Pow-Wow Indian WIP 4

I have done a few more things to help me see better "road maps" of this man's anatomy, such as blocking in his hair and I continue to work on his jaw. The eyebrows will need some refining and then I think I will move on to his hat. Lots of detail there. I need that to be the correct darkness to be able to gauge how much darker the skin tones or his face paint needs to be.

Pow-Wow Indian WIP 3 (or 4 or 5?)

I have mainly been working on this at night and haven't stopped during the daylight to take WIP photos as I promised. Sorry. This is probably more like WIP 4 or 5, but here it is, the third one.

He is wearing paint on his face, very dark and black on the lips and upper face, so I have to soften the edges so it looks less like a mask. Also, I misread the modeling shadows below his chin and needed to use the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to correct that and will make it right the next time I work on it. There is more paint to add in the face and then the hair will be blocked in lightly so I don't get lost again. Details, details. I really owe a debt to Mr. Clean, he knows his stuff!

Stay tuned, when you see his black hat with the bead work and feathers hopefully you will like this guy as much as I liked his photo. Slow going on this one due to time constraints, but I will continue on.

Pow-wow Indian - WIP2

Just added the beginning modeling shadows late yesterday and this morning. Will work on it as I can today and see how far I get. So far, so good.

Pow-Wow Brave WIP 1

This is the underpainting for my newest project, an Indian man from a pow-wow in Banderra, TX. The reference photo was taken by a new online friend, Diana Webb. She graciously gave me permission to paint from her photo. I was taken by this photo and wanted to paint it immediately upon seeing it. It is hard to see in these early stages, but his gaze is intense, yet pensive and calm. Plus, I love his hat! Pardon the buckling of the paper in the face as I got in a big hurry to take the photo before the paper had dried after the wet-into-wet application of the underpainting. This will be my first attempt at these magnificent feathers that were part of his attire. I'll keep working and posting WIPs as I move along, although it will no doubt be fairly slow for awhile.

The image size of this painting is 24 x 16, watercolor on Arches 140-lb paper.

A Christmas Wish - Okay Three

I have three wishes for us all this Christmas Day. As so much of the country is enduring harsh winter weather this year, I pray that you are safely within the embrace of your families in a warm place. As we enjoyed the fellowship with my side of our family last night I was struck by the basic need of connecting and reconnecting with those whose pasts we share.

I also have a wish for all to be safe financially in these troubled times. I speak not of wealth, but of the security that allows us all to feel that we can take care of ourselves and have freedom from the threat that we will not be able to if the world's economy does not level out. This needs to change, may those who are in charge of making this happen for us be guided by good and not greed.

Lastly, my biggest wish this holiday season is for health for us all. If you are dealing with health issues may you find healing in this new year that will allow you to enjoy all of the above as well as look forward to many future holidays. This has been a year of working through health issues for my family and I realize that this is the greatest wealth one can have, health.

God's blessings to you and yours this Christmas Day......

"Rock Talk and Autumn Framed"

These are the two paintings I finished last week, but due to spending so much time working on my new computer, transferring files, etc. I have not updated my blog to include them. The reference photos for both of these was provided by Roch, of New Mexico Jeep Tours. His photos just inspire me, plain and simply. He stops to take the photos I believe I would take if I were where he happens to be as he leads Jeep tours through the wonders of New Mexico. Thanks once again, Roch!

Now, I can maybe squeeze in some painting time to work on my Indian brave painting. I have the background in, so far, so good.

12/12/08 Sunset

I neglected to share with you our sunset the night before last here. This was shot from our driveway. Whenever there are clouds present in the West at sunset you can count on a spectacular display here. I just about missed this one but got out in time to snap a few photos.

ArtChix Sale This Weekend

This will be my home on the planet for this weekend, an ArtChix sale. Hopefully, people will feel compelled to buy something, but in this economy one never knows. It was worth getting prepared for, I just hope it all works out to be profitable. Lots of people looking, few buying so far. The cooler weather tomorrow may hinder this effort, also. Sigh. Such is the life of an artist, I guess.

Cell Phone Sunrise

While leaving our house to run some early morning errands yesterday I noted this great sunrise. Not having my good camera with me, I resorted to using my cell phone. While this isn't the best photo I have ever taken, I think it shows this display of color very well for having been shot from a cell phone camera. Love these rosy sunrises!

