Tulips

Mary, Victoria and I painted tulips yesterday.

Toya's Painting of Tulips

Victoria has been painting with me and this is one of hers. This is only her fourth oil painting. She is a natural!

Early Spring

Post Valentine

Victoria and I wanted to give ourselves a 15 minute time limit to paint, after preparing. It was a good exercise to be definite with strokes and values.

The Fam

Victoria is home on her reading week and we are having such a wonderful time together. Today we set up a still life and painted.

Study

Found a little black and white value study from long ago and decided to give it a quick try.

Grapefruit for Breakfast

Bird Bath

These grouping of Canada Geese were in this small creek last summer, preening and grooming and swimming around together. I liked the S curve in the composition, and the shapes of the geese without using too many brushstrokes.

Geese in the Reeds

Still working with my gray puddles, although the mud which had a bluish tinge looks too blue here, might need a more muddy look to see that it is an embankment. Did the geese strictly as shapes and am pleased with how they turned out - minimal strokes too!

Toronto Street Scene

So with all of these wonderful leftover greys, I put them to use in this painting because most of it is in shadow. Maybe the wall could have been a bit darker, but I think it still works.

Frozen Colours

When we drove past the ice falls last week, the sun came from the side, and the ice was a medley of colours. I wanted to recreate these nuances by using different greyed down colours. It was exciting to work with so many puddles of grey.

Ice Falls

Near Mazinaw Lake there are frozen waterfalls beside the highway that are beautiful.

Alabaster

These pieces are alabaster from Egypt. The small bowl is variegated with white and different shades of green. I am still working on the shapes of ellipses - it is getting better.

Tucked

Does this look a bit confusing?

Winter Roses

This summer, I had a big clay pot with mini rose bushes. When it was time for the fall clean up, they were still making buds, so I brought the whole pot in and now they are really blooming in full splendour. The buds reach for the light on rather long branches and so it was tricky to even attempt to keep them in place as subjects. But it was fun standing in the sun, painting nearly plein air.

Mates

Am slow with ideas lately, they are baking somewhere. Carol Marine had done an interesting composition, so I did my version.

Lemons

Today I watched a Helen van Wyk video, and tried some of her teachings.

Basket Case

Mary and I painted together today, a great start for February. This is a sweet grass basket from Charleston. I cropped the composition really close, for a zoom-in effect.

Stained Glass Plate

I am lagging a day behind again because of wipe offs/outs...what a way to end the month. The experiment was to paint this stained glass plate because of the interesting shadow it gives off. I am still after suggesting more translucency...but think I got the shape.