Mother's Day Rocked... and Roses

Painting....the freedom to paint just for fun about a subject I love...roses and my boys
Picnic...a park filled with roses and people enjoying the gorgeous day
Perfect Movie...a fun, entertaining movie we all loved
Mother's Day Rocked!

I had an awesome Mother's Day! I woke up early - 7am and decided since no one was up...I would paint something. The boys had given me some flowers that were delivered on Friday. They were beautiful roses...so I took them out the the Art Cottage and thought about how to paint them. I decided to set up a still life in honor of Mother's Day. What did I have to set up with the roses that would speak Mother's Day to me? I found my statue I had that reminded me of my boys. Okay..now I wanted to give it a "blue" feel since the vase, flowers and "boys" have an underlying "blue" tone...so I used my blue paint shirt to cover the stand for the statue. I then took my camera and took several photos of the setting to see if I could find a composition I liked. The sunlight was streaming in at this early morning hour. So I set off to paint.

I decided to sketch with paint and not draw with pencil.

And wahlah...3 hours later the boys came in to say they were all ready for our picnic.

(my husband is one of "the boys"....actually he is the best boy at heart!) All I did was hop in the car and off we went to the Rose Garden in Santa Clara. They had brought yummy cheeses, salami and crackers, grapes, drinks and chairs. We all really enjoyed the beautiful day and gorgeous roses.

It was fun checking out the varieties they had there. The boys got a lesson in the differences between a "hybrid tea", a "grandiflora" and a "florabunda" rose.

They were surprised they found it interesting.

After the rose education...we headed off to see "Star Trek" the movie.

Woo wee that was a great treat.

We all enjoyed that movie.

What a perfect movie to watch with your teenage sons on mother's day.






I'm One Lucky Girl!

Hawaiin Art

We had a super time in Hawaii/Maui!


I think every time we go I have been inspired to paint something.

What is it about Hawaii...?

Relaxing

Bright Colors

Warm Breezes

Spectacular Flowers

Sunshine

and

Tropical Drinks

I've wanted to do something with this colorful magazine picture I cut out a few years ago.

It was of two bright and colorful margaritas.

After I got back from Hawaii this year I decided to just paint it.

Margarita Magic

8" x 12" acrylic

This Mai Tai painting was from a photo of a Mai Tai drink we had in Hawaii last year.

I have sketched this photo before in watercolor,

but this time I did another acrylic

to compliment

my Margarita painting.

Mai Tai Time

6" x 8" acrylic

The beautiful landscape surrounding the Lavender Farm in Maui.

I just couldn't resist sketching it out in my watercolor journal while I was in Maui.

It was such a beautiful area.

I really enjoyed stopping by the farm.

Their was something old fashioned about this building

where we stopped by to get some lunch.

I love the tree next to it as well.

So here I did a second sketch.

Just a fun shot while we were on our hike.

The boys coming through the tunnel.


I couldn't resist this beautiful plumeria flower

I found on our morning beach walk headed to breakfast.

The back side of the flower looked as if pink stripes had been painted on.

I will be painting something from my photos I took in the restaurant.

ALOHA!

AAAHHHH....Driven to Abstraction

My First Two Abstract Paintings...

for FreshBrain...pretty easily accomplished and without much fuss and I was pleased. They are now hanging in the office. When FreshBrain moved into their new office, there were two terrible photo images of paintings left on the wall. They weren't even on real canvas...jus paper stretched on a frame. I took them home and had at them. I figured it didn't matter really what I did with them, they were not for FreshBrain. I planned out a simple sketch of what I wanted to do and they came out relatively the same as my sketch - with a few extra embellishments.

TA...DAH!

FreshBrain #1 and #2

16" x 20"

Acrylic

Then I decided to take a little workshop on the basics of abstracts. We went over various composotions you may recognize.
I sketched out a couple of ideas and decided to try to have a tropical pallette....
WELL....it just didn't come out easily this time.
You can see that I reworked the darn thing multiple times
until I finally was "OK" with what was on the canvas...I called it "Cosmic Waves".

Above is try #1 at the class

Below is try #2 at the class

I took it home and worked on it over and over until I got to this point below. I took it outside and decided to add spontaneous splashing to it.

Then I added more paint with a pallette knife.....below

And...after many more hours I came up with....

COSMIC WAVES

16" x 20"

Acrylic

I wasn't done playing...

so I attempted another one

and this time started off with just some tropical colors....

to see what would happen.

After 6 hours into it I came up with ...

SOMEWHERE A SUNSET

16" x 20"

Acrylic

AAAHHHHHH.....Abstraction!