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.