hands..one of my favorite painters, Ken Auster, has been doing this lately.

As an pictoral explanation of the total silence on my blog for the last month, here is a (quick, and not excellent) sketch of my latest project, sleeping....

Red Skein, 6 x 6 inches, oil with palette knife, available.

I recently attended a knitting party put on by a friend of mine, and learned a bit about knitting. It turns out to be a fun thing to do, kind of like Sudoku, but in 3-d. Here is a small still-life of some vibrant red yarn to commemorate the acquisition of a new time-sink!

Baylands I, 6 x6 inches, oil with palette knife, available.

Baylands II, 6 x 6 inches, oil with palette knife, available.

Yesterday afternoon, after a day of dense cold winter fog, the sun shone for a few hours and I took myself down to the marsh for some much needed plein air painting. These are two sketches that I completed before the winter light left and my fingers became to cold to paint.

These paintings are both done very quickly, but with close attention to the actual light harmony and quality at that very moment.

Napa Trees, 6 x 6 inches, oil on canvas, available.

This small palette knife is done from a larger work that I posted to my Web site earlier this winter. I often look to previous paintings for experimental motifs. Here I enjoyed the rather unusual orange/pink color scheme that developed out of my whimsy and from the source material.

Beach Scene, After Dan McCaw

This painting is taken from a painting in Dan McCaw's wonderful book, A Proven Strategy for Creating Great Art. He confesses in the book that he just made this composition/color study up on the spot. Strategy is a book I look at again and again, and always recommend to my students. You can tell it is cold and rainy here--hence all the indoor painting.

I'd like to share an exercise with you. On the left is my version of a composition by Sargeant, on the right is the original. He completed this sketch on a trip to Morocco in 1880. I enjoyed the composition so much that I did a version of it with warmer tones and a palette knife, rather than using Sargent's cool colors and soft brushwork.

This type of exercise raises the question of forgery... is my version of the original a forgery? Does it only become a forgery if I have tried to reproduce the painting stroke for stroke and color for color, or is just quoting the composition enough? Would it be forgery if I went to Morocco, found the same spot, and painted there? Or would it now be a pilgrimage dedicated to a great painter? Lots of people have painted the Grand Canal in Venice or the same local barn, and some of those paintings look remarkably similar.

Maybe it is only a forgery if I try to pass it off as my own idea, or as a duplicate of the original. Occasionally, people offer to buy these "experimental copies", but I always feel like they are just exercises, not authentic Ann McMillan paintings.

Pears and Persimmons 18 x 24 inches, pastel

The El Camino Art Association in Arroyo Grande invited me to their meeting to do a demonstration. Here is what I came up with. It was a fun demonstration with an audience very interested in pastel and enthusiastic for the way I use the medium. The next day I gave a mini-workshop in the organizer's lovely garden. It was a very fun visit to the San Luis Obispo area.