Beautiful colors of spring

I am in artist's heaven these days. The spring flowers are in bloom and there is no end to lovely subject matter for paintings. My daughter and I spent one afternoon in the tulip fields north of our house, she photographing the blooms and I painting. So enjoyable!

more spring flowers

I love this time of year. That incredible green of new growth, and the thrill of watching buds open, absolutely wonderful!

Time to stop, look and listen

This painting was finished about a week ago. I'm fairly happy with this one, although I really wish I had made the eggs much smaller. There would have to be a chicken sitting on that nest to lay such large eggs... since the nest is only about six inches across that would be quite impossible. The flower is not bad though.

After quite a good run of painting and illustrating I hit a rough patch yesterday. I began a painting of some very lovely flowers in a cobalt vase and it was horrible when I finished. In the end I rubbed the paint off of the canvas and left it to dry. It will be the underpainting for a different composition . This experience reminded me that everyone eventually runs out of ideas and when that happens it's time to stop, look around and find inspiration.

Finally back

Well... as you may have noticed I haven't posted in a while. There has been a lot happening at my house. My husband has an exciting new job, I've been working on three illustration projects and trying to keep up with the painting. Fortunately everything has gone smoothly, it's just taken me a long time to get photos of the latest paintings.

This little composition is one of my favorites. The colors are so cheerful. It makes me think of all the flowers blooming in the spring. Everywhere I turn in the garden there are new buds mixed in with the crocus, daffodils, tulips and cherry blossoms.

I know I've said it before, but hooray for Spring!