On Thursday Give Thanks

My sunflowers have flowered and the heads are starting to have sunflower seeds. The sunflowers have  bloomed just in time for me to create this oil painting for the Daily Paint Works Sunflower(s) Challenge.  

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.  

Diva Duckie

This weeks Daily Paint Works challenge was to paint a composition that was mostly warm or mostly cool with the remaining portion the opposite of the majority temperature.  This sounded very interesting to me and I started gathering my still life items to paint for the challenge.  As you can see I have created a mostly warm painting with a smaller portion of cool temperature pigments completing the painting.

Diamonds may be a girls best friend but it appears that rubber duckies (at least Diva Duckies) prefer pearls. 

Spring Bouquet

My good friend, Lori, sent me this lovely vase from Wisconsin.  The vase has been here for several weeks and I have been wanting to paint the dainty vase, but didn't have the right flowers to fill it.  Today I discovered wildflowers growing beside our road and knew they belonged in the peach glass vase.
Wisconsin has had a long winter so I painted a 'Spring Bouquet' for Lori and all who are still waiting for spring to arrive.  

Good News

What could possibly be good news after the Marathon Bombing in Boston and the Fertilizer Plant explosion in Texas this week?  I wondered that myself as I painted in my studio.  Then I heard this quote from "Mr. Rogers" (a children's television host and Presbyterian Pastor), "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say,"Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping."  To this day, especially in times of 'disaster', I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helping - so many caring people in the world."   It is always good news to remember that there are many more good people in our world that evil ones.