Flower painting #2 - Sunshine Yellow - 4"x4" oil on gessoboard

     This has been a year of so many new things, new people, loves, and losses. I loved this hibiscus plant we found at the nursery back in the summer. I took pictures of it before we decided to buy it. I had to paint it.  I've heard that anything yellow, with shadows, is difficult, because it isn't just 'dark yellow' - it's something different altogether. I found this to be true. It was fun experimenting, and mixing colors until I got is right.  I think I did, pretty much. I really like the way it turned out.
     Sad thing, though, about what happened to it.  Have you ever had a moment in time that you wish you could take back?...change something?...listen to that small voice inside your head?   I've had a few in my lifetime, some more impacting than others.  This one, not bad enough to cry over, but still....
     I took this little painting, along with a few others, onto my front porch one afternoon to photograph.  I was just about done, and had just set it down next to another small painting when my camera refused to work. It needed batteries. ..sigh...so I went in.  For a split second, I thought, 'don't leave it there...pick it up, and bring it inside...' and then just as quickly, thought 'No, I'll be right back...and besides, it's not going to rain 'til later, and there's no way the dog could pick it up off the porch...'  Well, being highly distractible person that I am, I forgot all about the paintings.
     Eight hours later, after the wind and rain had stopped, my youngest daughter came in from the front porch, and said 'hey, look what I found by the front door!'  It was my little sailboat painting.  It was dirty, and had a chip out of the side.  Then I remembered.  OH NO!  I left the yellow flower painting out there, too!

    Yeah...it wasn't there. I felt sick.  It was nowhere to be found.  We looked a long time.  I thought maybe the wind had blown it off the porch into the bushes, but no.  My husband found it later, in the yard.  Never underestimate a dog's ability to get ahold of something it wants - and chew it to pieces.  Oh, I wish I'd listened to myself to begin with!  This is what's left of my sunny hibiscus painting.

     I may try to repaint it one day.  I have a brand new year to work on that...starting tomorrow. Happy New Year to all my friends, and may you be blessed in 2011.

Tabitha's Challenge: 100 Flower Paintings #1 'Little Favorites' 5x7 oil on canvas board

A couple of months ago, I showed my daughter some paintings on another artist's blog, some in a series, like '100 plein air paintings' or '100 faces'.  She told me I should do something like that, to challenge myself, and suggested either flowers, or birds. 100 of anything sounds un-doable in my world. But I accepted her challenge. I decided that flowers would be easier, to start, but of course, I immediately made things complicated for myself  by picking out 'flower scenes', instead of one little flower in a vase, or something simple like that. So, the challenge began.  Here's the first one I did.

Tabitha on the Beach 12"x16" Oil on Canvas

This is a painting I did last summer.  It was my first attempt at painting a beach scene, or water.  I started out a bit intimidated, but it all went pretty smoothly, and a lot quicker than I had anticipated.  It was a lot of fun.  This was from a picture of my daughter at the Gulf Coast, near Destin, Florida, taken on the last day of our vacation that year.  She was about 11 at the time.  It hangs in her room for now, and she loves it.  I've thought about giving it a different title, something like 'One Last Look' or 'Until Next Time', since Tab loves the beach so much, and always hates having to leave.

Kentucky Waterfall - 9"x12" My First Plein Air Painting

I'm back.  After a long winter with lots of snow and cold, wet weather, I came out of hibernation.  You would think that after living in Kentucky for 20 years that I would be used to the cold.  I live through it, but I don't welcome it.  So! For Christmas, my husband bought a small, portable easel for me, and I've used it twice, now.  I've been wanting to try plein air for quite some time, but, well, obviously, being the kind of girl that lives for warm weather, I would never venture out to paint in the snow, for instance. Probably not in the rain, either, unless it was very light rain, and warm, at that.  So, Monday, I packed up my stuff, and walked down by one of our seating areas in the woods, and set up. 

Well, it was 12 degrees here in Kentucky today.  This is the 8th day in a row with temperatures below freezing. We have about 3 inches of snow on the ground that won't be going anywhere until some time next week.  It's very pretty, actually.  I took a few pictures before the light faded completely.  These are from the screen porch off the side of the house.

