ORANGE FLOWERS

ORANGE FLOWERS

20 x 20 inch, oil

My favorite summer activity is working in my gardens.  Grooming, watering, weeding, feeding, and finally PICKING!  Now, it's August and the summer garden is bursting with inspiration!  Supposedly, yellow and orange represent freshness, optimism, remembrance, loyalty, and joy, among other things.  That's a lot of positive stuff making yellow and orange great colors to have in your home.  This painting was done on a warm summer night in my little home studio.  

Check it out at Gillyflower Cottage on Etsy.

"FRESH CUT" - DAY 2 of 30 PAINTINGS IN 30 DAYS

Day 2 of 

30 PAINTINGS IN 30 DAYS 

It was one of those beautiful, end-of-summer days - sunny and just enough humidity to make it still feel like summer.  What better place to spend a portion of the day than in my art room with the sun and breeze pouring in the open windows!

This jumble of paper, paints, brushes, and pens led to the petite 5 x 5 inch watercolor/pen/ink I have named, "FRESH CUT."   I have used 300# Arches watercolor paper which is a thick, 100% cotton fiber paper mouldmade in France.   The watercolors used are Sennelier, also made in France and with an increased amount of honey for luminous, lightfast color.  

This flower would be an enchanting addition to your cottage garden.   It's a zinnia that is heavy on the petals and deep in the rosy-reds, and a little of the orange-reds on the petal tips.

"FRESH CUT"

5 x 5 inches

(ready for your mat and frame)

SOLD!

There is a little VIDEO showing the drawing and painting of "Fresh Cut" on my Facebook page, I hope you'll check it out by clicking the photo below!  While you're there, please click the "like" button so you can follow along on future Facebook posts for my "You Could Make That" blog.

"Fresh Cut" is available here:

Thanks for looking!

-Nan

LLOYD II & GETTING READY TO PAINT

Guess who's going to Boston?  Lloyd II will be leaving my Etsy shop and heading out tomorrow morning.  He is a little apprehensive and it shows, but he'll be fine.  So I spent part of the day getting him ready to go. 

Au revoir, Lloyd! 

Then I picked up a couple new canvases and got ready to paint by taking some photos of flowers from my garden.  Even more than the flowers, I'm looking forward to the challenge of painting the jar of water.  These are in an empty mayonnaise jar.  I love the distortion of the stems underwater, and the little changes in color from above, to surface, to under the water.  We'll see how that goes . . .

 A photo taken from above allows you to see so much more of the water and an interesting view of the stems.  That, along with the sparkle of the glass and the ridges around the rim should be pretty challenging!

 There are lots of different blues, grays, and greens in that water. 

 And so much beautiful detail in these flowers!

I like to crop out individual flowers in different positions and stages of opening so I can get a close-up view of all the colors and shadows.  The photo below really shows good detail of the dark green, overlapping bracts zinnias have, under the flower head.

Zinnias have little "disk" flowers in the center, and "ray" petals around the outside.  To make it realistic it all has to be there.

My canvas for this is large - 24" x 30" - so the flowers are going to be WAY bigger than life!

And just one photo of a large part of my garden.

Just because.

 So, tomorrow will be a painting day.

All.

Day.

Long.

Can't wait!