Brass and Silver Keys (8 x 8 watercolor on clayboard) $65.00

I painted this little baby yesterday at the gallery. I like the contrast between the silver and gold, but I wasn’t really happy with it until the shadows went in.

Available through my Etsy Shop.  Prints available through my print shop at Fine Art America.com.

Mothers' Day Daffodils (watercolor 5 x 7) $25.00

[This painting is currently on display at Art in the Valley, Corvallis, Oregon.]

I’ve spent my gallery shifts this month making postcard sized paintings for the OSU Mom’s Day Weekend Craft Fair.  It’s a fun fair to do.  Where else do you get to see a crowd of college boys with their moms?

As part of the Mom’s weekend celebration I’ll be at the gallery demonstrating  polymer clay cane-making on Friday from 1:00 to 2:30 at Art in the Valley, 209 2nd Street, downtown Corvallis.  The craft fair will be on campus in the Memorial Union Quad.   The fair runs from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Saturday.

Three Tulips (watercolor 5 x 7) $25.00

Little Green Mister (5 x 7 watercolor)

Here are the last  two watercolors for my one woman mini-show at Art in the Valley, Corvallis Oregon.   Both are much smaller versions of recent paintings.  Both paintings were painted at Art in the Valley in late March.

I hang the show this Monday.  It will hang until Tuesday, May 4th.  During the show, I will be painting in the gallery on Wednesday April 14th, Wednesday, April 21, and Wednesday, April 28th.

Single Lily (5 x 7 watercolor) SOLD

Apples and Oranges (13 x 18 inch watercolor) $250.00

I had to watch my youngest daughter like a hawk to get this one painted.  She loves the sweet miniature Clementine oranges and kept threatening to eat my still life before I had it painted.  I don’t blame her much.  Clemetines are so very sweet and so small you can eat three or four of them and have had less than a full sized orange.

The palette is raw sienna, burnt sienna, cobalt blue, french blue, phthalo blue, quinacridone magenta and hansa yellow.  The magenta and the new hansa make a perfect orange colored orange.

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Jade and Tulips II (watercolor 11 x 14) $250

This is much the same composition and color scheme as  Jade and Tulips I.  I lowered the tulips which causes them to stand out more than in the original version, but makes the upper line of the composition less interesting.  Including more of the jewelry box increased it’s three dimensionality as did opening thing lower drawer.

The palette and work methods are the same as Jade and Tulips I.

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Tulips, Jade, and Books (watercolor 8 x 11) $100.00

Our house is covered in floor to ceiling book shelves.    So it was really only a matter of time before the shelves showed up in one of my still lifes.  This time they feature only as a reflection.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com. See more still paintings at: still life paintings

Jade and Tulips (watercolor 11 x 14) $250

Years ago I celebrated a new job by purchasing a jewelry box I had coveted for several years.  I love oriental furniture with it’s brass hinges and inset  jade and soapstone.  I find a whole room full of  such furniture much too heavy.  But the jewelry box was everything I loved about the furniture in miniature.  And despite it’s exoticness, it looks perfectly at home on my plain pine dressers.  And it has the added advantage of actually looking better half open with the jewelry hanging out than it does closed.

It took me some time to compose a picture with my jewelry box at the center.  The problem is that the box’s shape  is really just that,  a vertical rectangular box.  Compositions with the complete box were brought to a complete and boring full stop by the edge of the box.   In the end, I subordinated the box to the tulips and  cropped it along one edge.  The dark open door of the box makes a beautiful foil for the bright tulips.

Once composed, painting the picture was relatively straight forward.  I masked the highlights and then began with the tulips painting them in a various combinations of hansa yellow, hansa gold, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow, and cadmium red.  The leaves are combinations of the same yellows with cobalt and phthalo blue.   I used the same colors for the jade necklace and insets as I did for the foliage.

I went on to painting vase and metal hinges using primarily yellow ochre, raw sienna and burnt sienna dulled with cobalt blue and cerulean blue.  I added the box in combinations of burnt sienna, quinacridone magenta, and dioxazine purple.

The dresser top is layered washes of burnt sienna, raw sienna, and burnt umber.  The wall yellow ochre and dulled with dioxazine purple. Layed the wall on very heavily to allow the tulips to pop.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.