Sunflower Trio

Last week, I hosted our critque group, aka artist's group, which includes some absolutely phenomanal artists.  One of them brought me some sunflowers, which I just got to painting.  I think I'll go back in on the flower petals with some crayon.  The painting is approximately 18x24 inches on 300 1lb Fabriano Rough Paper.  Palette is Indigo, lemon yellow, quinacridone burnt orange, permanent yellow deep, undersea green, a little ultramarine blue, and a little pyrene orange.  

A Series of Small Abstracts

When I finished my sycamore tree painting, I had a lot of interesting grays in the mixing well of my palette.  I don't like to waste the paint, so I used the original colors from the sycamore painting and a strip of paper from a cropped painting to create five small abstracts.  They tend toward landscape.  

From top to bottom:

Color Block:  3.5 x 4 in.
Abstract:  4.25 x 4 in.
Corn Field:  5 x 4 in.
Gray Field:  4 x 2 in.
Mountain:  4 x 3.5

I've done this before--see here.  I think for me, working small makes it easier to go more abstract.

Sycamore In Front of Storm Cloud

My community has the most lovely collection of street trees.  There are sycamores, oaks, maples, tulip poplars, and more.  (And, ash.  The ash are sad, since many of them look stressed, or dying because of the emerald ash borer.)  Many of the trees are mature, which means in the summer, it's like a huge green tunnel with dapples.

Clematis

When we moved into our house, we had a small concrete patio flanked on one side by a garage wall (white aluminum siding) and on the other side by an interesting structure. I'm still not sure what it was--brick base, wood framing, and the bonus of termites.

Back to the Kitchen Table

For some reason, I've been wanting to paint lemons and blue.  I have no idea about the why.  Maybe because yellow is a cheery color and early June can't help but be a cheery time with all the graduations and celebrations?

Logically, I went back to my kitchen table with a lemon and a pear!  (See previous posts about painting still lifes at my kitchen table, here, here, and here.)  The blue glass in the back is where my boys keep their change.  They're saving for...maybe an xbox?  The glass dates back to when my husband and I first met--we bought several colorful glasses at Pier One Imports.

The palette is phthalo blue red scale, hansa yellow medium, quin violet, and a little bit of permanent yellow deep thrown in at the end because non of the 1st three colors will make a decent orange.  The paper is 300 lb Fabriano rough, and the painting is about 8x10 inches.