March 23, 2012 March 25, 2012

Indiana is enjoying an early Spring – days in the 70’s and 80’s, warm breezes and sunshine. It has been a real pleasure to walk Buffy and Baxter around the neighborhood. We have a huge number of flowering trees and the bulbs are bursting out of the ground with color and dancing movement. My newest painting is inspired by these beautiful, fragrant Spring days.

Spring 2012

This painting had several new challenges for me. First of all, I found this partially use sheet of illustration board in my stash of watercolor papers. As you probably know the surface of illustration board is has different characteristics than watercolor paper – hard, slick and not very absorbant… but very interesting to work with and learn from. Additionally it was an almost perfect square – 19″ X 20″ – a size and share I had never used for this technique. Overall, fun AND a real opportunity to learn. Forces to me think! (PS I’m painting when I should be mowing my rapidly growing grass…oh well, priorities I guess…)

 

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March 18, 2012 March 20, 2012

Have you been buried doing taxes too? It took me six long days to organize records, review tax rules, prepare schedules and complete our taxes. Now, as they say, the checks in the mail. Hurray!

I celebrated over the weekend by working on a new painting. I’m still thinking about the concept of Stages but, because of the warm, frighteningly wonderful weather we’ve been having in Indiana, I focused on nature and the flow of the seasons for this painting. It is on 300# Arches and is 30″ long and 11″ high. I really have fun with this long format and was pleased at how different this painting looks from my earlier Stages 1.

Stages 2

 

March 6, 2012 March 8, 2012

I have another face for your consideration. I think I was fascinated by the blowing, ruffled hair on this one and the last. Once again, this is a 30 minute sketch done in my Bee sketchbook with Pebeo pan watercolors and Aquastroke brushes (two of which are about worn out). Its a small book about 6″ X 9″. It tolerates wet media but I’ve noticed that I get “pilling” on the surface after several washes and I have to take it off with my finger tip.

March 4, 2012 March 6, 2012

Good morning everyone! I have been a little tired and distracted lately so I got out my sketchbook. You probably don’t remember but I worked primarily on loose sketches during the first three months of 2011. I think it helped relax my “little gray cells”, flex my painting and drawing muscles, and prepare me for more rigorous painting activity. I used my 6″ X 9″ Bee Deluxe sketchbook that will take wet media and an old copy of a magazine.  I am using my Pebeo pan set of watercolor and my aquabrushes to paint faces. First I do a quick pencil sketch and then I put the magazine away and just paint. The intent is not to get a likeness of a specific person but just to achieve a face I like in about 30 minutes.

Face 03042012

March 1, 2012 March 2, 2012

When Ken and I started going to our cancer support groups, the facilitators continually spoke of the “new normal”. Now I am attending a new type of support group and those councilers talk about that particular “new normal”. Two major changes in my life during the last 20 months have me thinking about the stages we all go through. Some have crisp, clean transition points. Others are a fading in or fading out. Some are bright and full of hope, some are fun, some are traumatic and dark, some are like a roller coaster ride. All of this deep thinking led to my most recent painting. For this painting I wanted to use the same techniques but, for the first time I used 300# Arches paper and a long narrow format. I thought the format might allow me to communicate better the idea of stages. I worked almost exclusively with primary colors and had fun developing this idea. Soooooo, I present to you – Stages 1.

Stages 1 - 300# Arches Paper and Watercolor