These are from the window in my 'studio' looking out the back, and over toward our neighbors with horses.

Blue-eyed Blonde 5x7

I painted this lovely lady for the portrait challenge on Karin Jurick's Different Strokes From Different Folks.  I had fun with this -  wondering about her, and feeling like we had a connection since she was painting my portrait at the same time.  This is only the second portrait I've ever painted.  I got that panicky feeling before I started like I used to get every summer when I was little, thinking I'd forgotten how to swim. I'd cling to the side of the neighbor's pool, skinning my fingers and toes on the concrete sides, trying to get up the nerve to let go and just swim.  I stared at this lady for days, wondering what would happen if I started to paint this, and realized I had no skill at all - and what in the world was I doing playing around with oil paints and brushes?! So, again, as the deadline quickly approached, I let go, and just started painting.  I still have a lot to learn, but I think if I get started on another painting right away, I won't get that panicky feeling, and I'll be able to paint without the skinned up fingers and toes! (so to speak).  I hope she likes it!

Audrey Feeds the Birds 14x18

     It's amazing what a deadline will do for you.  It marks a particular spot in your life, and says, "This must be done by today, or else .......... (fill in the blank)."  That is usually not a good thing.  The 'else' is either something you lose, something you forfeit, or something BAD you GET instead!  If you don't pay your taxes by the deadline, you get more taxes, and another deadline, and more taxes again. If you don't enter something in a contest on time, or have an application in by the deadline, you'll never know what you might have had won, or been offered. You gave up a chance of something potentially good. But deadlines are not necessarily a bad thing.  Sometimes they force you to do something you really wanted to do, anyway.  When I was painting once a week at Schrodt Art Studio, the rule was that you had to have your next project picked out before you finished your current one.  No big deal, right? Well, since I rushed to finish the orange poppy in time for the show -HA! I met that deadline!,- and then...OH NO! - another deadline! I needed my next painting.  Now.  I had no idea what to paint next.  Especially since I wanted to paint something 'original'.  On my way out the door that Thursday morning, I looked around frantically, thumbed through a couple of photo albums, scanned the mantle for an idea...(what happened to all those ideas I had last year?).. Then I spotted it.  A little picture of my little girl, Audrey, taken when she was about 4 years old. We were on vacation near Destin, Florida, at a little place called The Magnolia House.  This birdfeeder was in the front yard of Nancy Veldman's shop, and she had given Audrey some birdseed to put out for the birds. 'Oh, maybe I can do something with this', I thought.  I grabbed the picture and headed out the door.
      I must say, I really didn't know what I was going to do with it.  They all agreed it definitely had it's possibilities. So I went to office Depot, had it enlarged, twice, had them brighten up the color a bit.  Then I had to decide what size canvas, where to place her on the canvas, what to add, what to crop out, etc.  (This is all new to me, really.)  I decided the enlargement was a perfect size to transfer onto the canvas with graphite paper.  That gave me a rough drawing to start.  I had to finish one side of the birdhouse, add some space on the right side for 'whatever'...As the painting progressed,  I ignored that right side, painted in the grassy area behind the bushes, added the distant trees, and tried to create a park-like setting.  At one point, I painted a path leading out and away from her, but it didn't look 'safe'. (haha)  So I closed it in, added more greenery, more grass, and more trees in the distance until it looked believable.  My palette of colors was so minimal, I had to ask for a blue to match the color of her dress!  (Cerulean Blue, I think, was what I borrowed.)

     This is the finished result. Out of moment of desperation to meet a deadline, I was forced to decide, from a myriad of possibilities, what to create over the next few weeks.  A true moment in time, captured almost casually on a vacation to the Gulf Coast, has now become a painting that I truly can't believe I did.  Honestly.  I'm almost afraid to tackle something like this again.  What if I can't paint another thing this well again?  Then I think, 'Well, perhaps I will,.... if I must..., in order to meet a deadline!'