The Birth of a Blog

I have added a link to my new friend's blog. While meeting in an RV park in Kingman at Thanksgiving, we discovered a mutual love of painting and talking about painting and she was intrigued with the idea of a blog. She immediately took my suggested route of using this blog forum and set about creating her own blog. I have watched her fledgling blog since then and think you all might like to pop on over and have a look for yourselves! She has a style of painting in oils and watercolors that is realistic, but definitely charmingly painterly as well. Her name is Connie Hummel-Kornell and the link to her blog is: http://chummelkornell.blogspot.com/ She will soon be adding more of her paintings and this promises to be a very beautiful addition to her blog. The paintings I have seen of hers are reminiscent of Norman Rockwell or maybe Currier and Ives with a bit of Thomas Kincaid thrown in.

Check out her photos and ponderings on her very interesting life.

Winter Scene

Another mentoring session today, the choice was for this Winter scene, copied from a favorite greeting card of the student. Since this was a study, neither of us will be selling this copyright-protected work but it was a good one for trying out new techniques and learning from it. What does a girl from Yuma, Arizona know about painting snow scenes? You are right...not much! It was fun to ponder and experiment a little on what might work to get the right effects. I learn about as much when teaching as I did as a student! I am nothing if not brave!

NM Petroglyph Site

This is the second painting I finished today. It was painted from a photo of a petroglyph site in New Mexico. Roch, from NM Jeep Tours gave me permission to paint from his wonderful photo, for which I am grateful, he is a great photographer!

These are very large petroglyphs, almost intaglios it appears from the scale of the rocks. It was fun to do and shows some of the marvelous colors that were in these rocks.

Now, on to my next victim, a moose painting!

Glade Creek Grist Mill - Final

For better or worse, I finished the mill painting today. My goal was to finish every unfinished painting in my studio before the end of this week. I finished two of these paintings today, so only one more to go and then I am caught up and have less piles laying around the easels and tables.

I still like this scene and feel a real attachment to it even though I have never personally been there. This is the third painting I have done from photographs of this mill. It speaks to me.

Keokuk Eagle

This painting is from a reference photo by a mentoree who wanted to paint this from her home town in Iowa. This is a wood carving done by a carver using a chain saw and looks to be a huge accomplishment.

We both like working in sepia, the value shifts are great and we both had good results today. We continue to work on values, textures and mass foliage effects. Good times.

Surpise Sunset - 12/2/08

One of the rewards for surviving the ghastly summers here on the Arizona desert are the sunsets, especially in the Fall and Spring. This is tonight's sunset, which I thought was especially nice with the band of clouds so accommodating.

Surprise Sunrise

This is a project painting for the watercolor Workshop online group. We were to paint skies of any kind, so I chose one of my sunrise photo jaunt photos for reference. This has a series of at least six glazes, done over a month's time. I kept putting it aside and not getting back to it, but since this week is my week to finish ALL of the paintings sitting in my studio I got this one finished this morning. I have finished three so far this week and that leaves two, but those two are the most complicated and involved ones to do. Then, I have two paintings that I really want to get started with, so I have to finish these first before I allow myself the pleasure of starting the newest ones. A little self-discipline is good for the soul?

Home Again

We are home again after having a great Thanksgiving holiday trip in the motorhome. I shot so many photos, everything was so colorful at this time of the year and we were able to go on photo jaunts each day we were there. This included a sunrise jaunt, a 4-wheel-drive jaunt and a nice trip back home where I shot photos out the passenger side window of the motorhome. Of course, at 65 mph some of the angles produced some blurriness, but the colors of the Sycamores and Cottonwoods were not to be missed!

I also shot a few series of pano shots, the one I have processed can be seen at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcbysusanroper/3074257558/ as the file is too large to be included here.

Another highlight of our trip was that I met a fellow artist and made a new friend. She liked the idea of this blog so she got busy and created one for her artwork over the weekend. When she has tweaked it to her satisfaction I will add the link to my sidebar. I am convinced that the art community is one of the friendliest communities anywhere, there seems to be an immediate kinship.

I have five not quite completed paintings sitting in the studio so that is my art goal for this week, to finish every almost-done painting and get them off the boards. A discussion on Rhonda Carpenter's blog this weekend spurred me to action; we all have projects sitting around, waiting for us to stop pondering and just finish paintings that we have previously set aside. I'll post them here if I meet my goal!

