Not Big Enough for the Two of Us

Since that went well the other day, I grabbed another old photo that was lying around. This one though I already had plans to paint bigger - in my series of 16x20 aquabord panels. So this was basically just a warm-up to see how it would go. I'll probably bring the horizon line either up or down as it's pretty squarely in the middle right now. It's just so hard to decide which! I love having plenty of sky to work with, but the reflection is a huge part of what makes this interesting... Sky or reflection? Which should be the star?

Lilacs complete

Here it is finished:

Interesting how much that green background changes it. I think because of how much yellow is in it, the background even manages to warm it up a bit. It certainly helps the flowers pop foward.

And go here to see the time-lapse video of me painting it. The video is a little bit longer than usual because all those tiny flowers take a long time to paint! No big swashes of space to throw color into quickly. Darn details. 

Northwest Art and Air Festival

So I survived my first art festival! That was a bit of a wild ride. It's kind of like stepping into another world. A world that pops up for a weekend at a time and then disappears into nothingness. I spent way too many hours prepping and stressing and reading articles, along with way too many nights rehashing all of that in my brain instead of sleeping. But overall, I think it was a good experience. I can't say for certain because I'm way too exhausted at this point! I have no idea how some people do like 30 of these type of things a year! The coolest part was probably the night glow:

How cool is that?

 But back to the art side of things - I learned lots, got plenty of compliments, distributed business cards, met lots of people and sold a few things here or there. And I got some painting done at the same time! This is an 11x14 watercolor on aquabord that I painted out there for people to see as they walked by. I love the bright trees on the right and the clouds I added into the sky. I fought with the water for a crazy long time, and am mostly happy with it now except it really looks to me like there are snakes in the water. Ha! And ew.

 

And I got mostly done with this one as well: 

I'm really digging the sky! Kinda nervous about adding the water, which is silly because that's usually my favorite part!  Fingers crossed!

The Glory of Flight

Not sure this one is finished but then again, I vowed to not spent to much thought or energy in these so I should probably just moved on. It's just that it looked better in my head. Ha! Sometimes hard to transfer that to paper, isn't it? It's just that with the light source behind the balloon, the side facing us was all in shadow and I just couldn't get it to not look flat, and when I tried it just turned dirty. Then the lines on the balloon didn't really seem to curve around it but there wasn't room for them to with only showing this small portion of the balloon. Such artist problems. So it's not my favorite but I'm posting it anyway. 

Photo Credit: Linda Seavey