Strawberries

I was feeling guilty because the painting I entered last year in the "Nutrition" category of the USDA employee art show featured Linnea eating a cupcake! For this year's show I wanted to enter something more nutritious! These painting hang on the walls of USDA's South Building for about a year. The photo reference was snapped at a family gathering where we suddenly noticed that Linnea was taking a bite out of every strawberry then moving on to the next from a big bowl.

Cousins Playing Dress Up

I've been doing more sketching than painting but over a three day weekend was able to complete a "real" painting of my 2 oldest granddaughters playing dress up.

Self Portrait

I'm not really much for self-portraits but if you want to practice improving your technique you are the one who is always there. What I am still doing is art journaling, where the entries are pencil, pen, ink, watercolor or any combination of these. Trying to get the watercolors a little looser, with more interesting colors - still a ways to go!

Art Journal

I'm having a lot of fun with the Art Journal thing. Early dismissal from work today means I got to sketch around the National Mall and try out a little travel watercolor set I made from a mints tin.

To make the watercolor set, I filled the tin with a layer of white sculpy and made depressions for the colors and for mixing spaces. You bake scuply at 275 for 15 minutes and you're done. I also had to trim a paintbrush handle so it would fit.

Africa Travel Art Journal

One of the funnest things I did in Africa was to create an Art Travel Journal of the things I saw. My pages are below:

Watercolor Portraits

For fun I am trying to paint some watercolor portraits. I find this much trickier than doing it in oil. The one was painted of Willow the day before her third birthday.

Pan

I hadn't done any watercolor for a long time. I bought a little travel water color set and decided to try it out starting with a statue of Pan that stands in the garden at the Alice Ferguson Foundation.

Lorelai

Lorelai, my youngest granddaughter gets in her own painting.


The inspiration is Klimpt's baby.

Julia in Vintage Hat

I painted this one because of a suggestion Lynnis made that Julia looked like silent star Lillian Gish (below). When Julia saw the painting she wasn't too pleased. She suggested I do it over without the hat!

Still working on the book

I have completed a lot of paintings of the little girl but there is one verse that gave me the opportunity to paint the mother.