Sunflower Heaven!

Wray, a friend of Mom's at her residence, Friendship House, has an amazing community garden plot with huge sunflowers.  I've been admiring them for days, taken photos twice and this morning decided to set up in front of the garden to sketch and begin a painting sunflowers. Mom joined me to watch.  Here is my inspiration, and here are my beginning efforts.  More to come!

Getting Ready for Exhibits

This week I've been getting my paintings and my mom's paintings ready for a couple of upcoming exhibits.  The painting is the fun part, the matting and framing are the work part!  The wild flower painting was begun at the Celery Bog paint out with the Wabash Valley Watercolor Society and finished in my studio.  As I was sketching and painting, bees were buzzing EVERYWHERE!  It was a virtual feast - so the painting named itself - "Plenty to Buzz About!"

"Something to Buzz About!"

Another Paint Out????

Yes, I go for months with no paint outs and then participate in two within three days!  Today the Art Cenacle group met at Martha Riley's and painted on the banks of the Tippecanoe River.  What a beautiful day - hot, but in the shade, bearable.  I painted this long narrow triptique and started another one of coral bells.  I'll probably finish the triptique with pen work.

Celery Bog Plein Air Paint Out

Why don't I do this more often? Schedule my own paint outs?  I'm just glad that the Wabash Valley Watercolor Society organized this event on Saturday at the Celery Bog Nature Center in West Lafayette.  It was a beautiful morning with many places to set up and capture the moment.  These two scenes were painted from a deck at the end of a nature trail overlooking the bog.  The woods are FULL of poison ivy, and even though I made an effort to stay on the trail, I do think I'm incubating a couple of patches....

This nature center is only about 1 mile from my house - I need to make this paint escape again. I also started a painting of the wild flowers that I'm still touching up.

Celery Bog Paint Out Today!

Why I don't go by myself to paint plein air - I don't know, but today the Wabash Valley Watercolor Society organized a paint out at the West Lafayette Celery Bog nature center.  It's always a dream to be outdoors painting.  There were 10 of us that enjoyed painting, sharing lunch and then sharing our work.  Awesome day!  Here are photos of what I started today.  I need to add some finishing touches.

Sharing Art with Kids

 It's summer - time for kid's activities at church.  It's been a great week giving 20 elementary age young people a chance to use "real" artist watercolor and watercolor paper for the first time.  They caught the idea that they were painting with water with a little paint.  It was wet on wet with a pinch of salt and voila - the wonder of creating.  We also created giant "fandango" self portrait puppets - what fun!

Marvelous Morning Glories

Instead of painting, I've been working on the organizational end of the Wabash Valley Watercolor Society.  What a wonderful group of artists to be getting involved with here in Lafayette!

The president of the WVWS encouraged all of us to bring something to the meeting tonight and decided it was high time to sit down and paint and get out of my "organizational mode!"  I've been drinking in the beauty of my morning glory photos and decided it was time to paint a few.  Here are my first efforts - one on Yupo, the other on Strathmore 140 lb paper.  It's always a challenge to capture the delicacy of morning glory pets.

Here is the photo I was inspired by - taken in Laguna Beach, California in 2007.