A Pair of Tulips

This is the second painting in my Tulip series.  I was looking for a different composition in which I could use some interesting lighting.  I just happened to lay these down on my surface with the light on, and there it was!  I liked the sweeping angle and the interesting shadows thrown by the tulips.  The tulip colors vary slightly from my first attempt (previous post), but this series was also designed to explore "reds", so I felt more free to vary the color.  Let me know what you think!

Two Red Tulips

SOLD

Where does the time go?  I can't believe it's almost a month since my last post!  But Spring has finally arrived and I find myself enjoying my garden and the spring flowers.  Flowers have always been a love of mine and I could not resist painting some red tulips.  I do seem to have this "red" thing going for a while now.  I"ve been exploring different reds, different backgrounds and various red objects.  I haven't really painted a series before, but this is the first of three paintings of red tulips.  I'm sharing this one today, with the others to follow soon.

Website at last!

"Gilsland Farm" is one of the paintings featured on the first page of my new website--victoriaartandframe.com

  I've long wanted to have a web presence and my family has been both encouraging and instrumental in making this happen.  The artwork above was inspired by a trip to the Audubon Society in Portland, Maine, a favorite spot of my daughter, Stephanie.  The website itself was developed and launched by my daughter, Stacey.  Both my husband Moe and my son, Marc, have been a great support in my artistic endeavors.  I am fortunate to have this amazing group to call family.  I hope visitors to my blog will enjoy checking in on my new website and thanks for sharing in my excitement! 
www.victoriaartandframe.com

In the Spotlight

This is a piece I painted, and repainted, and repainted--trying to get the glow on the center apple and have the two side apples be supports to the center of interest without overpowering it.  I think I finally succeeded with that idea after a lot of looking and tweaking.  The center apple is also basically the same one I used for the watercolor in an earlier post, which I had done as preliminary work for this piece.  I still want to go back and do the solo apple in oiil and hopefully, I'll get to that.  I also find I like working in this long format for a change and hope to find more subjects that fit the space. 

Falling in love

Red Apple-A Second Look--Sometimes I think painting is like falling in love.  You create this artwork and just love it.  And then with a little time to really study it--well, you see a few flaws or maybe something you can make a little better.  So you don't throw away the painting, you try to make adjustments and see if it'll work.  I think that most of the time there's a really good chance that it will make the whole better.

So I really loved my first pass at this painting and then thought--hmm,  a darker background could be really nice.  Let's try it!  I was pleased with the increased contrast and made a fairly good transition between the old background, new background, and the foreground shadows.  Always tricky in watercolor (or love!)  Would love your comments. 

Painting process--continued

Like most of us in the northeast, I'm thinking SPRING!  I had some photos from a set up I had done last Spring and never painted, so I did some cropping to come up with this charcoal sketch.  I'm a little unresolved as to what the background will be--light or dark--my photo source was light.  I may do another sketch or perhaps a color study to work that out.  This is what I like about the "painting process"--giving myself permission to try different things and just see how they work  without worrying about producing a "perfect" product.  I'm sure many artists can appreciate and associate with that feeling. 

Red Apple

This is a watercolor interpretation of my previous charcoal sketch.  I thought it would be fun to see how intense I could get the colors in watercolor, rather than oil, which is what I usually use for this type of subject matter.  The watercolor is definitely a much more indirect approach, with layering to build up the color.  This was a great exercise--I usually do watercolor with a wet into wet approach, so this made me work on the layering process.