100 Garden Oil Paintings, Original Art Work from A Colorado Daily Painter, 3/100

6" x 6" oil on board
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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Today about half the daffodils in our yard are opened and the rest are opening.  It happens pretty quickly.  Daffodils are a great flower for Colorado.  They're hardy in the cold and heat, although there's more cold than heat here in the spring.  They turn to face the sun, so it's as if they're looking around all day.  There are more than 1500 varieties! These must be a hybrid daffodil.  I got out my flower book and these are not yellow trumpets, the most popular; nor are they short or large cupped.  When we built our gardens and planted them years ago, it didn't occur to me to pay attention to what kind of daffodil they were.  Does anyone know?

Crab Apple Blossoms 4

5" x 7 " oil on masonite
$75.00 + $10. s/h
SOLD

It's amazing how quickly the trees blossom once they start. In 3 days almost every blossom has bloomed on our crab apple. Up and down the street are deep pink trees. I love spring colors. I recommend painting the same thing several times. It really gets you to look, and in the case of these blossoms, I've notided so much color change in the green of the leaves and the pinks of the blossoms.

Crab Apples #3

5" x 7" oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
SOLD


This is the third in my crab apple series. The blossoms are just opening. And so quickly. It's amazing when you really watch. One day the tree just had a pinkish tint. And now, we have a few blossoms. It still is so interesting to me that the closed little blossom is so red, but so pink when opened. I would have thought it would have been dark pink when closed. Mother Nature never ceases to amaze.

HoneyBells--The Finale!

6" x 6" oil on masonite
SOLD

This is the last of the HoneyBell series. I really liked painting these. And now I have something to submit to their "You Ought to be in Pictures..." bib wearing contest. At least I'll get put up on their "Wall of Fame." I don't know how many paintings are entered.

I took bib photos in the studio (too dark); with the still life set-up (too busy); on the deck (too much reflective light); in the front yard (just right). My husband was a good sport about all of this. Anyway, not sure if this is the one I'll submit. But....

HoneyBell 4

6" x 6" oil on canvas panel
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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You can really see the unique bell shape of the HoneyBells in this painting. They really do look like a bell. This fruit is only ripe for 4 weeks in January. We're down to our last six. I like getting out the juicer (ours is the kind you twist the fruit by hand) and having a puckery glass of juice.

This morning I watched the Inauguration. It is wonderful how hopeful and united the population has become. Then, (since this is my painting journal) I painted a wall in our living room. It looks good. Fresh paint is great. Then, I went for a walk, it's 60 degrees out today! And in an hour I'm off to painting class. It's been a good day.

HoneyBell 3

6" x 6" oil on canvas panel
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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Because I pre-mix piles of paint, I often have enough paint left over to do a second, third, sometimes even a fourth painting in a series. And, because I love these HoneyBells (and I hope to get a gift certificate) I keep painting them. Even though there's only one orange here, I must have spent 10 minutes moving it around to get the right composition. You'd think it would be so easy: an orange on a white paper towel.

HoneyBell 1

6" x 8" oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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My sister and brother-in-law sent us a box of HoneyBells for Christmas. They are so juicy that the box comes with 4 plastic bibs and instructions on how to eat a HoneyBell. Also is a little note telling the consumer to send them a picture of you wearing your HoneyBell bib and if they use your photo in their catalogue, you"ll recieve a coupon for $100. toward a purchase. Well, always one to jump at the chance to win something, I decided to paint the HoneyBells in my bib, and send in photos of my paintings. This was really fun, and good to eat.

South Platte River 2

6" x 8" oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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No matter how many times I hike in the same valley or paint the same view, it is always completely different: a different time of day, different colors and values, different season. I used Naples yellow again in this piece, also using it to warm up the cloud reflection in the river. That's about the only thing warm in the South Platte. The water is really cold. The elevation here is about 8,000 feet and the river water is rain and snow run off from even higher mountains. When our kids were small they could only wade and play in the water for a short time.

