White Poppy Study

Okay, its Thanksgiving week and I have my sweet family coming over on Thursday, so I am very excited about that and have been doing a little cooking and getting ready.  I have been a good girl and taking care of business, and have not painted much this week.  When I don't paint, I get really bad withdrawals.  So, I took a break from Thanksgiving duties today and painted.  My photography is not the best, but here it is anyway.

I have a 4 foot canvas sitting in my garage that I am thinking about painting poppies on and thought I would play around on a small piece of canvas until I get what I want then paint it large.  Here is my first study on a  16" x 18" piece of canvas...probably one of many until I am satisfied with my end result.

White Poppy #1
16 x 18 - oils on canvas













This painting is on loose canvas and can be stretched and/or mounted on panel board.

Plein Air Painting Downtown Lafayette

Every Wednesday I spend the day with a friend and fellow artist, Denise Broussard, plein air painting.  We designate a location for the month and paint that area.  Our designated spot for the month of November is Downtown Lafayette.

Our painting in the downtown area has been a wonderful experience and we've received such positive feedback and comments from passers by who stopped to check out what we were doing.  Our hope is that we will encourage other artists to come out and paint with us.

This photo was taken by someone from The Daily Advertister and is in today's edition of the local newspaper.  

 I will be posting my finished painting soon so stay tuned for updates....

Red Poppies

This red floral painting is one I did several weeks back but never posted.  I'm trying to work on getting better contrast and value in my paintings.  I like flowers growing in a group look and I'm happy with the way this turned out, I just wish I had painted it on a larger canvas.  

"Red Poppies"
8 x 10 - oils on canvas

English Garden

I found a sweet little  picture of an English Garden that I fell in love with and decided to paint.  Although painting from a photo is not the ideal way to paint something I did it anyway and I'm very pleased with how this turned out.  My intention here is to include lots of value and color.  It's painted on a 12 x 12 panel and filled with lots of detail work.

Backyard View Value Study

This painting was done a couple of days before I attended the Mississippi workshop.  The view is from my back patio looking out into the field behind my house.  

The first photo was taken after the first sitting.  

When I returned from my workshop, I worked on the painting again concentrating on adding more value to the painting and trying to apply some of the techniques I learned.  The photo below is the result I ended up with.  I am happier with these results.

Downtown painting update

A couple of weeks ago I posted a video taken by the Independent Magazine while a friend and I were painting downtown Lafayette.  The photograph below is the painting I was working on when the video was filmed.  

"Downtown Lafayette - 500 Block of Jefferson Street"
10 x 14 - oils on canvas panel

Techniques Workshop

I recently attended a one-day techniques workshop given by an amazing and talented teacher, Pat Bourque.  Her many years of teaching experience really show up in her workshops.   I would highly recommend her workshops to anyone! 

We did this study on a stormy sky.  The sky is painted with a brush but the foreground is all painting knife work.  I was very happy with the results of my painting.  

The afternoon was spent on value, florals using more palette knife techniques, medium additives, etc.  Awesome Workshop!

Workshop News

I want to appologize to my followers for having neglected my posting lately but here is what has been happening in my world.  I traveled to Mississippi in October for a 5 day plein air workshop, drove home right after the demo on the last day then attended a 1 day workshop the very next morning.  Needless to say I was pretty tired exhausted but I'm home and am attempting to get my act together.  The hardest part for me is taking a decent photograph that I can use to upload my work.  I took photographs of some of the pieces I have been working on and will be blogging and posting in the next few days.

The 5 day Stapleton Kearns plein air workshop bootcamp was a truly amazing experience.  The days were super long and exhausting but so enjoyable and filled with sooooo much information and knowledge.  Stape is a super talented professional landscape painter from New Hampshire.  If any of you have the opportunity to attend one of his workshops, don't miss it.  He is an awesome teacher!  Here he is doing his thing, teaching and painting in the town square...

Attending something like this, not only is a humbling experience but it also strengthens your artistic eye.  My days were filled with information and now I just need to practice what I've learned.

We went to a sweet little farm one of the days and after the mornings demo, we were given the task of painting something in black and white as a value study.  I setup and painted this little hay barn, but was unable to complete because the sun went away.