"Lettuce and Tomatoes"

"Lettuce and Tomatoes" -- oil on canvas 16x20" -- Margie Guyot

This is the first painting I did after the holidays, right when everybody's thinking about diets and salads!  I'd just finished a still life recently that had this same green bowl in it.  It was such a "hoot" to do, I had to do another one.  Don't you love the greenish shadow it casts?  I'm fascinated by glass (although this bowl was really plastic!) and how it distorts shapes.  Why scrub floors when you can paint glass?

We rarely get sunny days in winter up here, so there is hardly ever a true, strong sense of shadow shapes -- only a fuzzy suggestion. 

Another thing that's captured my fascination lately has been the colors of the shadows.  It seems the local color of an object (such as the carrots) affects its shadow.  Notice the faint tinge of orange next to the carrots?  And the faint tinge of red next to the red pepper?  The cold and winter snows help eliminate distractions up here in the north so we artists can notice things we might otherwise miss.

Lemon Meringue Pies

 "Lemon Meringue #1" -- oil on canvas 6x6" -- Margie Guyot

  "Lemon Meringue #2" -- oil on canvas 6x6" -- Margie Guyot

  "Lemon Meringue #3" -- oil on canvas 6x6" -- Margie Guyot

  "Lemon Meringue #4" -- oil on canvas 6x6" -- Margie Guyot

 "Lemon Meringue #5" -- oil on canvas 6x6" -- Margie Guyot

Lemon meringue pies are SO much fun to paint!  But the ones I've seen in the grocery stores around here look so nasty.  I baked this one a couple days ago.  Alas, I think lemon pie wants to be eaten the same day it is made: it deteriorates so quickly!  In reality, this slice of pie looked nothing like my paintings.  At two days old, the meringue was shrinking and the crust was soggy and falling apart.  Had to use my artistic license to "pretty it up" a little.

The first painting I did showed the slice on a green Depression glass plate.  I kind of liked the colors, but thought I probably should do the rest on a plain, white background.  

I enjoy painting one view (and I always use a little viewfinder at the start), then turning it slightly for the next painting.  One thing I found rather amazing was how intensely yellow-orange the lemon filling was in spots on the shadow side.  And the meringue was quite dark when in shadow.  I just have such a blast, painting lemon pie!  Thinking of doing a few more.  

And what about eating it?  I doubt it.  It really is quite a pitiful, soggy mess!  This might be something the chickens will savor.

Strawberry Shortcakes

 "Strawberry Shortcake #1" -- oil on canvas 6x6"

"Strawberry Shortcake #2" -- oil on canvas 6x6"

Oh boy -- I'm running way behind on my posts!   I've been very busy painting, and now that the snow's finally melted (!), there's my morning bike ride and gardening chores.

One of my friends told me a secret used by advertising photographers.  For non-melting ice cream and whipped cream, they would beat up Crisco and powdered sugar.  So I experimented with this technique.  It worked!  In fact, these paintings were done a couple weeks ago and I still have a bowl of the "ice cream" sitting on my kitchen counter, looking as fresh as the day it was made.

When I finished painting these two, I gave the setup to the chickens.  They dove into it!  Kind of funny to watch them.  Their beaks were soon covered with the Crisco-powdered sugar.  It was completely devoured within 5 minutes. 

Cupcake Party!

"Cupcake Party" -- oil on canvas 30x40" -- Margie Guyot

After finishing painting just about every variety of cupcakes that Simplycupcakes makes, I wanted to pull them all (OK, most) together for a bigger still life painting.  That's a vintage tablecloth under everything.  I loved the cheery tulips in it.  Had to throw a little vase of real tulips in as well, along with my favorite frog teapot, sugar and creamer set.  

We only had a couple days of sun while I was painting this, so every time the sun came out, I focused on painting the shadow shapes.  I think it's the shadow/light patterns that give a painting a feeling of reality.  

I'd never painted Depression glass dishes in the sunlight before, and they were an interesting challenge.  This painting has a feeling of "gay chaos" in it -- but isn't a good party a sense of "gay chaos"?