Green Mason Jar - Daily Painting by Darren Maurer

6" x 6"

This is a mason jar that I found in a flea market store a few months ago. It is the same one that I used in the Jar of Buttons painting on September 5, 2007. I emptied the buttons out and painted it alone this time. The green glass is extremely cool and fun to paint. I used a light muted out pinkish tone for the background. I want everyone to describe something for someone else tomorrow and use the term, light muted out pinkish tone, in your description somehow. I think it could catch on as a favorite color with the right kind of promotion. This is painting 209 in my Painting A Day Series. Painting Sold.

Donut - Daily Painting A Day by Darren Maurer

8" x 8"

A friend brought some donuts by today and I thought one of them deserved getting painted. Not the donut literally, but it's resembelance being painted onto a prepared wooden panel. It was drizzled with some pink glazing that went back and forth across the top surface of the donut. I like the way this painting worked out. I am partial toward donuts though. This is painting 208 in my Painting A Day Series. Painting Sold.

Jelly Jar Daily Painting by Darren Maurer

6"x 6"

My youngest daughter made jam a few weeks ago. A family friend helped her. This particular flavor is rhubarb blueberry. I liked the way the jar looked when some of the jam had been used. It reminds me of my grandmother, my mother and all my aunts making jar after jar of every flavor you could imagine. This is painting 207 in my Painting A Day Series. I will post this painting on eBay Wednesday evening unless someone emails me by 7pm Wednesday night and would like to purchase direct from my blog page. $100. UPDATE: PAINTING SOLD AT 2:49pm

Carhartt Cap - Daily Painting by Darren Maurer

6" x 8"

Carhartt makes work clothes. They wear like iron because they are made so well. As a result of wearing so long they tend to get a lot of character to them before they finally wear out. This cap has the character factor going for it and I decided to paint a still life of the cap. It is also the cool shade of yellow I like. Almost like an egg yolk. It is my friend's hat and I should give it back to him sometime. This is painting 206 in my Painting A Day Series. Painting Sold.

Jelly Spoon - Daily Painting by Darren Maurer

4" x 10"

I think I may have a problem. I have become obsessed with painting grape jelly as a subject matter. It is the most cool color of purple out there and it is wet and translucent and has reflections of surrounding color showing up in it like a little purple mirror. I don't think people normally think about jelly most of their time. Lately I have been. I'm planning some more jelly paintings in my mind and can't wait to get to them. This painting is a more horizontal format and I think it works great. It was inspired by the painting I did of the butter spreader back in January. I am very happy with the deep dark color in the jelly and the highlights to give it the three dimensional chunky jelly look. This is painting 205 in my Painting A Day Series. Painting Sold

Chocolate Easter Bunny- Daily Painting by Darren Maurer

6" x 6"

I promise this is the last Easter candy themed painting for this year. It is just too much fun painting these things I remember as a kid. This is Painting 204 in my Painting A Day Series. Painting Sold

I have been searching for an old friend for last several years without luck and last night I located him and phoned him out of the blue. We played basketball, football, dug holes, and explored the undeveloped land near our houses on the outter city limits of Grand Island, Nebraska almost everyday from about 1970 to 1973. My family moved but we stayed in contact and still hung out a lot until his family moved from Grand Island. I have been doing some name searching off and on for a long time and last night I finally got a hit and found him. I was figuring it out today and I think it has been about 27 or 28 years since we saw each other or spoke last. We had a short but great phone conversation and are going to make plans to visit when one of us is near the other one. The internet can be a pretty cool thing.

Easter Peeps #2 - Daily Painting by Darren Maurer

6" x 8"

I painted a box of Easter Peeps last year and had a very nice response from blog visitors. This is the box of Peeps that I took the single Peep out of for an earlier painting last week. The missing Peep is the one used as the subject for the previous painting. This is Painting 203 in my Painting A Day Series. Painting Sold

The Cat in the Hat Fish Daily Painting - by Darren Maurer

6" x 8"

I had a speaking engagement scheduled at a local college Monday evening and spent Sunday evening preparing a power point program for it which didn’t leave much time for painting. As a result, I wasn’t able to finish this painting for Theodor Geisel’s birthday, which was March 2nd. Geisel is better known by his pen name, Dr. Seuss. Probably the most famous of his many stories and characters is The Cat in the Hat. The fish in the story is the do-gooder character bad mouthing the cat every chance he gets. After the cat trashes the entire house and then gets it cleaned up just in the nick of time everything ends well. The fish ends up back in the fish bowl and looks very happy at the end of the book. I wanted to paint something else with the book but I wanted the object to have a connection to the story. I was fresh out of Thing Ones and Thing Twos so I decided to paint this fish in a bowl. The fish was a very uncooperative painting subject, moving around in the bowl constantly. I urge everyone that reads this to dig out a copy of The Cat in the Hat and read it. It is still good stuff. This is painting 202 in my Painting A Day Series. Painting Sold.

An Easter Peep - Daily Painting - by Darren Maurer

4" x 6"

Easter Peeps always start showing up a few weeks before Easter. I wanted to paint the bright yellow peep against an almost black background. The suger pieces make little sparkles on the yellow surface. This painting 201 in Painting A Day Series. It is very difficult to photograph this piece due to the bright yellow and the white highlights on the yellow. Painting Sold.