Almost spring?

Until then, more flowers.

I wanted to make the background warm to feel more cheerful and, well, warm.  This is watercolor and colored pencil.

When I paint people, I often take a photo of the pencil sketch so I feel free to screw it up.  Not that I'm aiming to wreck a painting, but I normally like my sketches and it's sort of a mental trick to know that I have a nice sketch somewhere no matter what happens.  Here are my flowers again.

The first piece of art I sold was a contour drawing of a lily.  It was on show at the Institute Library last fall.  This isn't a blind contour drawing, but line drawings are so much fun.

Still life

I bought flowers so I'd be inspired to paint tonight.

I drew them with a pen (without a pencil sketch underneath).  This can be intimidating, but not as much as drawing with a brush straight onto paper.  I drew a landscape with many buildings and complicated perspective with a brush in a workshop once.  I'm not sure what possessed me.  The perspective was off, but people like that painting.

Back to flowers, I learned a lot about painting flowers from Charles Reid.

Quilting is the New Painting

After finding numerous beautiful things to paint today, I came home from work and decided to get obsessed with a quilt commission I'm working on for a friend.  So tonight, your daily painting is a daily quilt project.  Readers may also place bets on whether I retitle this blog "Before Sunrise" after a week of trying to post every day.

One of my oldest friends - probably my oldest friend actually - commissioned me to make a quilt from heirloom embroidered tablecloths.  They are gorgeous.   She will give it to her mother as a present (hopefully her mother is not following my blog quite yet).

Unfortunately some are torn in places, so I've decided to applique the bits of embroidery into a Baltimore Album quilt. 

 Here's an example of one of the tablecloths and what I'll do with it.

I have enough flowers to start a small florists shop, and I'll probably make 20 blocks, six of which will be flowers in these vases.  On the back of the quilt, I'll use a whole tablecloth that's in beautiful shape, with interfacing.











I especially love these hand embroidered towels. 

These are my other favorite patterns.  One good thing about the snow - I'll have a lot of time for applique!

You can find examples of Baltimore quilts by clicking on the links here:
Album Quilt from the collection of the St. Louis Art Museum
Explanation of what a Baltimore Album Quilt is

Step off, winter

Last week I bought a hyacinth on a whim at Trader Joe's.  I stuck it in my kitchen window, and when I woke up this morning I was surprised to see not less than one inch of snow, but about three, and that my hyacinth was starting to bloom.  Perhaps we were both not expecting quite so much snow.  Tonight I used my handy dandy new paint set to capture its first day blooming in front of the snowy sky.

You may see some writing in the bottom right of the image.  I also keep a physical artist's journal for each day.   I normally punch holes in the side of whatever I paint for it, since they are typically quick and dirty paintings or sketches, and after working in museums it's fun to be able to beat up on your art, but out of deference to the electronic media I tipped it into the journal instead using masking tape.  I figure future conservators will thank me for providing work for thirty people when I am older.