Happy New Year's Day!

Well, it's here at last!  2011!   I ended 2010 with a paint brush in my hand, and today I started the new year by painting from morning until late afternoon.  My goals for 2011 are to produce more work and, in the process,  to grow as an artist.   

I want to become a more prolific and proficient plein air painter.  My pastel classes, which begin on Tuesday, will be one way of doing just that.  I know that masterpastellist Claudia Post will significantly influence my drawing abilities as well as my use of color.

The palette I was working with yesterday was totally different from today's.  Yesterday, working primarily in greens, I was putting finishing touches on a second lupine painting from a photograph my husband had taken in Searsport, Maine, a few years ago.  Today, when I began, the weather was sunny with the temperature on our deck in the fifties.  The first painting is in high key winter colors:  whites, greys, blues, browns, pinks.  The palette darkened on the second painting as the sun, now shrouded in clouds, dropped further to the west.  I hope to finish both paintings tomorrow, though the forecasters are predicting rain. 

This is approximately the view that I was painting today.  "Waiting for Spring" was completed in February of 2009.  I'll be eager to see the difference between the two new paintings and this one.


Waiting for Spring, oil, 12" x 12"

I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year's Eve and a relaxing, peace-filled New Year's Day.  May the year ahead bring us all a wee bit closer to our dreams.