Flame Azalea - Final

Wow, that is a statement... "Flame Azalea - Final".  After nine months of very intermittent work, I finished.  Whew!  Of course, I could fiddle with this forever but at some point you have to just declare victory and move on.  A teacher once gave good advice, that once you sign the piece, it is really done.  No more tweaking.  No more adjustments.  Just done.  I try to follow this rule and so as you can see, I have not yet signed this piece.  I like to give it a chance to dry overnight and make sure the colors don't shift dramatically.  Especially with the long tiny stamen. So tomorrow I'll give  myself just one more opportunity to go at it with the 000 brush if need be.

For now, I'm happy to step back and share it with you.  What do you think?

Flame Azalea Stamen and Pistil

Who knew one could spend an entire afternoon painting 36 small thin lines?  And yet I did!  It never occurred to me that it would take so long.  I mean really, what's the big deal?  Dip the brush in paint, lay down the line and get on to the next one, right?  Well, if you are trying to portray threadlike, nearly translucent, pastel-colored stamen and sturdy yet similarly pastel-colored pistils protruding from flower centers and waving in the morning breeze, you've got another thing coming.  These particular stamen and pistils change color from coral at the base to palest yellow green at the tips, and look entirely different depending on whether they are in the sun or shadow.  Good grief..........  So at any rate, I finished one flower cluster today, and I'll do the other one tomorrow.  It is difficult to see in this photo but here's how it looks so far:

I am reminded of Picasso's famous line: "There are painters that can change the sun into a yellow blot, but there are others, that due to their talent and intelligence can change a yellow blot into the sun."

Only 42 lines to go!

Flame azalea - progress report

Thought you all should get to see where things stand with the Will-she-ever-finish-it flame azalea:

Peter keeps congratulating me, thinking I'm done, and then I spend another day refining it.  But really really I think it is nearly there.  Tomorrow I have to do the final bit: painting the stamen.  Eek! I am losing sleep over the task because 1) I will have to have paint very teeny, fine smooth lines, and 2) there is no way to correct anything I mess up.  No problem.  Please keep your fingers crossed for me and check back in tomorrow!

Sneak Peek

Lest you think I didn't do ANY drawing or painting these past three months, I'd like to share with you some fun stuff.

I signed up for an online watercolor lettering class, so even though I wasn't intensely painting botanical subjects, at least I was doing some pretty major doodles.  I figure it might come in handy one day if I get into greeting cards and other commercial things of that nature.  The beauty of an online course is that you can go at your own pace, which in my case has been glacial.  So even though I'm behind, I have until March 18 to finish the course.  Fun!  If you are interested in taking this class, check out this Link .  Val Webb, the wonderful teacher in Alabama, is offering it again next  month.

More assignments:

OK and to keep you coming back for more, here's a sneak peek (albeit a poorly scanned one) at our friend the flame azalea, which I've been working on fiendishly for the past two days:

Cheerio!

Bud Break

If I had to come up with a word to explain why I haven't posted anything new on this blog in the past several months, I would have to say it was due to dormancy.  That is to say, I went dormant.  Like the shrubs and trees in winter, I drew all my vital energy down to my roots and went quiet for a spell.  I don't know . . . It could have been the changes our family is going through, emptying the nest. It could be my adjustment to not being needed quite so very much.  At any rate, I recognized that no amount of forcing was going to get me going again.  It just needed time.  I hoped that eventually renewed creativity would well up inside and want out, like the sap rising in spring.

And it did.

 
Several days ago I went out to clip some branches from our witch hazel trees because I noticed them breaking bud.  Inside our house, where it is nice and warm, the buds quickly began to open and this is what it looks like today.

The brown buds swell up and pop open, and teeny flat confetti-like petals unfurl like little yellow pom-poms.  Here in dreary February, it is as if Nature is sending us a cheer-leading squad. Hang in there! You can make it to Spring! Yes you can! Outside in the landscape, I see our three witch hazel trees with their branches all pointing up to the sky like so many arms outstretched.  Yellow pom poms waving at me, You Go Girl!

