Roadside Landscapes

Here are a few unfinished roadside landscapes. These are on a few left over pieces of Shina wood. (for woodcuts - about 3x3" and 4x4"). I'm hoping to get some wood cut at the hardware store to do more - maybe not quite this small. Stay tuned I'll be working on more :)

The Last Underdrawings...

This one is early in the season... She's realized it's snowing again.

A moment of sunflower ecstasy

Here are a few more beginnings drawn outside over the weekend. I think these will be the last of the series to be in the show. Gotta get busy finishing many and (my favorite part) starting the last of the new ones. There will be 10 of 'em for the show... 9 if I can't mend the one the dog damaged when he knocked over the Half-Julian portable easel, broke it and caused the painting to crash on the floor. (There go the dreams of painting plein-aire!)

Flowers

Here are a few glimpses of the painting with the 'Proteus' flowers in them. Need to hurry up before the flowers die! Naturally, it's unfinished (aren't most of my paintings? :) The face I like but it's on the masculine side... I'm tweaking it and making some decisions about what to keep; what to paint over.

Tomorrow, I'll share a few new underdrawings done yesterday, outside... listening to some cool, old 70's rock. (lots of great, fleeting childhood memories in that music!)

Winter Madness... Dreaming of Spring

At the Lake Lodge

Bird on the Head

Flower Goddess

Been working on my series of ladies and having so much fun looking at botanical books and birds. These ladies are/were suffering from winter madness and make themselves 'right' by getting their gardens in order. I have more in the works and will share their progress.

New Starts

Darn, I missed Sketchbook Thursday! Maybe over the weekend there will be a belated one - just wasn't in the cards. I updated the shop, so have a peek if you'd like!

Started a new series of ladies yesterday... felt so good to finally get going! They are for an upcoming show. Hope I can be happy with 'em when they're done :) I'm my worst enemy and critic sometimes. You know all those 'bad voices' inside giving critiques before you're at a 'stop, step back and squint' moment?? Painting is sort of love - hate with me. There must be painters out there who feel good and confident about their pieces in progress...

Finishing up...

Finishing up a few of the small paintings I started in a fury around Thanksgiving time. The piano ladies... I still am thinking of a good title that will explain the story behind it. Think I need to sleep on it!

The first one is inspired by my imagination when I was a kid... a 'what if' kind of thing. I did not like all the rules in school, including no gum chewing, no running in the halls, that we all had to play baseball on Mondays, etc. So, what if everyone had to have the same haircut? The same sack lunch? What would it be like to live that way, hmmm. Funny how some crazy childhood thinking turned out to be not such crazy ponderings after all :) Thinking I may make their shirts longer so they're not floating.

Piano Ladies and Night Snow

Already shoveled this out this afternoon!

I worked on the piano ladies today... and many other ones today too! (ahh, nice to get in some good painting days!!) This is another work in progress - I like to have several going at one time. I work on one for awhile... then when I'm 'spent' I'll move to a different one. I'm posting about another wip over at Take 5 Paintings, so check it out! ( I've also added 2 new paintings to the shop and will probably add another one tomorrow.)

**On the flip side... look at all that snow! I'm doing bunches of laundry for fear we'll loose power. I heard on the news this is apparently 'The perfect storm' and much different than the meteorologists could have predicted. It may mirror or surpass a record from 1950 where they got 14 inches of snow in 24 hours. Yikes, I feel the cabin fever coming on already! At least the kids have adequate snow boots this year.. I can tire them out by running around and sledding in it.

Tea and Peace in the Village

Here's one of the 'repetition' series (must think of a better name!) Sorry for the crummy quality photos... I couldn't get any good ones this close to winter Solstice! It starts getting gloomy around 3:30pm and dark by 4:30pm. (I'm never ready to photograph in the morning light, gotta work on the paintings first :)

Anyway, I eliminated some of the items that were up top and put in mountains instead. They remind me of the ones from home on the Olympic Peninsula of WA. I'm not liking the smoke... there's still a lot of tweaking to be done but here it is as of tonight!