Naples Yellow Clouds

6" x 8" oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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Our daughter, Coley, and I just went to the Ernest L. Blumenschein exhibit at the
Denver Art Museum. Blumenschein was a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists and a renowned painter of 19th and 20th century western art. The exhibit was amazing. I couldn't stop looking at Blumenschein's clouds. Especially since I've recently been painting a cloud series. Coley commented that his clouds were so creamy. My clouds are bold, strong, bright, warm, cool, yellow ochre, but not creamy. Artist Martha Mans and I were discussing how he got his creamy clouds. She suggested Naples Yellow; it's a traditional yellow and probably part of his palette. So, I have a tube from a past workshop and painted these clouds with Naples Yellow.

Another View Near Yellowstone

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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This peak is from my husband's trip to Yellowstone. Again, I repeated the cerulean from the sky and clouds in the mountain. This allows your eyes to go easily from one to the other. I also moved the clouds, peak and foothills just a little (artistic license) so that your eyes softly zig-zag back and forth across the painting.

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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There's a lot of sage in South Park. There's a lot of sage all over the west, actually. I wanted to show open land, and brush in the idea of sage. I like painting the upper part of the sky with cobalt and white and the area of the sky near the ground using cerulean and white. I repeated the cerulean in the sage.

Glow over Buffalo Peak

9 x 12 oil on canvas panel
$100.00 + $10. s/h
SOLD


I never tire of sitting on our South Park ridge and enjoying the afternoon clouds. They are different everyday: the values, colors and shapes change every few minutes. Just this view provides me with daily paintings.

Yellow Ochre Clouds

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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Our kids, both home for the holiday, are now gone. The house is quiet, empty and a little lonely. I loved having them here. But, I can get back to painting and posting.

The clouds and skies in the sunrises seen from our deck, are strong, bold and bright. I use a lot of cad yellow for these paintings. The morning clouds in South Park, a large semi-open area of Colorado about one hour west of here, are a much calmer, softer yellow. I wasn't happy using cad yellow in these paintings. So, for the yellow in these clouds I used yellow ochre. It works.

Dark Orange

6" x 9" oil on canvas on foam board

While painting this poppy series, I constantly struggled with the "dark oranges." I was adding alizaron and getting a redder orange. But I didn't see the dark orange that way. Finally, I went outside my regular palette and used magenta, part of my extended palette. I like this color mixture much better. I guess the extended palette is kind of like the extended family: great to have.

More Poppies

6 x 6 oil on canvas panel


I painted poppies regularly while they were blooming. While looking at the reds I think I should paint poinsettias. A more seasonal series.

Flanders Field

6 x 6 oil on canvas panel



When I was in 5th grade, I had to memorize Flanders Field. I don't remember what we were studying, or why we had to memorize this poem. But, to this day, I have a visual image of the graveyard with poppies growing randomly and haphazardly; unlike the perfect rows and rows of crosses.
We have three areas of poppies in our gardens. They grow well and easily in Colorado; not all flowers do well at this altitude (6,000 feet here in Colorado Springs.) I love painting them, and have done so dozens of times. I just wish their blooming season was a little bit longer.

Warm--temperatures and colors

6 x 6 oil on canvas panel


The temperature in Colorado Springs was 5 degrees yesterday; way too cold to go outside and photograph my recent paintings. So, I'm posting a series of poppies from this past summer, before I was blogging, which I painted in our garden on warm, beautiful days.

Morning Sky

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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This is another cup of coffee view from our deck. I painted this one with the 6 flat and definately see that it's a little more geometric than my filbert paintings. However, I like the layers of morning clouds.

Yellowstone Sky

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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This sky is from a trip my husband and a friend took to Yellowstone. The views there might be almost as incredible as the ones here in Colorado.

Clouds at Sunrise

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + &10. s/h
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This is another incredible sunrise from our deck. While the sky is cool in the morning,I found myself mixing both warm and cool yellows.