I feel the ideas flowing again.  The desire to paint for long stretches in quiet solitude in my sun-washed studio.    Channeling creativity in new directions and with greater purpose.  About a month ago I wondered if I'd ever get back to this blog.  After all, the internet is crammed with chatter and does my small voice make any difference one way or the other?  Oh yes, it does. It makes a difference to you, dear reader. And it makes a difference to me.  And in life, if we can touch others hearts even in small ways, isn't it worth the effort?

So now if you will excuse me, I need to get back to my paints.

Humble pie

Hello dear followers.  I am alive and well and getting back in the saddle after a week-long intensive botanical art workshop with Anne-Marie Evans.  Yes, THE Anne-Marie Evans, a veritable phenom in the botanical art world.  She is constantly on the road giving workshops around the world and I was lucky enough to participate in one organized by Botanical Artists for Education and the Environment.   I took with me several scanned copies of my finished pieces as well as our friend, the flame azalea, for her professional critique.  We were to arrive ready to work on something new, so I took preparations for that, as well.

Suffice it to say it was an intense week. Anne-Marie is an incredible teacher.  She gets right down to business; so even though we were coping with the power outage effects of superstorm Sandy, we cobbled together enough flat surfaces and light sources temporarily in someones living room to begin working as soon as the storm would allow.  When she critiques, she really critiques.  (She reminded us, "After all, you are paying me a lot of money to be here, so I give you the full and unvarnished truth about your work.")  Her practiced eye kept finding errors in my painting: places where the detail was inaccurate or the color was all wrong.  As soon as she drew my attention to the problem, I'd see it too, and wonder why I hadn't got it right the first time.  At the end of each day I would sadly pack up my things, ready to throw in the towel on my composition (Why did I tackle something so enormous and difficult??).  And I'd slink back to my lodgings completely deflated.  (To one of my classmates she said: "I know I'm fierce.  I've been known to bring artists to tears!")  But by the next day I was ready to try again, and I'd get to class even earlier in the hopes that extra time would work to my advantage.  Somehow, some way, I was determined to succeed.

I was working on a specimen of Swiss chard:

And while she was very pleased with my pencil drawing:

She was not impressed with my early painting. 

I think I was nervous, to tell the truth.  Can you imagine bending to a task and having The World Expert hovering over your shoulder watching you work?  She kept questioning my rush to work on color before the form was fully set down.  On Wednesday, she suggested I add a study of the root system to make the painting more interesting, so I had to go home and dig up one of the other plant roots in the pot without killing my subject:  

and then somehow fit that into the composition:

Long about Thursday, she realized I really did know what I was doing; I just went about it a different way than she does.  This helped us a bit.  Finally her words made sense to me and I began to achieve the effects she was describing.  On Friday I decided to get her advice on my flame azalea.  I thought I was nearly done, but au contraire!  So much to correct and redo!  So much more depth to convey!  And I can't tell you how many times she walked by my table reminding me to dull the garish leaf color.  ("But it's a spring leaf!" I kept screaming inside my head...) By Saturday I was exhausted but thrilled with all I had learned.  It has been a long time since I've taken a class; and I think years of basking in the glow of my family's praise has kept me from refining my craft.  Now I think I've taken my skill to the next level, really. 

See what you think:



OK, I know.  I do still have to increase the intense tones to convey the depth more.  And fix the width-of-the-stem issue.  And paint the stamen ever so delicately and with varying detail and strength of color to convey aerial perspective.  But maybe, just maybe, this painting can be salvaged after all.

And then I'll get back to the Swiss chard . . .

Short strokes

Hooray!  I am down to the short strokes, as it were. 

Here's what is left to do on the To Do List: a little more darker shading in the flowers with the teeny weenie brush, a bit more definition in the stem, and the stamen (remember them?)  Almost to the finish line!!!