"Cuppa with Suzy"

This weekend we had a marvelous torn paper collage workshop with Suzy Powell from Plains, Texas. Since my favorite color is red, I'm certain nobody is surprised at this collage. This was my first attempt at the medium, and I must say that I'm very pleased with this one. Suzy is a wonderful teacher and the 14 who were in her class all finished at least one collage...and several did two. We held the workshop at fellow artist Greta Faulkinberry's art retreat in Bullard, Texas...which is right down the road from me here in Noonday. Suzy is also one of my artist friends our Artcolony blog. I'm also thrilled to say that Suzy posted a gorgeous collage recently of two sparkling wine glasses, "A Touch of Red", on Artcolony and it now lives at my house. For any of you who have admired collage, but just haven't tried it...jump in! It is soooo much fun, and you can use all the creativity you can muster. My next one is a piece lemon maringue pie...and it'll have photos of diamonds in it's makeup...doesn't that sound like fun.

Pears

Just thought I'd post a better photo of the pear collage...I really enjoy how the colors mingle and blend...and I'll admit that I did eat the setup...we had received a box of gorgeous pears from friends for Christmas and I couldn't resist painting them.

"smushing" technique

This is a demo of a technique we'll call "smushing" for lack of a better explanation. It's simply mopping colors around letting the water do the work for you and giving the mingling of colors time to work before going back in with your brush and making mud. I'm doing this for my PaintFriendsForum for a little monthly blurp I try to do. This is actually the first time I've also tried to put a collage together so this is somewhat of a learning experience for me...we'll see what happens when I click the post. I've also done a step by step of the background and that'll be posted next.

My New Treasure

This is the drop dead gorgeous painting I received from my dear friend, Cindy Agan, from our Artcolony Christmas painting exchange. Each year, we draw names to see who we are sending an original painting to from our little group and this year I hit the jackpot again!! Cindy's painting is just gorgeous and she told me that she worked the red in just for me...I'm a bonafide RED nut and my friends know this to be a real "sickness"...usually, if it doesn't have red in it somewhere I don't like it. I might add that it was sent framed in a beautiful gold frame with a beautiful white embossed mat of tiny leaves...it's just gorgeous and I'm over the moon I love it so. Thanks, Cindy...I can't believe I own a Cindy Agan original!! While in Chicago last summer we all met and played for a week and it was such fun meeting Cindy IRL...

Christmas Kisses

This morning I was looking at my friend Christiane Kingsley's blog and happened to notice that from looking at her blog roll that I hadn't posted anything here in the last 5 weeks. Goodness...Santa isn't going to stop by our house this year if I don't shape my act up. I have been painting, but just small things and the large things I'm working on aren't even in the WIP stage just yet. I guess my life is getting in the way around here.

This was a painting I did a while back for one of our Artcolony challenges that asked for something "green and red"...what else could I come up with other than foil wrapped green and red kisses that would have been any better for Christmas cheer? And, you can bet I ate the setup after clicking that picture...I have absolutely no willpower when it comes to chocolate.

If I don't get anything else posted here (and there is one more painting floating around out there that's a Christmas theme that I can't post yet because it's gone to one of my friends on Painting Friends Forum...and it hasn't arrived yet!) I'll wish everybody a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Here's hoping that you all have wonderful times with family and friends.

Tea for Three

This is a little silver painting demo I have posted on "paintingfriends.com" which came about from a little "blurp" I'd written about silver on that neat forum. Next to painting crystal,glass, and red stuff, I think painting silver and reflective objects would probably be next on my list. It may be my love for detail...who knows? Anyway, jump over to the site and take a peek if you have time. I have this wonderful black teapot and it throws really dramatic colors on anything silver. This is another of those paintings where I must work from a reference photo and really pay attention to saving whites...much like painting crystal.

Red

Here is a really fun painting I've finished as a challenge to a wonderful forum (which I love)...painting friends...where we have one of our artists post a photo every first of the month...we paint it just however we want...and we post on the 20th of the month. It is just the most fun to paint with red...(have I ever mentioned that it's my fav color in watercolor?). Our son's first truck (and boys in Texas have trucks) was a 1951 CandyApple red Ford pickup...this reminded me of him. Couldn't decide what I wanted to do with the background, so I just left it for now.