Red Red Rose--Blue Blue Dogwood? Kind of Green Succulent

• I thought that I had posted photos of the rose and dogwood blossom paintings earlier last year but find that I have not. The rose was done last summer and is my inspiration of a new series of flowers.
•  I did lots of glazing on the reds and the surface is very smooth and deep. I started with a yellow under coat and worked to the deeper reds from there. It just glows.This one is a bit larger than the paintings I am working on now. About 18x26 oil on deep sided canvas.

Touch of God

Next up is a giant dogwood blossom for blue on my color wheel of flowers. There is much more texture on this one than the rose has just like the flower has in real life. This one is also 18x24 Oil on deep sided  canvas.

Here is the next step of my succulent. (see my previous post) I added the purple shadows. I really have to let this one dry for a while before I add the touch of pink to the tips of the fat little leaves. I do not want them to smear. This is a fun project. Working on the iris this week and will post a photo of the progress.

Working the winter away

We have had a really nice thaw this week and have lost lots of snow pack. I decided to do a series of flower paintings that follow the color wheel. I already had the red rose and blue/white dogwood flower. This past week I started on a green succulent and yellow tulips. I think I might make sunflowers for yellow. I am emulating Georgia O'Keefe with these macro flowers. Her work is my inspiration.

16x20 oil on wrapped canvas

This size is small enough to fit anywhere but big enough to have a presence on the wall. The succulent is less blue than it shows here but is a very soft green. There will be purple and red highlights when I am done. Those colors should make it pop.

Same size and still oil on canvas. Parrot tulips that I thought would be for the yellow place on the spectrum of my series but it just doesn't have enough yellow so I will keep this one and use sunflowers for my yellow painting. I started on a purple iris yesterday. This project is really fun.

I have also been working on a large painting of my chambered nautilus shell. I took the photo and cropped it to a long narrow size. I could not get a good photo of the whole painting which is 46x20. Long and narrow. I was surprised at how much longer it takes to work on such a large piece.

This photo is cropped to about 2/3 rds of the painting. The other third is at the top of the painting and is more of the shell fossil. Again oil on stretched canvas. I really enjoy working with the oil. I have to slow down and wait for it to dry a bit before I can work on it again. Lots to learn about using oil paints. Acrylic is fast but the oil is also fun. What a great way to learn and become more creative. 

Each media, watercolor, oil and acrylic---all call me to use them. 

Winter scenes

I think I am in the winter doldrums. I have been painting but not a lot. There has not been much to write about here on my blog. The other day I committed my self to a pay it forward game on facebook. I was really disappointed when I only got two responses to my call to pay it forward. Of course I went ahead anyway and here are my results.
Snow! What else this winter. Hardly anyone in the whole US of A is missing out on snow this year. I was inspired by our first really heavy snow in November. The tree limbs were breaking every where. We had a really pretty maple tree in our back yard split right down to the ground. Evergreens know how to bow to the heavy snow and take on really soft shapes. I decided to use very different color schemes for each of my attempts to show how that snow changed the looks of the trees. These are watercolor about 11x14.  First a warm sunrise. and then a night scene.

This one is a bit lighter in color than shown here. And will be given backwards on my pay it forward to the gal that got me into this project. Thanks Jill, got me painting.

A nocturne. I always wanted to try a night scene. This one is made up and I really had fun making the stars shine in the night sky. This one is for my DIL Joey. Now all I have to do is get these delivered. The final one is already delivered and was a really pretty pink and purple color scheme. Many happy snow days to you all. Since it is already February we can imagine this snow melting away and

 spring just around the corner!