St. Nicholas

Tonight is St. Nicholas Eve.  A night of small gifts and kindness.  To learn more about St. Nicholas go to www.stnicholascenter.org. 

Celebrate Three

Hello from Florida,

I know, this doesn't look like a painting of Florida does it?  You would be right!  I painted this in Northern Wisconsin on a painting trip in late October.  I was with two great outdoor painting buddies, Lynn Rix and Lori Beringer.  It was cool and breezy but the day was warmed by our friendship and love of painting.  So today I am celebrating painting the beauty of autumn with dear friends.

On Sunday Smell the Roses

This painting is entered into the DPW Challenge on Composition.  It was fun to use two (I have a whole collection of women's needlecraft) of my tea towels and the red climbing roses, from the arbor outside the studio, in this still life set-up.  

NASTURTIUM

These nasturtium were a riot of color in my window box and it was an exciting challenge to capture their colors in paint for this still life.  Not only were these colorful flowers beautiful cascading down the window box, but as an added bonus, the flowers and leaves are edible. 

Baby Rubber Duckie Dancing

After painting this little (5" x 7") gouache painting I decided to donate it to the Oklahoma Tornado Fundraiser auction through my sales site at www.dailypaintworks.com.  100% of all of the proceeds from the sale of this painting will go to the Red Cross to help the victims of the Oklahoma Tornado.  

The Traveling Chicken has arrived!

Miss Chicken and her family have arrived safe and sound from Dawn Eaton's studio (www.dawneaton.com) in Illinois.  The postal service did their job well in snowy Illinois and sent her safely to my studio.  Her blanket of bubble wrap insulted all of them from the cold and she is happy to be in sunny Florida.
She arrived yesterday and was waiting in her box patiently when I arrived back from my consultation with the oral surgeon.  When I let her out of her wrappings, read the nice note from Dawn to her and her traveling family, she was sad to hear (and a little fearful) that my root canal was not successful and I need to have the molar pulled.
I will take her to the dental clinic today to let her see for herself that the oral surgeon will take good care of me and I will feel much better once the molar has been extracted.  Since she is so young and inquisitive, I think I will let her stay in my purse while the procedure is occurring, so she doesn't ask too many questions.

Art for sale to benefit Storm Sandy Victims

You will find these four (10" x 10" original gouache paintings) at www.dailypaintworks.com.  (The paintings are from my Chinese Character Garden Series)  The proceeds from the sales will be donated to The Salvation Army to help the victims of Storm Sandy. Over 100 artists have donated paintings for this cause. 

Group Hug

My tomatoes are ripening and I decided to feature only these beautiful ripe ones in another DPW 'paint an emotion' Challenge.   The emotion for this painting is love and is entitled Group Hug.

Green with Envy

This weeks Daily Paint Works Challenge is to paint an emotion.  Wow!  I have never painted an emotion before and was excited to get started.  Except what emotion would I paint?  How would I paint it once I decided on my choice?  Many choices came to mind but were quickly dismissed.  Then I looked in my kitchen for a snack to fuel my tired brain and there was my subject, my just picked garden tomatoes. (While I was out of town, Jane, my neighbor had saved them from the frost, by picking every tomato still on my plants. - Thank you, Jane.)   A few of the tomatoes were ripe, red and perfect.  Most of the tomatoes were green, blemished and pretty un-tomato looking.  These green tomatoes looked like they were envious of the red tomatoes maturity, ripeness and beauty to me.  So I set up my tomato still life and painted the emotion 'envy' thanks to these tomatoes.
PS  To all those green tomatoes out there - you can ripen up if you are put in a paper bag with a few green friends and placed on top of the refrigerator for a few days.  Or you can be turned into fried green tomatoes!

EGG HUT

To be invited onto someones property to paint is such an honor.  My fellow artist friend, Pamela Ruschman, had permission for us to paint at this farm.  The chickens, cats, ducks, sheep, rabbits and children kept us entertained as we painted.  This young farm couple raises most of their families food themselves and sell eggs to the buying public.  This painting features one of their (loud - he wanted my attention so I put him in the painting) roosters, quiet ducks, and the Egg Hut.  Many times I had to pause while painting when an egg buyer drove up, put their money in the jar (the honor system at it's finest) opened the refrigerator and took out the eggs they wanted to buy.  I am glad the process was fast since their car would block my view as they 'gathered' their eggs. 

Tractor Break

We need rain in most of our counties here in Wisconsin. The grass is 'crunchy' under our feet.  Ozaukee County, where this painting was painted really needs rain.  With irrigation most of the crops are growing well, but rain is still needed.  My garden here at home is being watered today from our trusty Simer water pump that is in our lake, for irrigating my neighbors and my gardens.  We are so lucky to have this water source and the pump!  Since we have a well for our drinking water we wouldn't be able to irrigate the garden from the well without fear of lowering our water table. 

WHO'S GUARDING THE HENHOUSE?

I just returned from the 2012 Cedarburg Plein Air Paint Out.  It was a hot week for painting in Cedarburg this year, since temperatures were in the high nineties everyday I painted.  The painting that I am posting today is a painting I did last year at the 2011 paint out.  The rule for The Cedarburg Plein Air Paint Out is to finish the entire painting in --- WELL ---  plein air or completely outside with no tweaking in the studio.  This painting just wasn't finished when the light changed, so I enhanced it in the studio a few weeks ago.  I offer it for sale now while I finish putting in a late garden instead of painting today.  

CURTAIN CALL

It is always fun to open a box and find a surprise.  Well, this morning as I was packing up my painting gear, for my trip to Cedarburg, Wisconsin; I discovered this painting.   Since I will be packing and then traveling I won't be painting until I get to the plein air paint out.  So today I am posting my found painting, Curtain Call.  (I think the daffodil looks like it is taking a bow until it blooms again next spring.)
To follow all of the artists who will be painting in Cedarburg this year, go to www.cedarburgpleinair.com. 

Hypnosis Dots

This week on The Daily Paint Works website, Carol Marine, sent out a challenge.  The challenge to all painters was to include dots somewhere, somehow in a new painting we would create this week.  It sounded like fun!
Besides I had been wanting to paint one of the water glasses that came with our cottage and the bird salt and pepper shakers that are part of my salt and pepper collection.  (My Grandmother, Minnie, collected salt and pepper shakers and now I do too.)
So I put out my paint and began painting.  Soon I was seeing dots before my eyes even where the dots did not exist.  To finish this painting I needed to rest my eyes from time to time from all those dots.  The dots were hypnotic.  I was so glad the challenge didn't include counting the dots or connecting them!