Watercolors

When I work with my watercolor palette and all my supplies, I like to paint in our eat-in kitchen. The room gets light on three sides, and I paint at one end of our long kitchen table.  On the other end I can set paintings to dry.  I worked on two new watercolors in the past two days, which are almost finished.  During drying times, I got out some of my previous paintings for a little critical editing.

Here is one of my favorites, Poppies and Lupines.  I never thought the stamens in the center of the poppies were dark enough, and some of the other lines needed to be a little more crisp.

This one of a glass vase with flowers had the edge of the vase and water line refined, and some of the stems darkened a bit.

I did not do much more to the sunflower except define a few of the stems and leaves a bit.

All of these paintings are from drawings by Karlyn Holman, and many of them have instructions in her books and DVD.  I took a class from her at Art of the Carolinas last fall, and enjoy her teaching style as well as her painting style.

Charlie spent the day trading in his car for a new Ford pick-up truck.  I am astounded at all the gadgets and electronics.  It is very comfortable.

We celebrated by going out to dinner at Girasole in Wake Forest.  The sun was setting and made a lovely vignette at the front window.

And it was even prettier when we got outside.

My foot is getting better each day.  Today I walked up our long driveway to the mailbox for the first time.  I have ventured out several times in the last few days after being housebound almost a week.  The worst was a trip to the library yesterday, since I ran out of books during my convalescence from the sprained ankle.  Walking across the paved parking lot was not a great idea.  I have a new favorite author:  Claire Cook.  I read her novel Must Love Dogs at the beach, and enjoyed it so much that I got four more of her books from the library.  Each one is about a woman who is divorced or trying to rebuild her life after some traumatic event.  The film based on Must Love Dogs starred Diane Lang and John Cusack and was cute. 

That's about it for tonight...I'll try to finish the two new paintings tomorrow.  They are quite different from all the floral and still life paintings!