WILDFLOWERS

Our spring flowers are blooming now and are just beautiful! Since I have been in a flower painting mode the past six months or so, I have been snapping photos like crazy. I carry my camera in the car and sometimes stop by the side of the road and take pictures. My husband wonders how many pictures I need to take of one flower, but I really take pictures from a dozen different angles and with the light coming from all angles. I might take 20-30 pictures of one flower at different times of day and only one or two will suit me for painting.

The past few days I have been taking pictures of iris. The garden center near us has a whole plot of iris in full bloom and I must have taken a zillion pictures in the late afternoon sun. I suspect that I might do an iris series of paintings next.

Below is a picture of a hibiscus that my neighbor grew last summer and invited me down to take pictures. I just took her the finished painting as a gift.

Even with all the packing, I am planning my next paintings in my mind. And Son #3 has ordered a big sofa-sized painting of the beautiful red sandstone breaks of the Llano Estacado. Now where did I pack those large canvases?

At present I am working on a painting of a white rose--never knew so many colors could be in a "white" flower!

PAINTINGS

I have finished several paintings lately and finally got some great pictures of them. I have a new camera and it takes wonderful pictures of my paintings. I will share a few with you. Most are from my "flower period." I saw some oil paintings of single flowers on a black background in Santa Fe last summer and decided to do my own set. I have completed four. I did the rosebud back in the summer and took that picture with my old camera. The others are more recent. The last one I did was the iris and it is my very favorite.

I also did one of a red hibiscus with a green background. It had fun with it!

In the fall I painted a landscape of Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon, NM. I took the picture when we were there last June. Bet it does not look that warm there today!

More recently I discovered water colors and am having a grand time exploring the possibilities with that medium. I have not figured out how to achieve the detail with water color that I like, but I am looking forward to seeing what I can learn once the holidays are over. Right now I am up to my ears in creating Christmas gifts, baking, wrapping, decorating.

PAINTING AGAIN!

I continue to enjoy oil painting. This coming week I will begin a new series of landscape painting lessons. The instructor's literature says that she promises to teach me how to really paint an oak tree. That should be fun since the picture I chose to paint is a desert scene from our trip to New Mexico. Anyway I am looking forward to learning a new technique in the way of oil painting.

In the past few months I have been working on my first portrait which still needs a few finishing touches. I am not ready to photograph it yet, but I did finish my water lily. See the picture below.

I also finished a picture of the misty Oregon coast which makes me cool just to look at it.

And today I added a few finishing touches to a still life of some pots that my brother has in his kitchen. See the picture below.

Recently I have been working on a desert cactus that I saw blooming in New Mexico. I guess that is appropriate since we are hot and dry as a desert here now. The temperature was 105 today and temperatures have broken a record every day of July--so far. The weatherman promised it might be cooler tomorrow--only 96! I can only hope!

FRUGAL FRIDAY

Today I am going to talk about making gifts instead of buying gifts. I know Christmas is a long way off, but it is not too early for me to begin thinking about gifts if I plan on making them.

First of all, I try to think of things that I can make from "found" items or things we have around the house. Recently I found some old, weathered fence wood in my husband's pile of wood. It has nice knots in it and I pictured a wooden cross carved with the knot hole in the middle. If the wood has a natural hole in it, I thought about inserting a stone in the hole--perhaps turquoise or something I might find at our local bead shop. I marked off several crosses that might be interesting and now I need to get my saw out to make the rough shape. Then I will sand until it is smooth and in the shape I want. I will finish it off by rubbing it with a number of coats of tung oil and using steel wool between each coat of oil. I love working with wood and seeing the lovely grain as it appears with the tung oil.

Last year my granddaughters made luminarias out of cans--soup cans, vegetable cans, etc. They removed the labels, filled the empty cans with water and froze them until hard. Then they drew designs on the cans and used nails to puncture the cans to make their designs. I put a candle inside the one they sent me and I keep it on my hearth where it looks very pretty in the winter time.

