I thought it might be fun to show the reference photo I took for this painting. It seemed daunting when I first thought of painting all those branches, but I just tried to be loose from the beginning and think of shapes and values before thinking of branches, and it all worked out rather well in the end.
I just had to do a little painting of these spectacular plants. The hairy light green plants are my husband’s prized asparagus. When it rains, all the tiny, hairy leaves get loaded down with water droplets and it takes on a real silvery color. And it is just beautiful as it sways gently in the breeze. Also, the sunflower variety we planted this summer was very tall! It sort of surprised us how big it was. Anyway, my husband just loved thee plants in particular, so I thought I would do a little reminder painting.
I had someone come into the Juneau Artists Gallery where I have some of my work. They purchased this little Halibut mini (on the left) and wanted to know if I would paint them a larger one just like it. Of course I did. This was painted from a reference photo I took after one of our fishing trips.
And just for fun, here is a pic of probably my largest Halibut catch!
These are all favorite local scenes. The first one is a fishing spot where we go to fish for trout. This was a beautiful sunny day, but of course they are not all like that, especially here in Juneau. We have to fish in the rain a lot!
This was an amazing spot to paint. It may look a bit awkward, but it couldn’t have been much nice. There were not even any bugs to contend with. For some reason, I just like to paint rocks. And I don’t think that I am alone in this.
It just never gets old to see a batch of these together. There is just something so cool about small things. They fascinate me!
I am back at painting a new batch of miniatures for this season at the Juneau Artists Gallery. I will probably be doing several posts with them coming up. I did not feel that I would be putting time into doing the small ones this year, but once I did one, I was very motivated to continue. I have done about 20 new ones this past couple weeks, and really enjoying them!
This is an example of what I sometimes do…this has been a favorite 8×10 painting that I did several years ago (the one on the right is the first edition). I think it was one of the first times that I really tried to push my colors to be brighter and bolder than what I was seeing in my reference pic. As I have gotten older, I have come to enjoy that brighter array of color rather than all muted tones. So I really liked leaving this bright.
As time went on, I wanted to tone it down just a little, and play with some of the techniques that I had learned regarding color schemes. I have to say I am very happy with the results. Do you have a preference?
Art with my Coffee 