Southwest Vista

One of the most challenging landscapes for me is the Southwest.  I love looking at the landscape, the colors the terrain but it is difficult to capture that with such a limited palette.
 Everything about it is like the flip side of the Northeast.  It seems to barren so devoid of lushness and color.  When you really look at it though it has it's own rugged, start beauty and the colors of the desert can be just as intense as the color of a forest.
This 5x7 shows the plain brownness of the desert with the complex colors of the hills in the distance.
Donna Vines




Southwest Vista



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Abandoned

Even though a lot of the country is still in the throes of winter this is officially the first week of Spring! When I think of spring I think of abundance and the overflowing of all things beautiful overrunning the deadness of winter.
I saw this truck abandoned by a barn in N. Carolina during a spring trip a few years ago.  I could not help but wonder at how many winters this truck sat there only to be nearly covered in new growth each spring.  How many more cycles would it take to completely cover this once loved red truck?

Abandoned

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A little coffee a little cream

I love painting landscapes but set ups are so much fun.  I am pretty lazy about them though.  I usually fuss around forever trying to set something up and am never happy.  It is so much better if someone just says paint this!
I painted this at an Elio workshop.  He always has several pieces in a set up and I usually pick a few things or an area I like and paint that.  For me the simpler the better.  At the time this seemed a simple set up but the creamer has a difficult shape and position.  Also the creamer and mug were white so all of the color had to come from the background and table cloth.  I used as much shadowing as possible to keep it interesting.  It turned out to be one of my favorite pieces.

 

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Bye Bye LIonfish

Do you have a piece you have done that you really love.  Something that is somehow a little special, maybe even so special you hope no one buys it?  And, if no one buys it for long enough you can keep it? 
My little collage Lionfish was just like that.  I don't know what it was but I just loved it.  I loved planning it, creating it, looking at it, showing it off and having it in the house.  I was very sad to see it go and I may have not let it go if a special person hadn't asked to buy it.  So, even though I did not want to sell it I did part with it as a gift because I knew the person who wanted it loved it as much as I did.  Besides he is residing in The Keys!!

Lionfish


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Tea Time

I love teapots.  I have no idea why but I just do.  I have a teapot collection and when my grandchildren were younger we would have tea parties.  They would dress in slips, scarfs, hats, high heels and beads from the play trunk and we would have a proper afternoon tea complete with little sandwiches, cookies or cupcakes.
This 11x14 collage is of one of my favorite teapots.  I used so many different colorful, textured papers to make the pot standout. There are even pieces of a cookbook page hidden in the pieces.
Donna Vines
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Tea Time
 

As I was getting my materials together for a workshop I had to move my plastic bin of hand painting materials and photos.  I had not done any hand colored photos for quite awhile and I of course had to open the container, anything to put off real work.  I found a photo I had started and decided to put out a few paints and see if it was still paintable.  Well I did and it was.
 For some reason the time flies by and you can really get into the zone when hand painting. Here is a blow up of an area of the photo I was working on.  It was a picture I had taken in Maine at a friend's house.  All of my photos are old snapshots I took when I was doing a lot of hand painting.
 I use special Marshall oils, cotton and Q-tips for applying.  This photo was a sepia tone.
I just love the colors and tone you can create with this process.  It was so relaxing I moved the container to the top so I could easily get out my kit again.

unfinished hand painted photo

Winter at the beach

Even though I am in sunny Florida, I cannot escape the cold breath of winter.  I get constant reports and updates of the bitter temperatures and mountains of snow.  I do not miss these things at all but there is still some beauty to be found that isn't stark white.
This hand colored photo of Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester, MA was taken on a January day and captures the cold, raw feeling of the ocean in Winter.
Donna Vines

Bajio Mountains of San Miguel

Carmen and I saw very different sides of the wonderful Mexican city of San Miguel.  While she was a city dweller navigating the cobble stone streets and tiny sidewalks, I resided outside the town on a little farm overlooking the Bajio Mountains.  The elevation of San Miguel was quite an adjustment for me...dry and cool.  So dry in fact that most of the farmlands surrounding the mountains were various shades of brown and gold at this time of year.  But I was engaged in studying the psychology of color so the "local" tones did not stop me from interpreting the countryside from a feeling side.

Here I am sketching out two different scenes from our front porch.  One is 6 x 12 on board, the other is a 6 x 6 canvas wrapped board.

I did the under paintings in acrylic while still in San Miguel and brought them home to finish up in oil. See the blue house to the far left of the composition?  It was such a happy color that I could not resist letting it literally color my entire view of the beautiful area.

6" x 6" oil

Bajio Mountains

6" x 12" Bajio Panoramic 

And here's the panoramic view front out our front door scanning to the right and beyond of the blue hacienda next door.  The fields were either dried husks or land being plowed up to ready for planting.  Scrub trees often marked the property lines between haciendas and several times we stopped the car to let sheep or cattle cross from one field to the next.  Bright yellow blossoms were the most vibrant natural color along the highway but I never did find out the name of its weed-like plant.  The jacarandas were within days of bursting forth.

So these pieces came out warm and cool, dry and verdant, brown and green...a melange of contrasts just like the country.

Cindy Michaud