Flower Carpet Roses & Dragonfly Egg

Something that just started blooming in my garden are my Flower Carpet Roses. I love, love, love these roses as they are so prolific with blooms all spring, summer and fall but they are also the most disease resistant roses I've ever come across. These particular blooms are salmon colored and I also have pink and red in the garden as well. They are the most beautiful, no fuss roses I've ever come across.

Well, my poor little Dragonfly Egg is no more.......a couple weeks ago, I was packing up my china cabinet for our move up the street. We're having movers but hey, I figured I would treat my china and precious items with a lot more care then they would right?? Well, it didn't really work out that way....this little guy came crashing down on my hardwood floor and smashed in a lot of pieces. Had there been carpeting, the little egg would have been fine but it just couldn't take hitting the hardwood floor like that, from so high up.

I had it listed on ETSY for all of a couple of days, until I broke it and had to take it down. I thought atleast it could appear on my blog and get its day in the sun, since that is the only glory this little egg will receive at this point.

Spring Irises

Now that it seems spring is springing around here, it gets me thinking about some of my favorite flowers. Well, if you know me, you know I have lots of favorites but this particular one is a spring bloom. I really love my Iris collection. Every May, it is one of the things I look forward to with great anticipation.

The top photo is a watercolor I was inspired to paint 2 years ago by all the ongoing photos I seem to take each year of my collection. Simply enough, I called it "Spring Irises." This piece is a 23" x 9" watercolor on coldpress paper. The original sold but I have made prints. In fact the day after it sold, I went into a panic because believe me, as much as I was happy to sell it, very happy, I would miss it hanging on my own wall. My husband quickly got to work taking a good quality photo of it so I would be able to make prints. I now have one for myself and also, offer them for sale on my website.

So these are some photos I've taken of my Iris garden in bloom. I have a lot of them as you can see and sometimes get as many as 5 blooms from one plant. It makes for good picture taking anyway.

When I was creating the painting, I used a bunch of these actually, to get my drawing done. I rarely use just one photo of a subject, I prefer to mix and match different things, in this case flowers, from the different photos to get my painting. The top photo was the one I used the most.

Fun Surfaces

This morning I received an order for a gourd birdhouse. I love painting those and well, it got me thinking why I love them and what other surfaces are very rewarding and fun for me and why..... The Pink Roses duck egg above, I painted for a gift exchange last year. I had a great time painting this one. One of the reasons that I like eggs so much is the curvy and well, sensual surface. It just feels so wonderful in the palm of my hand.

Eggs are also challenging to paint because especially with the smaller ones like the duck and turkey egg above, when you have an idea, it is sometimes hard to fit it all on the surface. I guess I also like them because I love the crafty part of it as well, making the hangers out of stones and beads, also gluing pretty stones on the egg itself, to add the finishing touches to the design. I've also always loved eggs and have a decorative egg collection in my china cabinet, which has overflowed to the glass display that makes up the bottom of my end table in my livingroom.

Every time I'm at a crafts fair, I tend to gravitate to the booths that are selling gourds. I guess I would say I love gourds for the same reason as eggs...their shape. These vessels are made by nature instead of man made so you never quite know with a gourd, what shape you are going to get. I think that is what makes them so much fun and so compelling to paint, different shaped gourds lend themselves to different designs.

Ok, then there is Yupo paper, a great alternative to traditional watercolor paper if you feel you can let loose, not be so serious and just have some fun for a change. Funny that it is called paper because there is nothing natural about the surface, it is a totally man made synthetic surface. You can do more serious paintings on Yupo, like my Red Calla Lilies above or do silly and fun paintings like my Springtime Birdie Doodle below. Either way, all the traditional rules of watercolor go out the window and you can just pretty much do anything you want. The result are paintings that have a crystal like shine to them, they are beautiful to look at on this unusual surface.

Well, Doodles, what can I say, I'm loving them. This is the name I've given to paintings I'm starting to do on Yupo paper, that are very playful and fun, nothing seious about them. I feel like a kid who has discoverd crayons for the first time when I work on one. They are a real form of therapy for me, perhaps a break from art that makes you take it and yourself way to seriously sometimes. The doodles get their image by first, completing a background I'm happy with, then removing areas of the paint, showing the white Yupo beneath, to reveal the design itself. I think the possibilities with these are endless and my mind is brimming with ideas for new doodles in all different sizes.