Kingman area

We took a sunrise photo jaunt yesterday morning and got the one above with the spooky cloud below the horizon. There was so much moisture remaining in the atmosphere from the rains of Thanksgiving Day that these low clouds were everywhere. We had a very cold and rainy Thanksgiving Day, but a nice potluck feast here at the RV park where we are staying until tomorrow. They baked three luscious turkeys on the huge stone barbeque and everyone brought all the traditional goodies. Other than getting too wet and cold, it was a nice day. Friday, our oldest son and his family came for our second Thanksgiving feast. We smoked a pork loin before we left home and I used Crockpots in the motorhome for the rest of the feast (see the Crockpot blog link on the sidebar...it really works!).

Today we went to the top of Hualapai Mountain to the County Park there. There are good vistas from above, I took series of photos to stitch for panos but will wait until home to upload them to Flickr and direct you there to see them. We drove for HOURS on a one-lane, 4-wheel-drive trail to come down the other side of the mountain and come back to the motorhome. We thought it would be more picturesque than going back by way of the interstate. It was picturesque, but got quite tiresome after a few hours of rocking around up there over that rocky trail. The other photo with this blog entry is from about halfway down the other side, we were up pretty high and saw some great mountains across the valley. Lots of Manzanita bushes and these silvery white bushes (I wish I was so knowledgeable to be able to identify them for you) contrasting with the abundant greens. It was an experience for our memory books for sure.

Home tomorrow, nice sunny and breezy day yesterday and today. Hopefully that will hold until we get home.

Thanksgiving Trip to Kingman

We drove to Kingman, AZ yesterday afternoon, most of the way in rain and fog. The reward for this was to arrive to the area around Kingman just in time for sunset and a huge, very vivid rainbow. This rainbow lasted and was very visible for almost 15 minutes and as the sun set through a small opening in the clouds we had the treat of seeing this magical color display. The rainbow stretched from one end of the valley to the other. It is around 48 degrees right now on Thanksgiving morning but not raining presently.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, have a great day!

Hooked up and ready to go!

We are hooked up and ready to go this afternoon on our Thanksgiving adventure. I am giving thanks here for the friendship and support I have been given through this blog, it truly is a valuable tool for artists. The human factor cannot be ignored, either.

As you can see the street and sidewalk in front of our house is wet, imagine that, rain here on the desert! We need it so I won't grouse about having to travel in the rain, but I hope it doesn't become too stormy for our three-hour trip this afternoon.

As long as we have good WiFi I will use this blog as a travelogue and post photos of what is going on. Our oldest son and his family will be joining us for our Thanksgiving feast on Friday so that will be fun. We also plan, weather permitting, to scoot around the area for interesting photo ops while there.

I wish all who read this blog the very best of turkey days, good left-overs and great fun with family and friends. God Bless....Susan

Glade Creek Grist Mill WIP 6

I have been working on this painting again, lots! I have just submitted it to the watercolor workshop gang for critique. I don't want to continue fussing with it because I think I could easily over-detail it...to death! I have spent more hours working on this painting than any other I have done. This is because the subject matter makes me reach out of my comfort zone and figure things out I have not tried before. I know this is necessary for growth, but it has really caused me to stretch!

If anyone sees anything they'd like to change speak now or forever hold your peace. I'm leaving it on the Homosote board until after Thanksgiving in case I need to do something else, then it will go into an antique bronze metal frame. The image size is 16x24, watercolor on Arches 140-lb cold press.

Surprise Sunrise - 11/23/08

We took another breakfast picnic to the desert here in Surprise to capture more sunrise shots. Yesterday's sunrise was so nice, this morning's was less spectacular due to the lack of cloud bands near where the sun rose. It was a nice thing to do, anyway. It was quite cold this morning, as compared to the last breakfast picnic we had in this spot in September!

The shot with the most blue is the first one I took after the tripod and camera were set up. I love the colors in this. The other shot was of the more distant clouds at that time, they were more of a light coral color. I shot many of the actual sunrise, but due to a remote trigger malfunction (okay, the photographer was not noticing that it wasn't actually taking any photos!) I do not have any of those to share. Drat! One of these days I will have everything ready to go at the right moment.

Razor Blade Painting - First Try

At the Arizona Art Guild meeting Tuesday night we watched an excellent demo by John Erwin on painting with razor blades and India ink. This is sort of like using razor blades for palette knives and is a two-step process where you create the architectural elements first with the razor and ink and then do watercolor washes over it. He demonstrated this technique by painting a magnificent Italian village complete with towers, domed buildings, etc. I chose, for my experiment with this concept, a far simpler Taos Pueblo complex. I also have another pueblo scene ready to go that has more to it so I will try that, also.

