Another Day, Another Flower Painting

For the last few weeks, I've been immersed in painting imaginary flowers in Carla Sonheim's online Flower Crazy Class. This is one of my favorite paintings. It started as a purely abstract piece on a square piece of birch board.  In the class we learned how to use gesso to create wonderful texture and then paint with watercolor. The flowers gradually emerged as I added layers of watercolor, sanded, rubbed and added more paint. I love watercolor, but had never used it over gesso, nor on wood. It's amazing to me how beautiful and rich the results are. 

In this painting, perhaps my very favorite of the month, I  started with a collage layer before adding gesso and watercolor.

This one is also on an 8" x 8" wood panel. I am definitely going to continue use this painting method because it's so much fun to do, and I love the results!

Thanks so much for visiting my blog today. I always appreciate your comments.

Flower Craziness

Hello, my long neglected blog and lovely blog readers!  I seem to have taken an unplanned break from blogging but the good news is that I've been doing a lot of painting. I signed up for Carla Sonheim's Flower Crazy Class and have been going flower crazy (in a good way) all through the month of March. It's my first online class and I am loving it. Carla is such a wonderful teacher. Beginners and experienced artists alike can learn a lot from her playful and practical approaches to creating art. 

One of the great ideas I've learned from the class is to look at other objects for inspiration. for example, in this exercise, I looked at pictures of gears online for flower shape ideas. Pretty cool, huh?!

And in this painting, I was inspired by a sea anemone.

It's amazing how this takes the pressure off when you're drawing, at least for me. 

Can you guess what my inspiration was for this one? 

I'm amazed by how many completed paintings I've done this month. It's definitely been a worthwhile experience to take this class. 

New Collages with Old Spanish Papers

I recently decided to push myself to open a shop on Etsy. As I am one to take baby steps and let the process of selling my art gradually unfold, I am not expecting overnight success there! I'm sure I have a lot to learn about what will sell, and how to sell it. There's a good reason I didn't study marketing or business in college. Anyway, I'm really enjoying surfing the shops there and discovering all of the wonderful items for sale. I do have to limit that activity, though, because it is easy to be tempted. I did buy some interesting 'vintage' papers from Spain there that I'm having a lot of fun with in my collages.

"Especial"
mixed media collage
4" x 6" on paper

"I Will Touch a Hundred Flowers"
mixed media collage
4" x 6" on paper

Many years ago, I spent some time in Spain, teaching English. It's fun for me to bring a little Spanish into my collages in this way. An old pink receipt brings in a beautiful splash of color, and the lovely words are from Edna St. Vincent Millay,

I will be the gladdest thing under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.