Rosy Winter

Hi Everyone--happy Wednesday! This little 8 x10 oil painting fresh off the easel was inspired by a snowy day and having "paint a floral in oils" on my studio to do list for the week. These are my roses and a few marigolds for pops of cadmium yellow. I'd like to take credit for growing them but frankly, as I think I've noted before,  I'm not much of a gardener. I just love to paint flowers. Thankfully, the previous home owner had a small rose garden that continues to flourish despite my thorny inheritance. 

The dark vase has an almost metallic navy glaze which was a fun challenge to capture in paint and was created by a wonderful potter in my neighborhood. I snapped this picture back in early October and put it away for a snowy, less colorful day just like today.

This painting was also inspired by watching and episode of Passport and Palette on Create TV the other day with Kevin MacPherson. If you enjoy plein air painting, or just want to get a sense of it while staying warm on your sofa, I highly recommend the program. 

In this particular episode, Kevin painted a wonderful landscape study of a snowy river bank near Taos over an older canvas he'd previously employed as a palette. In the process, he let the old, scraped off colors work for him in the new painting as interesting and unexpected pops of color. I've used this "method" before, but not recently, so this morning thought it would be a perfect technique for a floral study like this one.

Hi to all my fantastic new January students--It's been great to meet you and see what you're working on and what you aspire to. I hope you will all enjoy painting for the rest of your life as I do. And many thanks to everyone who has contacted me recently about classes--I know my teaching schedule is getting very full this time of year, so I appreciate your patience and I promise we'll get you in the studio soon!

Finally, as many of you know, this is also the time of year that the blog community likes to share goals for the upcoming year. So, speaking of plein air painting, one of my 2011 art goals is to paint at least once a month outside. Can't promise I'll venture out in January, but hopefully we'll have a more temperate day before the end of the month. And if not, I will at least head out with my camera for lots of snowy landscape reference photos when I'm painting this July.