Sky

This little landscape was done for a monthly project of an email watercolor group to which I belong. It was inspired by a photo taken by Marci, also a member of the group, although it doesn't much resemble the photo. It's somewhat smaller than a quarter sheet.

Autumn Road

Another pastel. This is the same photograph that I used for the previous, blurry painting. The orange and lavender in the sunlight is really what attracted me to this photo. As usual, you'll see the colors better if you click on the picture here to see the larger version.

Two pastels

To make up for that leaf painting that took weeks, I did two pastels this morning. Both are from slides that my father took and that I have been scanning (all 6700 of them!). The autumn scene was done on a piece of red, flocked paper that another person in the studio had found in her old art supplies. If it looks out of focus that's because that's how it looks in person. The paper would only take the softest pastels and sharp lines were out of the question. It was fun to do, but the two of us who tried it recommended that no one buy more.

Catching Up

Well you haven't missed many paintings in the 6 weeks or so since I posted. About a month ago, Fran tripped over one of our dogs and broke her shoulder. As a result, she spent almost 2 weeks in the hospital and had a partial shoulder replacement (the knob on the top of the arm bone). We discovered that the closest hospital to us has improved greatly over the last dozen years or so and Fran got excellent care there, as well as from the ambulance guys who got her there! That means I've taken over all the cooking, as well as the other household tasks Fran usually does, and I haven't gotten much painting done.

I did paint this dogwood tree that grows on our back hill, and these canna leaves from a photo I took at Chanticleer, a local-ish garden where we were taking a plein air class. The leaves took me weeks . . . not my usual finish-in-one-sitting style of painting.