Update on the Hibiscuis

After giving my hand a "day off" from painting I was able to get back to the easel today....although my shoulder told me later it was too soon so I won't be working on the trio of orchids - today. Lots of blahness outside. Snow pack remains in my yard and it's grey skies outside so I mixed up a bunch of different yellows, reds and white to work the canvas with. Mind you this is just an underpainting so it's still very rough. Don't worry if you don't "get it" at this point. It's missing a lot of detail in this stage.

Where do I start?

Okay so here's the reason I've been AWOL....I finished this last week and quit my job. Yup I quit my day job and am back to painting full time.


This blue Clematis is 24 inches by 24 inches on wrapped canvas. A variety of layers of blues were used to complete this piece. I'm still thinking of a name for it. Any ideas?

Since I've got that pesky need to create I started working on a trio of white orchids.... This is the first undercoating. First I start with bright under paintings so that the color will come thru. It kinda reminds me of a watercolor. It's tempting to leave it like this. Perhaps another time I'll experiment more at this stage...but for now I'm turning it more white.



And here's another update of it looking more white :) .





Being that it's oil and I have to wait till it's dry I've started working on something a little more colorful. White's hard to work in the dead of winter...especially when we've had snow on the ground for over 2 months now. Did I mention we have a 2 1/2 month old snowman? I digress, here's my newest work in progress ...a hibiscus. It's a fancy one with all sorts of petals in the middle. Normally peachy color I decided to kick it up a few notches. Then my hand, wrist and arm started hurting. Time to rest and get back into shape.. after not painting much lately I'm out of shape!