Celebrate Five

Today I am celebrating how fortunate I am to work in my raised garden boxes, year round.  Even when most parts of the USA are too dry or are covered with snow, here in Florida, I am planting and harvesting fruit and vegetables in the late fall and winter.  Today I will be planting my turnip seeds.  Exciting! 

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!

Sunrise and One Lump or Two - The challenge paintings

It has been very, very hot here this week (makes sense since it is Florida in the summer!) and I have been painting indoors.  Both of these paintings were inspired by The Daily Paint Works challenges.  The first one was in response to the challenge to paint a raw egg yolk.  The second painting was for the challenge to paint a light bulb.  I went a little overboard and painted three bulbs instead of one and also included a sugar bowl and lid all on a six inch by six inch panel.  Oh well, I guess I just can't follow directions very well.  Both of my paintings and all of the other challenge paintings can be seen on www.dailypaintworks.com by clicking the challenge button.  

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.