While I dislike the shade covering I wound up with after playing around with the ink too much, I do think this method is a good way to loosen up and do something different than my usual "style" sometimes. We sure had fun working with these at the art club yesterday afternoon! And, I didn't cut myself one time working with those razor blades...hooray!

Sandy's Bridge

I asked Sandy Maudlin for permission to copy her painting in my Beginning Watercolor II class as a way to show the students nice mass foliage techniques and the "value of values". I loved her painting and was grateful for her permission to work with this. It did work out to be a good lesson for us to work on. This is my demo painting. For my students seeing this, after class I darkened some of the values where needed, added some branches to the trees and did some spattering in the foreground.

I Wish I Hadna....

I am at the point in this painting where I am soooooo wishing I had not done several things. I think I cleared up (as much as possible) the foreshortening problem with the front right corner of the roof. Now, I am wishing I had not done an underpainting as I am feeling as if I had painted myself into a corner. I have few options for the troublesome rock/stream area since I have painted the darkest values with the blue. I promise to try my next project like this without an underpainting and see if that works better. In the meantime, I am plodding along trying to do this without messing up what I do like about this painting. Stay tuned for how this goes from here on out...it may be cropped down to a landscape orientation with just the mill and middle ground rocks! I know we never learn or advance our skills if we only paint what we know and are comfortable with, but I think I may have pushed myself farther than I want to go at this point! I am stepping away from the painting for a breath of fresh air and, hopefully, a new perspective.

The same as below!

Okay, as below, I took this painting to the Vanguard Artists meeting this afternoon for a critique. They found problems with the foreshortened roofline of the right part of the front-facing, vertically aligned part of this mill. I am unsure of how to deal with this problem, but I will figure something out! If nothing else, I will extend those wonderful Fall foliage limbs over to hide those bothersome details! I saw that on the reference photo but thought they were not significant to the painting....WRONG! We will see how this pans out in future WIPs. Considering, pondering, exercising caution! Susan

Glade Creek Grist Mill - WIP 4

Here is the little apparent progress made after three hours of painting yesterday. I am approaching all of these stages slowly, but I thought after three hours it would have more added than is apparent here. Anyway, I am slowly glazing on colors for the rocks and stonework of the mill, adding more detail to the wood in the building, etc. I love the detail work but it takes time to do it as I want to. I see so many hard edges in the underpainting of the rocks that I may have to switch to doing the water and rocks next just to soften those edges and not have to see them anymore. I still have to define the stonework mortar in the building and waterwheel support wall but might wait on that until after I attack those rocks in the water.

Glade Creek Grist Mill - WIP 3

I am still working on this, slowly but surely. It seems that in November my art world just explodes with activity, most of which takes me away from the creation of the art! So, this will probably be a work in progress for the foreseeable future. I do plan on taking it with me to this afternoon's watercolor group session and seeing what I can get done in three hours there. I love the fellowship of painting with like-minded (watercolorists!) artists and find it both relaxing and stimulating at the same time. The feedback and ideas exchanged are invaluable and I am always surprised that so many artists prefer painting in their own studios, on their own, like they find painting with others too distracting. While I enjoy my painting time in my studio, I always welcome painting in a group as well.

I was reading Rhonda Carpenter's excellent blog and she announced that she was celebrating her second "blogiversary", she has been posting to her art blog for two years now. This made me go back through the archives and realize that my blogiversary should have been celebrated on October 11, as I posted my first fledgling blogerisms on 10/11/06! Wow. A fellow Vanguard member introduced himself to me yesterday and told me how much he enjoyed reading my blog, "from start to finish"! So, even though I don't always have others commenting on my blog, I frequently hear from people about how often they check in with my blog to see what I have been getting up to. I love the journaling aspect of blogging in that it causes me to organize my thoughts a bit about what I am working on and thinking about in my so-called creative process.

Stay tuned for whatever today's efforts bring when I post WIP 4 of this painting tonight (hopefully!). Rhonda commented on the prior WIP of this painting that I should be careful to include more of that red color of the trees on the right in other parts of the painting. I did pay attention (thanks, Rhonda!) and punched up the red on the left, and that waterwheel is a warm red color but that will be done at the very last step for this painting. I was taking enough of a chance in adding the red of the trees since I haven't painted the rocks on the right rock face yet and I hate how any red will bleed badly if not careful. So, no splashing of paint in that area...just go slowly, Susan.

