Oregon Flower Gardens Landscape Transition #8, (Peony) Oil and Cold Wax

Sometimes no mater how hard I try I just can't seem to get the colors adjusted correctly in my photos of my art work.  I put my photos into Microsoft Digital Imaging, which has some color adjustment  ability but I still never get it quite right.  The red in the flower in this picture is way too intense. Seems like I am always complaining about something in my posts, so onto why I love flowers.

Several years ago a friend took me to the  Schreiner Iris Garden in Oregon. Nearby was a small Peony garden where I took several pictures of Peonies in there past glory.  To me the dying flowers were just as amazing as when they were in bloom.  It's almost as if they have turned themselves inside out to show the other side of the bloom.

In the spring the central valley of Oregon, the Willamette Valley is ablaze with what looks like stripes of colors side by side.  Glorious reds, yellows, oranges, purples, in the fall the blueberry bushes loose their leaves and the branches become another amazing color of red.  Artists paint these amazing fields of flowers and the paintings look so unreal, as if those solid vibrant colors couldn't really exist, but they do.  I am so grateful to live in such a beautiful state.

Landscape in Transition #7 Oil and Cold Wax Painting ( Rose Hips)

I have wrestling with what to name this new series of paintings.  I recently posed the question to several artist friends as to whither they thought I should just number them or give each a separate title. They all thought that numbering wasn't the best way to title a painting. 

All believed that in some cases a persons response to the piece was because of the title.  It resonated with them because the title gave the work something they could relate too in their lives, a memory or feeling of a place they had been to.  The more I thought about it I wondered also if I should include in the title the flower that I painted in each piece, since the flower is not in it's most beautiful state of being and may not be completely recognizable.

So, I would really welcome comments as to your thoughts on the subject.  How do you feel about the titling of art work?  Is it just the painting that appeals to you or does the title also give the art meaning to you?

Landscape in Transition #6

In my last post I wrote about where my flower inspirations came from.  The lovely Chinese Lantern
specimen came from my friend Wendy.  It's beautiful delicate flower.  On my first attempt at painting it I complained to my friend that I just couldn't capture  what I was seeing in the flower, something was wrong, what wasn't I getting right, she said and I quote; " you need more orange in the lanterns, " so that was my next attempt to get it right. Well, after much noodling with color I still haven't gotten it "right."

I think one of the problems is they appear too opaque; the lanterns have a wonderful translucency to them that I haven't been able to capture.  I still want to keep the landscape image on the right side of the painting   I didn't want to paint over the image and because I normally sand the images off by hand which is very labor intensive;  off I went to Home Depot and bought myself a small electric sander. Today will be the day the image goes away and I may rethink what flower goes with the landscape image. I need to get this painting out of my head and out of my hands.  What do you do when you get stuck with problematic a painting?

The Appeal of Dried Flowers

     I thought I would do a post about the flowers that inspire me for my Landscape in Transition series;  but first I have to rant about Google and their Google +.  I have spent a good part of my day trying to get these images first to download upright.  To download and publish  most of my photos I use Microsoft Digital Imaging. I tried any number of ways to get the photos to download upright, resizing, saving, turning off the computer and doing a restart...nothing WORKED!  So I went into Picasa where I knew there was a button to publish to a Blog.  Nope, said "service unavailable," so I went to the Internet to pose the question on Google.  Turns out it all depends on this new Google Plus and what account it uses.  Finally success, but what a HUGE WASTE OF MY TIME!!! Enough said, can you tell I am angry, why can't they leave something that always worked alone.

So, to get to the flower part of this post.  I often time pick flowers and let them dry to work from, or I will work from a photos I have taken  out in the field. The ones posted here are from friends who know and understand the appeal to me of flowers in this stage.  The colors do change but there is almost always still a hint of their beautiful color.  What fascinates me the most is the new form they have taken.  I can see the movement  that occurred as the petals and leaves dried in this new stage.   The flowers have taken on a more sculptural form that I find challenging to paint and hopefully the viewer of my work will be able to see and understand. So, I have to thank my friends, Wendy, Kathy and Roxanne for the beautiful specimens they gave me to work from. Hopefully you will keep watching my blog to see these flowers appear in a new painting. 

If I have time and luck tomorrow I will post a few more new Cold Wax pieces with flowers.