Painting in Italy

Home from Italy! I had a fantastic time in Tuscany and Umbria. What a beautiful country! Everywhere is a painting waiting to be painted. I stayed in a villa in the country side. We did collage art and took day trips to beautiful places.

This small painting is from my small watercolor art journal. I sat outside of the "agriturismo" resort villa we stayed in and painted this. It's a beautiful valley with a farm. This is looking into Tuscany. This is also the view I had from my room.

The Evening Rise

The Evening Rise

Oil on panel

8"x 10"

My niece's husband took this photo on a recent fishing trip. As soon as I saw the photo, I knew I would use it as a reference for an oil painting. It just grabbed me. I love the setting sun, the bent rod, the story it tells.  Steve, who took the reference photo told me that this time of day is called the evening rise, because the fish rise up to eat the bugs that land on the water. I am happy with this painting and how it turned out.

soon to reveal

This is a WIP (Work In Progress). My niece's husband snapped a shot of his friend about to catch a fish. This is the background for that oil painting so far. I have since finished it, except for the bent rod. I am waiting for this to dry and then will paint in the rod. The overall image just captured me and so I felt compelled to paint it.  More to come...

Butter Pecan

 Butter Pecan

4" x 4" 

oil on panal

Ice cream and cupcakes represent happy times to me. I guess because I only

eat them when I am with my family or celebrating a special event. Those are 

happy times for me. I don't eat cupcakes or ice cream cones when I am by myself.

Do you? 

 cone refine to only dull out next

(I thought it was competing too much with the actual ice cream,

so I dulled it out.)

 highlights

 start to refine

block in 

Fabric and paper collage

Home Sweet Home

This is a fabric and paper collage. I am starting to think about which papers I will bring with me to Italy for my collage trip with Elizabeth St. Hilare. She uses paper and will supply all of our supplies needed, but she did say to bring paper that we would like to incorporate into out work while in Italy. 

This collage above uses both fabric and paper. I also used paint. Its a real mixed media piece. It's part of a children's board book that I altered. 

I found a great little paint set that is fast becoming my favorite. I love it because it is small and yet holds twice as many paints as my old paint set. My old set is about 20 years old and it served me well. But I was able to add most of the paint from that old set to my new set and now I have a great many colors. The new paint box is made my Prima and I don't think it is artist quality, although it says it is. But even so, the colors are vibrant and rich, perfect for quick sketching. Easy to mix and I just love the bright colors.

The wonderful thing- this paint set cost 15.00. I would of paid 15.00 for the box alone, so the added paint is a bonus. Like I said, its not artist quality but it works just fine! I'll be taking this little gem to Italy this summer. I plan on doing as much sketching of the local area as possible. I can't wait!

painting fog in watercolor

fog

watercolor on 140# paper

I've always wanted to paint fog...and I just didn't know how to. I found a technique book that showed me how. Yay! This is my first attempt. I like the sky colors. I found a workbook by Zolton Szabo that has demos on techniques.