A Visit To Texas...Jane Freeman and Janet Belich

My friend, Jane Freeman, called one day and asked to come to "hot Texas" to get out of the snow of Minnesota...what a thrill to have her visit.  And then, another friend from Artcolony (and my roomie from our Artcolony reunion in Chicago 2 years ago) couldn't stand it so she booked a flight down from Maryland for the week too.  We had such fun.  I had intended for us to do flower garden stuff, but it was a bit on the cool side...Janie was sweating in the 70's as she's used to snow and ice right now...but we turned on the AC and that worked.  Janet's weather is very much like ours, so she wasn't in "weather heaven" like Jane.  But, we fooled around all week...shopped, went to plant nurseries, and mostly giggled and talked art like kids (and we think we are...you know). 

We went out to our art retreat to meet the girls I paint with every Tuesday  and they were very happy to welcome Jane and Janet...we took pics and they signed our "wall of fame". 

The rest of the week we just fooled around...shopped Chico's(bad Janie!!), ate fried catfish several times, enjoyed some Tex-Mex, drank a little wine and just had a marvelous week.  Wish they could have stayed longer...but Friday I took them back to Dallas to catch their respective planes.  We'll do this again next year...maybe at one of there houses...that's a promise.

The Alamo

This painting is somewhat different for me...and I was pretty happy with it all in all.  When I was in SanAntonio several years ago, I went by The Alamo...our beloved Texas shrine.  For you who have not ever seen the old treasure in real life...you'd be very surprised at the exquisite carving and relief work done in the front door area.  The columns and windows and niches are just beautiful.  I thought I'd keep a pretty simple limited palette as there are no shrubs or flowers there...just the grand old building.  This is half sheet...and I'll crop it when I decide whether or not to continue the columns lower in the bottom area...going to live with it for a few days and then decide.

Azalea

While I was looking around for something to paint that required glazing, I found that if I painted a floral that's almost around the corner for blooming...that'd be a good thing.  Our azaleas here in East Texas rival those of further south and east and are always the first big show of spring.  My thing isn't really in the glazing department...so I thought I'd try some here.  My usual way to paint is to charge in and just let the paints merge.  I'm not so sure I even like this glazing stuff...maybe I need to do a bit more before making that decision.  This one is quarter sheet and I painted it large enough to be able to do the glazing.  I find that painting small doesn't give me enough room to do much and probably would have had more fun had this been half sheet.

Cindi

This is my friend, Cindi DeWeese, from California.  Last summer after our Florida get together with our PaintingFriends group, she and I decided to take a "Thelma & Louise" road trip for a few days to New Orleans on the way home.  What a fun town...Bourbon Street, the French Quarter, casinos, jazz and clubs, great food, just a fabulous few days of wonderful things to do.  On one of our little shopping excursions she found this darling crochetted hat...and while having a bit of food and "drink"  somewhere in the FrenchQuarter the photo op with these sun spots bathing her face was just too good to pass up for a painting.  Portraits aren't my strong suit, but this one was really lots of fun...

A Fireside Chat With Jane Freeman

My dear friend, Jane Freeman, got cornered into doing an interview with me for a forum that I'm on...Painting Friends...and it is up and ready for reading.  Hope you'll drop by www.paintingfriends.com  and take a look.  Just go to the site, sign in as a guest, and enjoy.  We met year before last when the Artcolony gang met for a face-to-face in Chicago, and I could still see her smiling eyes and hear her voice when we were "chatting" so it was lots of fun for me.  There are a handful of her paintings included, and some pretty good information and bantering back and forth if I do say so.  Janie's book, "A Celebration of Light" was one of the very first art instruction books that I purchased as a rank beginner.  I saw this gorgeous painting on the cover, and that was all there was to that.  It's amazing that from that painting and book a pretty special friendship has happened.  I think it's somewhat of a miracle that I so admired the book and her talents, then found her blog(Artcolony) and became a real fan of Jane and the other very talented artists there, then by some still unexplained event was asked to join the blog, and have become friends with the author of the book that started it all...go figure.  Our art world is a rather small world in the scheme of things...and aren't we all lucky. 

So, hope you'll go and take a look...you'll love her thoughts and wonderful advice.  This landscape is one of her latest paintings...and we're all drooling over the others.

One of our friends just e-mailed me for more instructions...so...click on "What's New" and scroll down to the chat, or click on "Quick Links", then click on "Today's Posts" and scroll.

Crystal Blue Persuasion

Thanks to one of my Artcolony blog friends, Bitsy Gibson, for the title to my latest painting.  Had so much blue going on except the pinks and greens in the hydrangeas and was totally stumped for a good title.  This paintings was mostly done in mid-tones...which is pretty hard for me to do since I usually charge in with lots of color...but I'm enjoying the calmness amidst all the busy elements.  Now it's time for another one, and there are some "must paints" that are calling my name.

Silver/Crystal WIP

Here's where I stopped today.  Seems that I have another decision to make about the crystal.  When I did the drawing, I decided to keep it on the sparse side facet-wise as the rest of the painting is really busy so I wanted to "slow it down" a bit.  It is half sheet, so there's lots of "stuff" going on.   Now I'm thinking that there aren't enough facets in the decanter as the many facets seem to be what attracts me to painting crystal, and now I'm thinking it may be too sparse.  Also, I'll wait to do my value adjustments until I decide what to do here.  Ah, the trials and decisions of we artists...but...that's what makes us such perfectionists it seems...too much, not enough...I'll just sleep on it and see how I feel tomorrow.