A little more spring

I had some more fun this week working on another tulip painting. This one is a close up into the cup of a pink tuilip. Oil again on gessoed board. I used a quin red which makes a very bubblegum pink. I learned a good lesson on this one. When I painted the leaves they turned out quite garish, much to green. I have always read that if you place a glaze of a complementary color over another you can tone down a color. Tried this on the green green leaves and it worked perfectly. That red glaze on the greens is totally invisible as red but has made the leaves the perfect complement to the very pink tulip.

Happy Spring

On Friday afternoons, some friends and I get together to either work on our projects or learn something new. Eileen Hinz helped us learn how to do Ukrainian Easter Egg painting this week.  Here are mine set up in a nice basket that Eileen brought in . 

The black, yellow and orange egg, I call my aborigine egg because of all the dots. The dye baths were yellow, red and then blue. the lighter egg is a blue bath with a second bath of yellow over the blue. I thought I would get a darker green but ended up with the lime green. Really a nice springy combination, I think. The one that is white is a blank egg for comparison. ;-)   It was fun to see what the different color baths did to create new and unusual colors. 

Eileen really did a good job of letting us use our own creativity to come up with designs and colors. She is a good teacher, encouraging and complementary to our efforts, which were pretty crude. She tells us that this can be a meditative art. The artist has to take time to draw the designs with melted bees wax, and make each quarter of the egg the same as the others, then cover over colors you want to stay. Needless to say, it takes concentration. I enjoyed the process but would need to slow myself down a lot more than I did on Friday afternoon to reach the meditative state. Miss Impatient is my name.  

BTW-- I got my birthday present on Saturday. Dan and I finally painted our bedroom after 23 years as a pale blue with pink tulips stenciled around the top of the walls. It is a beautiful warm creamy yellow with an accent wall of a light cinnamon. It is just beautiful. Thanks so much to my dear Dan. Smack!

Passion Week starts with today, Palm Sunday, the day I was born. The birthday is on Tuesday this year. A busy week. I need to work on my new commission. Hope to have it done for Easter. Wish me creativity.