More on Artist of the Month for AAG

The Arizona Artists Guild newsletter has been published online and has an article about my being the October 2008 Artist of the Month. If you would like to read this article and see the photo of me with the painting, the link is: http://arizonaartistsguild.net/news7.html

I had this painting on display at this last weekend's ArtChix show and it garnered many comments from visitors, especially those who had been to Alaska. Many have such vivid memories of the beauty of Denali, I am among them!

Desert Sky

One of the monthly projects for the online Watercolor Workshop is to paint this sky from a photo provided by the moderator. We could make it with whatever landscape elements we wanted, but it should be of this desert sky. Since I was at my ArtChix sale table this weekend I thought I would do a "demo" while there and did this project painting. It was fun to work on, stayed fairly loose with it and met the requirements of the project.

The sale was moderately succcessful for me, but the new advertising/sign restrictions placed upon us by the HOA here in the community did not help draw in many people, and then there is the problem of the economy. Sigh. Hopefully our new administration, when begun, will be more successful in averting disaster than the current one has and will have some magical means to right the wrongs with the stock market. Enough politicism, I'll be quiet now.

Glade Creek Grist Mill - WIP 2

I have had two painting sessions working on this 16 x 24-inch painting, but failed to take a WIP photo after the first session. This is the Glade Creek Grist Mill in Babcock State Park in West Virginia. I have been granted permission to paint from the excellent photos taken by Bob Harris on a recent RV trip to this area. His photos were taken in somewhat failing light, but with that peachy sunlight glow that just begged to be painted. I want to capture the warm glow, in addition to the wonderful blue rocks and water that were in the photo. This one was made for the complements of blue and orange! I have already painted this mill in sepia twice and have fallen in love with the charm of this place. Hopefully, some day we can travel to this wonderful area and see it in real life.

I have the background foliage partially finished and the underpainting mostly done to set the middle ground and foreground values. Since I have been preparing for the first ArtChix sale of the season here I have not been able to paint much, but will keep on working on this one. I like it so far. But, as has been said before, "tis many a slip twixt cup and lip" so I want to post it "just in case".

Speaking of ArtChix, if you are in the area do stop by and see what we have going on this weekend at the Sun City Grand Art Club. We have all been painting this summer in preparation for our ArtChix events!

Nicholas Simmons

Nicholas Simmons is a renowned artist who has graced this blog with comments occasionally on my paintings posted here. He was a big award winner in the National Watercolor Society's exhibition and his Fresh Sushi painting is shown here, one of his award-winning paintings. This will be one of the featured paintings in the National Watercolor Society Annual Traveling Exhibition October 31, through December 14, 2008. This will be at the Surprise West Valley Art Museum during these dates. I plan to view his painting "up close and personal" and hope that many of you will, too. It promises to be a very good exhibit. Call the museum for details, see you there!

PS....If you would like to visit Nick's website it is at: http://www.nicholassimmons.com/ This guy can paint!

Aubrey and GMa

We have had the pleasure of having our 2 1/2-year-old granddaughter, Aubrey, with us for a couple of days. She brought along her parents as well! We got in one painting session this morning and had a great time....she shows real promise! She painted a "life study" of Elmo, one of her favorite friends from Sesame Street. She really has good coordination and seemed to enjoy herself, I know for sure Grandma did! We held the painting session in "Grandma's Tudio" as she said. My tudio will be very quiet and lonely after today!

Happy-Susan Announcement

Last night was the meeting of Arizona Artists Guild, of which I am a juried member. This is a statewide organization of many accomplished artists from whom I have learned a great deal through their critiques and demonstrations. As part of each monthly meeting they hold an Artist of the Month competition and I usually bring along a painting to enter into this. Last night I asked my husband to choose which one to bring and he chose my Denali Tundra II painting. It won First Place, or Artist of the Month! I was so shocked when they called my painting number that I thought I had heard that incorrectly. But, my buddy Barb, who was sitting next to me, gasped out loud and grabbed my arm so I knew I had won. This puts me in competition for the annual Artist of the Year award with this organization! I always enjoy this competition since the caliber of art brought is so high and so lovely to see. Last year I won Second Place for my large rose painting in this competition and was so honored, never imagining I would win First Place, ever.

