Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Spacecoast Living features our Carmen!

This month's issue of Spacecoast Living features a wonderful article on our own Carmen Beecher. If you don't get this beautifully printed magazine all about our area of the world, you can read the article online by clicking here: Spacecoast Living.

Congratulations, Carmen on your beautiful work and some wonderful, well deserved publicity! And we think you are way beyond "extradordinary"!

Friday, October 12, 2012

Vineyard Bridge

I am having so much fun painting from my North Carolina photos.  This was a demo on Tuesday.  That lovely day we visited the Grandfather Vineyard.  This bridge was covered with grapevines, and loaded with grapes.
When we tired of painting and and picture taking, we retired to the patio and enjoyed a couple of bottles of wine.  Such a delight!
Mary

Friday, October 5, 2012

A Passion for Passion Vines

There's no doubt I have a passion for Passion Vines. I especially love Incarnata, the beautiful purple one with curly tendrils that grows wild here in Florida shown below.
But over the past few years I've been planting other varieties and I currently have six of the seven in bloom. Below is Lady Margaret, a beautiful red one that I bought as a skinny little four inch sprout several years ago that now takes up half the fence in the yard and must have over 100 blooms at a time.
Here's a little view of the others. Below is the latest to show itself: Vitifolia. After that is Sweet Sunrise, followed by Cerulea and then Jara.







These flowers are an artist's dream. I haven't taken on the challenge of painting one yet. But below is an example of "Jara" all done up with filters, brushes and a little text in Photoshop CS6.
I have loads of photos if any artists out there want some to paint or to play with in Photoshop just let me know which variety and I'll send you high res.  And watch for affordable prints at our upcoming Pieces of 8 pre-Christmas sale on December 8th in West Melbourne.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Elk Falls Path






The Pieces of 8 had a wonderful time at Cindy's condo in NC in Sept.
This little painting was created from one of the many photos I took while we were there as a demo when I was teaching a class this morning.

Mary

Ballard Park, Original Oil on Canvas

  I had not painted outside in two years, so this was quite a challenge. It was one of those paintings I had to improve upon in the studio. ...