Sunday, April 5, 2009

This week in review. And some fruit.

I can't believe it's been a week since I last posted. I've done a lot of planting and very little painting in the interim. Today I scrubbed the dirt from under my nails and started the last piece for my spring show. I'll actually be ready ahead of time! That's a first for me. I don't quite know what I'll do with myself...but I never have any trouble filling my time.

This week more daffodils came into bloom, weeks after the first ones were finished. New tulips are budding as well. Their timing seems strange, but I won't complain. My roses are almost open, irises are peeking out, and my bananas look like they're finally recovering from the winter. I'm so glad to see them! And of course it's an azalea wonderland all over town. I took a lot of flower pics today, but since we're in danger of becoming a floral photo blog here, I'll save them for another time. (If you really need to see them, they'll be on my Flickr stream.)

Here are a few more paintings that never made the blog. (As you see here, my pear obsession is nothing new.)



Reclining Pears, 15 x 15, soft pastel on paper.
SOLD



Apples on Folding Table, 35 x 10, soft pastel on paper. SOLD
One of my favorites. I'm seldom tempted to keep a painting--this is a business after all--but this one was hard to give up.




Lemons with Fringed Scarf, 18 x 9, soft pastel on paper. SOLD
I painted this one after a year away from the easel. I'd purchased a camera for photographing my art, and ended up devoting a solid year to nothing but photography. These lemons gave me a nice welcome home.



Pears, 15 x 24, soft pastel on paper. SOLD
This was one of my first experiments with a near-monochrome palette. The pears and the background were pretty much the same color, and similarly textured as well. It was a challenge. I tried it again with Reclining Pears, above, and I feel I did it better. But this one sold, so someone liked it! This photo way exaggerates the highlights on the fabric edges. It looked much better in real life.