I am still busy knitting dish cloths or wash cloths. I found some lovely new all-cotton yarn at Hobby Lobby that is very soft--doesn't feel like cotton at all and the colors are lovely. I plan to pick some blackberries/dewberries in the next couple of weeks and make jam or preserves. I figure a pretty basket with a knit dish cloth, a kitchen utensil and a jar or two of jam will make nice gifts for the neighbors.

Since I am still oil painting, I have at least two pictures in mind to paint for favorite people who have expressed a wish to have one of my paintings. The picture below is of a water lily and is for an art show in October. I am really a slow painter, so I started early. Soon as I finish this painting, I need to get started on my Christmas pictures. Do you have any favorite things that you can begin making now for Christmas gift-giving?

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES

I am a bit lacking in technological skills and it takes me a long time to figure things out by myself. Yesterday I talked about pictures I wanted to consider painting when I return home from New Mexico but could not put the pictures on my blog once I had downloaded them to my picture file on this laptop I am using. I fiddled and fiddled with it last night and finally fell asleep in frustration. Today I decided to try a different procedure and, as you can see, it worked! It may be unconventional and my techie son may groan when I explain what I did, but the bottom line is that IT WORKED!!

The first picture is the view from my bedroom window yesterday at midday. The second is a sunset picture the first day I was here and the third is a sunrise picture the next morning.

The fourth picture is of an arrangement in the kitchen that made me think of painting a still life. The shapes and colors intrigued me.

PICTURES TO PAINT

I have been taking pictures here in New Mexico and have a few that are making me ITCH to get back to my painting! Here are a few that I have taken in the past two days. Sunset--oops! For some reason there seems to be some disconnect between the pictures I saved to my desktop (on this borrowed laptop with which I am vastly unfamiliar), the blog picture loader and my limited technological skills. So--you will just have to use your imagination that I have taken luscious ice cream pink colored clouds over the mountains in the evening, brilliant orange sherbet colored clouds over the mountains this morning and lovely powdered sugar dusted mountains drenched in winter sunlight with lots of filmy white mare's tail clouds overhead this afternoon. It is marvelous to watch the mountains change in the changing sunlight.

And I must be hungry judging from the descriptive words I used about the clouds. I am trying to imagine the paint colors that I will mix to achieve some semblance of those colors.

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law and I went downtown for lunch with my brother. She did very well considering that she just had kidney transplant surgery six weeks ago. I think she was a little frustrated at how quickly she tired, but I was amazed at how well she did!

Whee! Finished the Picture Today!

I finally finished the white flower picture today and I am dancing in excitement! I am quite pleased with the finished project. The covered bridge picture is ALMOST dry enough to work on and I am working on two more with a limited palette--just using three colors. That is interesting.


I will share the new pictures with you when I get a little farther along. I also planned a water lily picture and the teacher wants me to do a triptych or threesome with a large square single flower in the center and two other pictures on either side. I am not sure about that. I might be sick of water lilies by the time I finish, but will definitely do the center picture and see where I go after that.

Oil Painting Frustrations

I am still enjoying my oil painting classes but I am a bit frustrated with two of my paintings. During the summer I began a beautiful white flower on a rather large canvas. The dark background and dark green leaves went in nicely and, in a few days, I was ready to add in the white flower petals. I painted them and began the shading in one day and it has been about 5-6 weeks since I put that white paint on the canvas. It is still not dry enough to work on the flower petals and center after all that time! I am very frustrated! I also painted a white covered bridge and, of course, it, too, is still not dry enough to put in the details of the bridge and paint a couple of tree branches over the side of the bridge. I am so impatient for both paintings to dry so I can continue working, but I might as well bide my time because they tell me white paint takes A LONG TIME to dry! Phooey!

Meanwhile, today I began another painting that has fog in it. It is an ocean scene with mountains running right down into the water. I put the dark mountains in and a green area of growth at the bottom of the painting. I have not done the sky or the water yet--and guess what? They have a lot of white in them! For the fog I will learn a new technique on this painting--AFTER the white dries! It is called scumbling and I have been reading about the process but cannot yet visualize exactly how it will work. Guess that is why I am taking painting classes!