So, I share my feel-good news with you all. Happy Wednesday!

Road to Crown King Pano

I stitched together 10 photos to create this panoramic view of the valley below when we were near the top of the mountain, where Crown King awaited. I still am working on improving my skills when taking the photos for panoramas. The Olympus E-510 does help me a lot on the pano setting.

Crown King Weekend

We brought the motorhome to nearby Black Canyon City just for a getaway weekend. Saturday we spent most of the day exploring the road to Crown King. This is a 28-mile dirt road across the desert and finally up into the pines of Crown King. It was so picturesque that it took us 3 1/2 hours to travel that 28 miles because we made so many stops for photo ops. This road goes through cattle ranching country as well as abandoned mines from long ago. Crown King itself was much smaller and less interesting to visit than either of us had anticipated, but we both agreed that the destination does not matter as much as the journey there. This was proven again today as we found lots of little interesting spots to stop along the way. I loved the old wood in the cattle corrals and loading chutes, and we found a nice windmill and this windmill fed a stock pond complete with reeds, ducks and frogs. It was like finding an oasis in the desert. I even took some experimental photos that I hope to turn into some of those artsy-fartsy, avant garde, special effect photos when I can play with them. It was a good day!
We will return home this afternoon, after having lunch at the famous (since 1918) Rock Springs Cafe, known for their pies. Uh-oh!

Awwww

This photo was taken by my good friend in Florida, Vicki Green. This 3/4-inch baby tree frog was happily living in her Mandavilla flower. If this doesn't make you smile this morning, there is no hope for you! Since my one attempt in painting this week produced more mud than art I wanted to post this awesome photo to share some beauty with you all.

Awwwwww.

By the way...it is Vicki's birthday today....Happy birthday Vicki!

Apple Basket

This is one of the monthly projects for the online Watercolor Workshop group. We were to all paint from the same lovely reference photo provided and I almost chickened out on participating after seeing the first paintings submitted, they were so good! But, I also feel there is room for every approach in these projects and here is mine. I was going for a looser approach than I usually do and trying to pay more attention to the shapes within the shadows, value shifts and reproducing those luscious apple colors. It turned out to be a very enjoyable painting to do, despite dreading that basket!

SWAP painting

I belong to an online group called Sharing With Artist Partners or SWAP for short. We are in the midst of one of our quarterly swap of paintings right now. I received this lovely painting from my SWAP partner this time, Crystal from Alabama. This will be a very nice addition to the Wall of Fame in my studio, reserved for my collection of SWAP paintings. I now have 12 of them and love them all.

Onions II - Final

This is the official end to my two-painting experiment to see which technique for painting onions I preferred. There are things I prefer in this second painting, such as the vibrant color of the directly-painted onions, but I prefer the onion shapes and details with the first version. The background was also better, in my opinion, on the first version. Oh well, nothing ventured.......and it was a fun project to try.

Watermark Test

I got the idea to watermark my painting photos that will go online from several of my artist friends, hopefully protecting them from being copied for commercial uses by those unscrupulous enough to try that with other people's property. I have the new software to do this and wanted to test it out on the blog before I do too many of my painting folders. This will be a big job!

Anybody have any opinions on how this looks? My goal was to make it unfit for copying, but not so obvious that the watermark would distract from the painting.

Sunrise 10/5/08

We did try to have our sunrise picnic this morning, but the anticipated red glow did not appear as it has in the three days prior. Must be a change in atmospheric conditions or, maybe, my karma because we waited and waited and it just didn't happen. That is not to say that it was a complete bust since we got some shots of great sunbeams such as these, so it was a good jaunt anyway.
When we came home, the sun was great for taking macro shots of my new hibiscus flowers. I just planted these yesterday so I needed to get some photos of them before the rabbits eat them, as could happen! This is called Cairo Rose and I also got a Cairo Red variety but the shadows weren't good on that bush this morning.

I love the angle of this one because of the shadow cast by the stamen. I used a macro lens and the macro mode setting on the camera for these.

Onions II

Well, I got part two of my onion experiment off my mind. I found that I much prefer both the process as well as the results of my more controlled, glazing approach that I used in the first painting. While I like the more vibrant, alive colors in this direct, wet-on-dry method, I find that I lacked the control I wanted and the results show this. I'll go back to my more instinctive, tighter approach for new ones. This was a worthwhile experiment and I enjoyed the process, learned a bit along the way, too.