Birds of Paradise, 16x20 oil on panel Wishing you a great new year! I believe that if we all do our best in our own sphere of interest 2016 could be an extraordinarily wonderful year. Shall we give it a try? In response to an invitation to a show titled "Bouquets" I painted some of my favorite California  flowers.  They grow with no tending and almost no water, adding brilliance and verve to everything between parking lots to elegant  dining tables. Their clear complementary colors are upstaged by the scrappy strength of the stem and base of the flower from which rise delicate ballet dancers in a wild array of shapes and colors.

Forgot to take a photo of the underpainting, but here you can see it with some of the early steps of painting over it using my entire palette.

The first stage of the full color painting. It's all here, but all the hours invested in pushing the darks back,  bringing up the lights, and finding the distinctive details in each shape make the finished painting- The finished painting is found at the top of the post.

This 16x20 oil on panel is one of a trio of paintings that I have just completed, all titled Cactus Shadows. My last visit to the extensive gardens at the Living Desert was in the cool of the morning. The low morning sun  accentuated all I love about cactus - the sculptural quality of its varied forms, and the unexpected color combinations.  Several varieties were in bloom, and I loved the design the shadows made.

My first step is to do a tonal drawing on the panel in Burnt Sienna

Here I have completed the first layer of color. I seek to find the median colors of all areas while staying true to the values  I made note of in the monochromatic underpainting

When I come back to the painting, after allowing the last layer to dry, I double check placement and proportions and the relative values. I make note of how the colors are working, what areas need to be greyed and pushed back, and where I want to boost the light and color to draw the eye. I spend as long as it takes to get these fundamentals working with my vision for the piece. Then I start in on the smaller details, the rounding of all the individual cylindrical shapes and then all those pesky spines and their shadows. The completed painting is at the top of the post.

Want a Ride? 16x20 oil on panel If you were lucky, you had a red wagon of your own. If you didn't, neighborhoods seemed to have some free floating wagons that you could spot in the driveway of your friend from girl scouts one day and then by the back steps of your brother's friend's house later in the week. When you were eating dinner the rattle of a wagon going by drew you to the window like a giant magnet. Wagons were what made the neighborhood interesting. They  hauled kickballs, last Halloween's candy, the little brother that could never keep up, and all the stuff you needed  for building the fort in the bushes on the other side of the schoolyard. There was always the temptation to ride one down the big hill by your house, but a couple of attempts were all it took to realize that the steering mechanism left a lot to be desired, and that your mom was going to kill you for losing the bottom of your sneakers trying to keep from rocketing out into traffic (such as it was) at the bottom of the hill. The 18 wheeler of childhood, the red wagon rocked.

The Burnt Sienna value study

The first layer of color

Now I  really slow down. First I double check proportions and relative values and make any adjustments necessary. In this case the lower wheel gave me quite a run for the money. I spent the better part of a day trying to make the changes it needed.  Once I felt that was resolved I began focusing on details.  I try to bring depth and character to the subject at the end by attempting to capture some of the surface texture and adding the nuts, bolts, rust spots and mood that will bring back what it felt like to pull one of these workhorses through the neighborhood. The finished piece is at the top of the page.

I found this scene in the other worldly cactus garden at Lotusland in Montecito, California. The amazing gardens Madame Ganna Walska spent her later years designing are now open to the public. No matter how far you have to travel to get there, I promise the trip is well worth the effort!

I love seeing the stages the fruit goes through, from small nub to breaking open and offering it's seeds. The sculptural quality of cactus is so satisfying - catching light and casting shadow, creating stripes of bright, warm colors and deep cool shadows. Oh, and the mixed message of the lush, shapely fruit and the bristling defense of all those spines delights me.

I was stopped in my tracks by this Angel's Trumpet one memorable afternoon in Santa Barbara. My husband and I joined my brother and sister-in-law for a weekend of exploring. We walked through countless breathtaking gardens nestled between the purple foothills and the wide Pacific, and these Trumpets called to me!