Happy White Flowers

I had this painting hanging around in shades of blue and black for a long time... It was sad, and it was starting to get at me to see it hanging so drab and forgotten in the back corner of my studio. So yesterday, during a particularly gloomy rain, I dragged it out, scrubbed a few happy glazes over it and now here it is, with it's lovely new clothes.

Sunnies on Blue

This is Sunflowers on Blue . It's 24 x 24 inches and was painted on a really thick, heavily woven cotton which was stretched on a thick wooden frame, so it's hefty.

If you're feeling a little deja vu ish about this painting it's probably because I've done it thrice before with a red background. I like the composition of my original sketch so I keep going back to it. On a side note, I was recently commissioned to do another sunflowers with a red background soon to stay tuned for that one :)

Old vine

Since it's been a while I thought I'd put up a pic of the latest progress on the "Old Vine" commission. This painting has been putting me through my paces. I did several layers in the middle ground trying to get it to make sense, but it still needs something. I might have to make a major change... however, my other worry is that when I end up getting to the vine itself and putting in it's leaves etc. the painting might become too busy... sooo I may opt for simplification of the middle ground at this point. That treeline on the right is not working for me... At any rate what it amounts to is me staring at this for hours a day and getting no work done. So I'm going to tackle the middle ground today once Jo goes down for her nap and see where I end up...

Wine Lover II Completed!

I finally did it! Nothing like a deadline to get those last few hours in! This commission took me two years to do, that's pretty long for me. Thank you Deja for being so patient!

Lucky 13 Corn theme

This month's lucky 13 theme was Corn. I thought corn... hmmm, how many different ways can you interpret corn! That's the beauty of doing this project though, it gets you to think wayyy outside your comfort zone.

I had a flood of ideas for this one, but the image that kept revolving in my mind's eye was "imprint" which is what I titled this piece. It's basically just a straight ink imprint of a lovely piece of corn, which I rolled over a few times with different colors, glazed a sepia and then fixed with a spray poly. I like how it turned out like a pop-ish abstract, usually I have an extremely hard time getting my creative mind to loosen up enough to get a successful abstraction going, so I was pretty happy with this excersize.

Lucky 13 Icons

This month's Lucky 13 theme is icons. I hemmed and I hawwed, pondered and mused and finally I realized I'd better just get something done, so I did a quick graphite sketch of Audrey Hepburn, icon of style and sophistication. To bump the arty factor up a notch I filled in her top with black acrylic paint and did a warm white acrylic wash in the background.

Glacier Lily

I've been doing some preliminary sketches and watercolors for a glacier lily painting, this is my favorite so far...

Ready for your closeup?

Click on the images to see them in more detail

Beatrice

Miss Jeanie
Ella
Clare
Olive

Elegant Annie

Here are some close up shots of the art dolls I've done so far. 3 and 4 are Gritty Jane patterns and the others are my own that I adapted. Whenever possible I recycle materials to make these little gals, but I'm still trying to find the happy medium between doing these art dolls that are sculpted and painted to something made from more natural materials that Jolie can gum to her heart's content. I was watching antique roadshow and they had an old wood carved doll head that they talked about. Some sweet old lady made them for the local kids then later turned it into a full on company, still with the heads carved by hand, she attached them to cloth bodies but very few of the bodies survived.

Dusk Inspirations

These little forrest watercolors were inspired by the view out my bedroom window. I don't really get to see much of a sunset, but I do get to see the most beautiful dusk framing the trees in greens and blues, blending up into the deep night sky slowly filling with stars. I was planning on making the sky filled with glow in the dark stars, but the paint had other ideas. When I dotted them in they looked a lot more like snow, which is probably more realistic anyway ;-)

Watercolor Dolls

It's been a while since I've done a new post because I've been busy getting a group show together featuring local artists doing art in the theme of "art for baby". We had the opening last night and a good time was had by all. My mom has been visiting and her help with the show made it so easy.

Unfortunately my camera died a dented death so I'm going to have to wait and see if I can get the pictures off of it. Above are a few scans of some doll designs I did as an addition to some acrylic nursery sets and cloth dolls (again, pictures pending). I've been having loads of fun getting back into Aquarelle watercolor sticks, watercolors and pencil, and oil pastels. It's a lot easier to do work on the kitchen table when you've got a toddler needing something every ten minutes! So the easle painting will have to wait till I can get some help.