Work in progress - Golden Vase

A few days ago I covered my kitchen table and sloshed around in paint just as if I was in grade 2. After I added paint to the watercolor paper I placed some saran wrap, wax paper, onion mesh and a variety of other texture making stuff on the wet surface and left it to dry. At that point it looked like this:

This is where the interpretation and second guessing begins. I looked at this "start" from all angles and I saw a woman leaning on one elbow, a box jellyfish, an octopus & seaweed, a bullfighter and a Franciscan priest....... Before you assume I'm crazy these are all options that I could have developed in this painting. However, I like doing still life paintings and I also saw flowers wrapped in clear cellophane with a greenish gold vase behind it. The purples, however, were troublesome - way too dark. I pencilled around the shapes I wanted to develop and began painting this morning. I added some rice paper "leaves" to the plant on the right hand side before painting the plant and pot. Also I've developed the darks (maybe too much) around around the bow, flowers, and the cellophane highlights.After a couple of 30 minute sessions this is how it looked:

I continued to develop the flowers and darkened the background vase this afternoon and here's how it looks right now. Stay tuned...

Last Wave (6"x10")

In Canmore, just 45 minutes west of our house it is SNOWING. Now, don't panic... it's just a little bit of snow. But it does tell you something about our weather right now. We are experiencing cooler weather. I like it. I think I'm going to enjoy fall and winter this year! It's not that I'm crazy about cold weather... lets just say I'm not as crazy about heat as I used to be. My little wave petunias have had a great year - loaded with blooms since I planted them in May. They just seemed to be saying their final goodbye to summer today - their "last wave". I plucked a stem and stuck it in this vase that I've been wanting to paint and I kind of like how it turned out. The stem on the bottom is a "popcorn orchid" given to me by a neighbourhood gardener named Michelle. This spring she was pulling the little plants out as quickly as they could grow... apparently they are a very aggressive reseeding plant. She offered me some of her little plants and they are now about 5 feet tall and covered with these little orchid like blooms. That reminds me... I really need to take the seed pods off as they mature or I'll have a time of it next spring!

I can't decide if I like this painting without the bottom 1.5 inches or with it... thoughts?

Mediteranean Climb ( 9"x4")

Again, I am enjoying painting stairs. They fascinate me because they take me somewhere if I have the effort to climb them... In this case, I may have to rest a few times on the way up but it looks like fun and the weather is nice and bright at the top.

Thanks to Denise for providing the artistic material for this photo. She and her son David travelled over to the Mediteranean to visit with husband and dad Sandy, currently posted in Afghanistan with our Canadian troops. They took a Med cruise together and wandered a variety of towns and streets... LOTS of great stairs over there!

I think they set a great exampe for our family - when Matthew goes on tour in Feb 2010, I'm hoping we can pack the kids and Christina over to the Med for a week of R&R. It sounds like a great thing to look forward to. One consideration will of course be that a motorized scooter might not do so well on islands covered with stairs like these.

Enjoy your long weekend!