I finished a sunset painting several weeks ago, but am dissatisfied with the colors in the sunset. The clouds are just too bright and garish for my taste. It grabs my eye when I look at the painting and keeps me from seeing the landscape. Today, in class, we talked about ways to mellow the sunset colors somewhat and I will probably work on that next week while I am waiting for all the whites in my various paintings to dry! I will either put a glaze over the color to mute it somewhat or just redo the sky.

Or maybe now is the time to begin that lovely water lily painting that I have been considering?

AIM FOR SUCCESS, NOT PERFECTION

Barbara talks about aiming for success, not perfection in her blog today and I believe I needed to hear what she had to say. She talked about learning to play the piano, but quit because she had not achieved perfection. Well, I swore off painting this a.m. when a picture I have been working on for months just refused to be the color I wanted it to be. I stuffed my brushes in the drawer, put the picture in the trash and packed my paints away in the closet.

After reading Barbara's blog I decided that I better take my paints out again and continue painting. I might have to begin the canvas all over with the realization that not all pictures will turn out perfect. Our instructor tells us that all artists have a few disasters in their closet! The one in the trash will go in my closet and I might pursue the same subject again on a new canvas. Maybe the next one will be a success--if not the perfection that I always strive for.

Perhaps you writers might want to spend some time writing about projects that you have begun and then abandoned because they were less than perfect. Or perhaps you have a project that you began and eventually finished because you were striving for completion and not perfection.

THANKFUL THURSDAY

Today I am thankful that I started oil painting lessons last January. I have completed several pictures and have had a great time learning new techniques. I strain; I work hard; I get paint all over my hands and sometimes my clothes; I load up everything every week and go to class where I have made some great new friends; and I am having fun doing this. Now for the "show and tell" part.


The first painting I did is on the left--I had it framed and it is hanging in my den and I LOVE it! It makes me yearn for another trip to the beach when I look at it.


The picture on the right was a photo from New Mexico that I liked. I have it hanging in my hallway and look at it every time I leave my bedroom.


This next picture on the left is one that I did on my own at home. I found the picture at church and was fascinated by the hands. I wanted to see if I could get the skin right. I was also fiddling with the concept of the painted "frame" around the edge of the picture. It turned out okay, but I am still hesitant about beginning a portrait, although I have one ready to draw on a canvas. Anyway, I am not sure what I will do with this picture of the hands.


After bluebonnet season came and went, I had some lovely photos of bluebonnets and decided to paint a single bluebonnet. It was an interesting project. At first I made the background very dark, but later went back and made the background a little more misty. I liked the picture when it was finished and planned to paint a companion picture to hang over the bed in our blue bedroom, but gave the picture away instead.






I fell in love with a photo from a Santa Fe plant magazine and decided to paint this picture on the right. I loved working with the weathered old wooden door, the brick step, cobblestone walk and the stucco wall. The pot of flowers was tedious and time consuming to paint. Those grasses above the pot really were a challenge to get curved just right and keep them even. However, the art instructor taught me to use a specific brush that made the task much easier. I learned a lot with this picture.


A neighbor asked me to paint a picture of a sunset that we took in Hawaii a couple of summers ago when she invited me to go with her at the last minute. Our painting classes had been postponed for the month of July so I thought I would just whip the sunset picture out while the teacher was on vacation. Wrong! I struggled the whole month with that picture and finally gave up. I just could not get the sky colors right, so I put the canvas up and bought a new one for our first class in August. First of all, the teacher told me to use a limited palette of colors--a new experience for me. I was to use just 4 or 5 colors, plus white, to create the picture. She also said that I was being too tentative with my colors--just splash them on and make them vivid! Whew! That was hard for me. But the picture turned out okay and my neighbor LOVES it. I kept the other one which is softer and I like it also. She has put hers in a big gold frame and put it in a favorite place over her TV. Mine is still unframed but sits on my mantle.

The last picture is one my husband took of two pictures I was working on. I am still working on the poppy on the left and all but given up on it. I gave the bluebonnet picture to my sister for her birthday in August.

Quirk #6 - Oil Painting

6. I am relearning how to oil paint and am having a grand time smearing paint on canvas, good shirts, shiny new easel and everything nearby--such fun! Maybe I need to revisit my finger painting days also!

