Finished!

Chives.  Certainly not my favorite thing to eat, but great fun to paint!  I started this yesterday and just finished it this morning.  Now my easel is full of wet paintings, so I have to wait before I can paint more.  Maybe I need to get my brilliant hubby to build me a drying rack!!

A Good Read

I just painted this a couple of days ago.  It's a combination of two reference pics.  A couple of summers ago we went camping and Murphy took the ever-present-book with him.  Right in the middle of a delightful morning, there came this butterfly.  Just dropping by.  Checkin' out the book.

Truth be told, the real butterfly was a bit bedraggled.  Really bedraggled.  And I happened to have another shot of a  perfectly healthy butterfly on some purple flowers.  So I combined the two reference pics.  I'm learning!!

Neither Murphy no I can remember what the book was.  It was thick, that's all we know.

"Bounty"

I painted this about a year ago.  I always struggle with knowing how much of the reference pic to include in a painting.  There was the person's body in the background, along with some other "clutter", and I didn't like any of it!  So I "wung it"....surely that's a real phrase in the English language?  Love the basket and the glove.

My dad built a frame for this and it's hanging in my dining room.

Chick Chick!

Every once in awhile I get in a rut.  Not really a bad thing.  I just find myself repeating a theme.  I think I did this about the same time I did "Breakfast at Skyline".  It's all finger painted.

I know.  You immediately thought of sticky-icky fingers, and hand prints on the walls.  Paintings of blue faces with mismatched ears, and hot pink clown lips.  Seriously, though.  I did put on gloves!  It went REALLY fast.  Well, except for the feet, which I did three times, I think.

It's based on a picture I took of one of the chickens in Doyle and Nancy's hen-house.  They are my source of all things farm-ish.  Their ranch is one of my favorite places to visit, and they're some of my favorite people.  And as a bonus I get to take lots of pictures of tractors, and bales of hay, and cows.  Worn out cowboy boots, and a real-live RED barn.  And there's always lots of good stories and laughter around a steaming cup of tea. 

And chickens!