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.