Sunflowers

Small Sunflowers painted in my Aquarius II journal.

My friend, Cathy, stopped at the farmers' market and picked up these sunflowers, and thinks this might be the last of them. We had a good time painting them, and hope we gave them the attention they deserve as some of the last of the season's flowers.

In keeping with my kitchen theme, I should have painted these in the kitchen, but the vase is from the kitchen and the blue and white gingham napkin in the photograph is kitchen-ie - so close enough, huh.

Christmas Cactus Study

This is a small watercolor study of the Christmas Cactus in yesterday's post. I did I light sketch of the shapes and then painted the leaves with clear water. Starting with quinacridone gold I dropped some pigment on the leaf sections, followed by a little Prussian Blue and a small amount of quiacridone red. I let the colors float around a bit and then helped it mix a little here and there. The petal color was done with a mix of quinacridone red and lemon yellow. Everyone in class did a beautiful job of letting it mix on the paper and keeping it simple.

I finished a little more Christmas shopping today. I have come to the conclussion that Christmas is so stressful because it is all about loose ends! One loose end after another - who's picking up what gift, who's coming to dinner, WHERE is dinner, who's gonna fix that thump-thump noise in the car so I can finish my shopping . . .

It'll be fine. It's all coming together.