Afternoon Iris

17" x 17", oils
sold


I love irises. This one was growing at my neighbor's house. She had a whole forest of these purple/golden irises and when it's hot, you can count on seeing her outside with her garden hose, watering her flowers. Thanks Jean for letting me trounce around your yard with my camera!

Pale Yellow Iris

29" x 26", oil
NFS
I had to include an iris in my flower series. They are the queen of frilly flowers. Every iris I paint causes me to think about my dad. He loves irises and it's because of him I like to paint flowers. When I was in high school, he asked me to do a 3' x 4' iris painting for his office and I've been painting flowers ever since. Thanks pops!

This iris was growing in my brother and sister-in-law's backyard. I'll try and get another picture tomorrow with better light (nix the glare at the top); I can't reshoot now seeing as it's dark outside.





Pictorial Tidbits: The two above pictures show the very beginning (white charcoal sketch on purple background) and the middle stage of the painting (almost finished flower before the background was warmed and the last of the POP was added to the petals). Total time lapse from start to finish: 4 hours.

Clematis

22" x 30", oil
sold
I've been excited to post this all day. This painting looked good from the beginning. I really had to just be sure I didn't mess it up. This clematis is growing on my front fence. One morning as I got the newspaper, I noticed the sun coming through the flowers making that deep grape juice color, so I ran and got my camera. I took a few pictures and this one is really the only one that turned out. The next day, a giant wind storm blew through and all of the blossoms were gone. Clematis flowers remind me of growing up because we had one crawling up some chain-link in our backyard.

I'm loving the flower series and have gotten a lot of great feedback. It's also been rewarding to work on a bigger scale. This piece will receive a Vintage Frame and will be fabulous.

Sun Catchers

15" x 30", oil
sold

Another day, and yet again, another flower. I'm on a roll! This is the piece I wanted to do two days ago, but I didn't have the right shape of panel. So, this morning my husband cut the panel, I gessoed it, drew the picture, and it's 9pm and the painting is (finally!) finished. I'm exhausted. I actually had to scoot my chair over to work on the edges because this piece is so long. I love how the background gray has just enough purple in it to contrast with the yellows. This painting will get a deep gold frame, very formal.

The hardest part about this painting was keeping the edges of the stems and leaves continuous, not broken by intersecting leaves (remember, this painting was all wet all at the same time) and the easiest part was doing the blossoms. I love making blossoms POP with sunshine.

A college professor once challenged my class to paint something yellow. He said there is hardly any yellow in something yellow (from a painting perspective), and now I know he was right. There were a lot of greens, oranges and whites in the blossoms.

Tuesday Poppies

18" x 14", oil
sold

Another day, another poppy. Pinks and greys are two of my favorite colors together. When this painting is dry, I'm going to show it to the lady whose poppy garden I photographed to paint this. Hopefully she'll remember me as the lady who rang her doorbell to ask if she could poke around in her garden with a camera.