Purple Tulips

"Purple Tulips" -- oil on canvas 22x28" -- Margie Guyot

Some people might think I'd lost my mind -- all that color!   But I was in the mood to paint COLOR!  Last weekend we'd had a 16" snowfall and were without power for 48 hours.  It was dark.  It was gloomy.  By some miracle my studio stayed about 50 degrees, even without the heating system.  I had to bundle up a bit more to work out there.

So the sun came out.  The snow has melted.  Well, mostly melted.  Robins are singing; crocuses are peeking up.  I was in the mood to do cartwheels across the front lawn.  That is, if I could do cartwheels.  In lieu of doing cartwheels, I decided to yank out the most colorful piece of fabric I could find and do something with the bunch of purple tulips I'd bought last week.  They were about to give out, so I had to paint fast.

But the painting wasn't challening enough.  Why not make it really interesting and add the acrylic box with the butterflies and the pink glass bowl?  It was damned near enough to kill me.  But even so, it was a lark, compared to sweeping, vacuuming and washing floors. 

Painting tulips is hard enough as it is.  They're always enlongating, ever so slightly.  Stick a bunch of tulips into a vase and the next day you come back, they've "grown" taller.  Or swooped lower, which was what these did. 

Purple is a tough color to try to paint.  Almost impossible to mix it and not have it turn out some muddy shade of reddish-brown.  I think I need to buy every shade of purple & violet they make.

This painting is a prime example of why Oil Painters of America seems to hate everything I do.  It's too gaudy.  Not brown enough.  After years of being a member and paying dues and entering their shows, I finally dropped them.  Why was I trying to paint something they might like?  It was pathetic. No, I finally decided life is too short to spend all my time doing things to try to win somebody else's approval.  

"Lavender and Gold"

"Lavender and Gold" -- oil on canvas 40x50"

As soon as I saw this beautiful purple glass bowl and silk scarf in a resale shop in Charlevoix, I knew it would be my next painting. Just fell in love with the colors!  It was high time to do another big still life, after months of the little 6x6's. 

Those are 2 little pots of petunias that I picked up at my favorite nursery (Pine Hill, in Torch Lake). Until fairly recently, I hadn't attempted painting flowers. Seems like I now compare everything to the difficulty of painting cupcakes: all those complicated swirls of frosting, the paper cup pleats....! Yikes!

Made a "new" discovery on this one. New to me, anyway: the deeper purple glass cylindar (in the back). How to make it a rich purple, yet give the illusion of smooth, translucent glass? A quandry. My first attempt showed the brushmarks ---- too upsetting! Finally, what I "discovered" on this one was to take a dry brush, dip it into the paint (in this case it was "ruby violet" from Vasari), smear it on the canvas, then wipe it off with a Viva paper towel. In effect, I was staining the canvas.

One of my friends saw this painting yesterday & she marveled at the glass bowl & reflections, etc. Well, up here, I have no TV reception. I totally refuse to shell out money for satellite TV. No cable here. So what else is there to do? Housework? Hah! Given the choice between mopping floors and figuring out reflections, you know what I would chose every time....!

Cantaloupe

"Cantaloupe" -- plein air field study -- oil on canvas -- 12x24" -- Margie Guyot

This was painted entirely outside last Sunday afternoon.  So -- although it's a still life, done "in the plain air", yet not a landscape --  can I still call it a "field study"?  Good question.  I've just been in a "fruity mood" lately and wanted to paint cantaloupe, doggone it!  That's a very shiny purple cloth the cantaloupe halves were set on.  I did this out on my patio table on one of our rare sunny days.  Well, it was more like "sunny for a couple hours" type day.  Didn't know if I could pull it off, but hey -- nothing ventured, nothing gained.

My chickens got to eat it when I was finished.  I used to love cantaloupe, but developed an allergy to it.  Boo-hoo!

If you could look very closely at this painting, you'll see it was painted "very gooshey".  About the only detail was the seeds; other than that, I used a #8 flat brush and shmooshed the paint around thickly, thanks to Liquin.  Well, I had to rush -- rain was moving in fast!