Acrylic, finished and installed in our bathroom. 🙂
I worked from memory and a photo on my cell phone of the Cordyline plant that is in front of our house. I wished I had cut one of the leaves off the plant to take up to the studio so I could work from real life. Overall, I am pleased with how this turned out, though. The signature is actually green but photographs as if it is dark red! An optical illusion.
New work in progress. Blocking in the leaves for a Cordyline plant painting. Acrylic on canvas – and still a lot of work to go. I can wait to hit it with the neon pink! I’ve been mixing my greens according to this excellent tutorial. 
I wanted to show you the finished Persimmons acrylic painting, now signed – as I photographed it today in daylight. It’s hanging in the hallway opposite the kitchen. I was thinking of putting some palm frond in the background, but I like how the fruit pops. To texturize the paint on the fruit’s skin, I used a paper towel and a lifting method that works wonders for watercolor – why not for acrylic, too? Painting with watercolors is a great learning ground to develop skills for when one turns to acrylics.
A fruit series might be a nice thing to do at this point. I can see maybe lemons in the same mode on a pink background … bananas on a purple background … and so forth.
A blank canvas stands in my studio. Today, at the Red Barn farmers’ market, and there’s a new tricolored potted bougainvillea plant along with an Angel’s Trumpet plant waiting to be painted.
Spend time in nature every day. It’s good for your soul.
Today, my neighbor brought over some gorgeous persimmons that she grew on her farm. So naturally, I had to paint them! OH, and they taste AMAZING.This isn’t done but I am excited about how it’s coming along. Acrylic. I painted this while listening to Brett Dennen and I am hooked on his music. Just downloaded some of his tunes for my MP3 player.
Creating the orange color of the berry was fun – I used yellow ochre, vermillion, and a touch of turquoise Bombay India ink mixed in with my acrylic paint.
Acrylic ~ “Desoto Path to the Water.” We live in Florida near the Gulf Coast, and my heart goes out to everyone who is fleeing the path of Hurricane Mathew on the east coast, wishing you are safe from harm’s way. Outside my studio, you can see we’ve had some rain. We expect more rain and wind to come tonight and tomorrow.
“Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.” — Sarah Kay
Instead of going to the beach, I painted it. “Gentle Surf.” Acrylics on gessoed canvas. Palette: Turquoise, Light Violet, Neon Blue, Aqua Green, Naples Yellow, Silver, Copper, Green Yellow, Ultramarine Blue, Bright Blue, Violet, Cerulean Blue, Yellow Ochre. White Gesso. A little watered -down Magenta and Turquoise Bombay India Ink, too! What do you think?
I had a little time to paint tonight, so I did this. I call it “Three’s a Crowd.” It’s based on a photo I took of our neighbor’s ducks in the little pond that’s down our driveway on the way to the mailbox. In the photo, there were four ducks. But I only painted three. I used the photo mainly for the shapes of the ducks and their reflections in the water. I am pretty pleased with how my little painting turned out for several reasons, one of which is the variation of brush strokes which helps keep the eye moving around the painting and the composition interesting and lively.
Another aspect of this piece I enjoyed creating is the achieved a variation of textures using several different brushes and tools. (Remembering how many times have I tried to paint something when I started out with just one brush.) This time, I even used a sponge and scraped the paint in the background where the edge of the pond meets the vegetation using the tip of my handy dandy glass dip pen. Feeling satisfied, mission accomplished today, and happy to say I have my ducks all in a row.
De Soto National Park ~ Bradenton, Florida. I was there this week and this tree by the water caught my eye. I was attracted to the water which had an orange tinge to it, and how the tree framed the view. Watercolor with a round brush and Bombay ink applied with a glass dip pen. I also used a sponge to apply the shadows and texturize the sand in the foreground.
I took lots of photos of things I wanted to paint.
When I paint from photos in the studio, I look at them on my computer or mobile phone and more often than not, simply keep looking back and forth between the paper and the screen, painting directly without doing a pencil sketch first. I find this method keeps my painting more lively, as if I were actually painting “en plein air.”
It’s hard work painting poorly … this started off well, then was a major fail, so I rinsed it and went back over it … and at least I didn’t tear it up. I didn’t give up on it because I had to post something for today!