I am really having a wonderful time relearning to oil paint. It has been a LONG time since I painted with oils--probably about 30 years and it has taken several months to be comfortable with the process once more. I have finished three paintings and messed up a couple more. On the easel is a poppy that I am beginning and a bluebonnet that is finished and ready to be varnished and framed. I have two more paintings in process.

My husband caught another picture of me painting out on our deck. I love to be out there in the fresh air and amongst all that green of the outdoors. However, it is becoming a bit warm some afternoons to paint out there.


Tomorrow is my class and I have to go load up my car with my painting supplies.


Write about the creative things that you do. Do you have creative urges? How do you honor those creative urges?

Thankful Thursday

I am thankful that I decided to begin taking oil painting classes last January. I had painted years ago--before I got married and for a while after I married, but then gave it up for other endeavors, like raising four boys. The oil paints and brushes had been stored in the garage for those many years, but most of the supplies were still usable. Amazing!

This past week I finished another painting. It was one I began when my brother sent me a picture of the snow on a mountain near his home. The photograph of the picture does not do it justice.

My next painting is a single bluebonnet. It seems like it will be a lot of work with all those little flowers on that stalk and all those leaves. I have the background in now, but still need to work in more background and begin the leaves and flowers. I will take a photo of it when I finish it. Otherwise, I am considering beginning a landscape with a path leading into some trees and I am having lots of fun dreaming of all the pictures that I am going to produce!

Thankful Thursday

Back in January I said that I was going to begin oil painting classes and wanted to paint two pictures. I am thankful to say that I finished the first one yesterday and am very proud of it. I have been working on the mountain picture and do not have it the way I would like to have it yet, but will continue working on it in the next couple of lessons.

Next, I want to paint a bluebonnet picture, so I have pulled out several bluebonnet pictures and want to find one of a single bluebonnet that I can paint in a small painting.

Here is a picture of my finished painting--not framed yet, but I am thankful that it is finished and that I am pleased with it!

A New Adventure...

I did something new yesterday. Last week I signed up for a series of oil painting lessons and yesterday was the first class. I had prepared for the class for two days--both mentally and physically.

Several years ago--well, a bunch of years ago--I did some oil painting and I enjoyed it. However, I drifted on to other things as my boys were growing up and never went back to oil painting. Last summer I took a picture of two of my granddaughters wading into the surf at the beach and their lithe little silhouettes against the silvery, shimmery water and the puffy-cloud sky was the perfect picture. It just begged to be painted. Then, around Christmas, my brother sent me a lovely picture of mountains lightly dusted with snow that he can see from his house. I had pondered painting both pictures for quite some time, but had not found the right place or time until I happened to inquire about a class I saw advertised. It was close by, the price was right, and the work the students were doing was inspiring, so I signed up.

I spent the weekend looking through all my old oil painting supplies. I need not mention that I almost never throw anything away. As I looked through my brushes I found that the bristle brushes were moth-eaten and crumbling but my sable brushes were still in good condition! My paints were still usable, so I felt ready to begin. I took a trip back in time as I went through my paint box. Most of the supplies were mine, but some, including the box and my very favorite palette knife, belonged to my grandmother who also painted in oils. Just smelling the paints took me back in time, reminding me of summer visits to my grandmother's house where I sat near her easel and did some of my first artwork while she painted.

The morning of the class I began to have butterflies in my stomach. Could I do this again? Would I be able to measure up in the class? Would I remember anything about painting? I almost backed out of going. I know how my kindergarten granddaughter feels now when her mother shoves her out the door on her way to school when she is reluctant to go. I froze on the threshold of the classroom and almost turned and ran. However, I gritted my teeth and walked in to see a welcoming teacher and a couple of friendly students with marvelous paintings. During the course of the morning I did some exercises concerning light and value and am quite proud of the three canvas pages that I did during the morning. When I completed the third exercise the teacher asked if I had painted before and I said yes. Her reply--"I thought so!" I guess I have not completely lost my touch--or my eye for light and value.

I am excited about painting my pictures now, but first I have to go through three more weeks of exercises the teacher requires before I am declared "ready to paint!" Sigh! I would like to begin TODAY!