Brightening up a landscape painting

Before

After

Morning Coffee

Having some coffee and easing into my day with a few watercolors. These are just basic images at this point, I'll add some detail with colored pencils as the day goes by.

The sun is out and the weather has warmed slightly so I'm beginning to hope that there will be fresh things to paint soon. Painting from life is a lot more satisfying and a great excuse to have fresh flowers in the house.

Watercolor, pencils and a pleasant afternoon

I'm just relaxing and kicking a few old ideas around. On the card I started with a detail view of an old acrylic painting and thought I'd try the idea in watercolor and see how that worked out. A friend of mine commented on how much her letter carrier enjoys all of the envelope art and it gives them a chance to talk so I feel good about that too.

For decades I've been doing roses on my envelopes. I like these mixed media ones best.

The landscapes need work. I plan to spend more time by the lake this summer to see if that will improve my technique.

Some of these work out better than others but everyone enjoys a bit of fun and color in the mail.

Minnesota Garden Reality

A playground ball
Falling branches
Brown Grass
Snow tonight

For days the TV news has been talking about the first day of spring but in Minnesota the only place I'm having spring is is my mailbox. Most of the week I'd been drawing and painting sunflowers, roses and Iris.
Yesterday I went for tulips and daffodils in colored pencil. I don't include pictures of most of them because it's pretty much the same old thing. New ideas and subjects should appear soon.

The push pull of creativity, losing the fight

Sometimes when a painting isn't going the way I want it to I just grab some paint, take a deep breath and see where it wants to go.

  At this point I don't think about which colors or tools I'm using, sometimes I even use my hands.

Looking at it now it's hard to tell whether it's the beginning or the end but it's an interesting process. It will be fun to see where it goes from here.

A few more colors

A dark place

A spark of red

Tossing the inspiration, relaxing into imagination

Once I had things more or less blocked in where I wanted them I tossed the inspiration photo so that it wouldn't be a distraction to the creativity that I hope will take over from here.

Coneflower Painting

Sometimes it's fun to get back to basics. I used to paint like this back in high school and once even sold out at an art show in just two hours.

Decades later I'm wondering if I can re ignite the spark and have my work catch fire again.

So far it feels really good just to relax and be myself without worrying about what will or won't sell and pay a bill or two.

There's still a long way to go before I feel I'll be done with this but I'm enjoying it and don't really care how long it takes.

Roses in watercolor and pencil

The weather is warming and as the snow melts my first thoughts are about my roses and the new bed I hope to start this spring.

Since there's nothing I can do in the yard yet I figured I'd grab my paints and pencils to decorate this card with them.

The cards are heavy and made for mixed media so as soon as the paint dries I begin to layer the pencils over them.

new paintings and other projects

I've been working on a new horse and a dala horse blog while deciding what sorts of projects I want to do here.

I did a lot of mail art but didn't bother to scan it because my focus now is what I want my first garden themed paintings and drawings to be about.

There's really nothing to work with yet so I may just relax and fall into some abstract knife and color pieces as I wait to get my seeds started for the garden this year.