Flowers With a View (15"x15")

Flowers With a View - A catchy name for a painting that would have benefited from a few more minutes of planning...

What do I like? The colors are working for me - especially on the right hand side of the painting. I like that this was done from life, not a photo. I think that makes it fresher and more artsy... working from photo reference just isn't as much fun. The flowers are bright and cheery... and very informally arranged... I was still cutting flowers when Lindsey arrived to paint. An afternoon of color and light... it doesn't get much better than that (unless the grandkids are in town!).

What would I change? I would mess around a bit longer with the setup to make the overlapping sections interesting. I would use my viewfinder when I sketch so that the entire bottle has room on the page (!?!). I would make the flowers facing the viewer instead of having them facing toward their own personal window (which was added last to give the flowers "a view").

Overall, it was a fun painting experience - Lindsey was over to paint for the first time since our painting challenge August 12th. Where has the summer gone? Wasn't that a fast one? Here's a photo of what Lindsey did today.... lovely and loose!

Over the course of this summer I've come realize that I really love to paint still life arrangements. I'm not sure if this is because I get to the painting experience without a drive... or that some of the shapes are hard edged and I love that! More stairs are on the agenda folks.


Anybody else on Olympic withdrawal?