Still Can't Paint Flowers or Why do I do this to myself?

It's all in fun and exploration, I know. Here are this week's daily paintings.

I am trying, I really am. But, flowers frustrate me. The leaves look pretty good though, so it was a fair-to-middling lesson and a great reminder of why I don't do flowers. (I wonder if I could whittle them?)


Maybe this one I don't dislike as much. It's not finished, but I'm finished for a bit. That funny streak of red in the front petal will someday look like the shadow of a knife-like leaf directly above the poppy in the photo I took. The center isn't really divided either, the lower red-orange center blob will also be a shadow.


Heck.


Maybe, I should just print the photos on canvas and leave at that!


The last little painting was a self-imposed challenge to loosen up my oil skills while I try to finish a big (16x20) portrait of my son and his kids in time for his birthday. Most of the time, I don't work bigger than 11x14. This little oil is 8x8. Just about my size, although I have two huge 19x25 pieces of Mi Tientes colored paper for some projects I have planned. That is, if I don't tear them into smaller pieces first!


I called my little challenge, "How many colors are in the shade?" Recently, on a birthday cruise for my sister, she passed along a biography of Monet, and one of the hallmarks of impressionism was that shadows were not gray. They were right -- they aren't. So, I thought Iwould try a stab (of the brush) at painting as many colors as I could find in the shadows.

This little painting isn't much, but I kind of like it anyway. That deep, hot sunny summer day shade appeals to me. I grew up in Southern California where plenty of scrub oaks abound in the hills. They are shady underneath, but it's not the kind of cool, inviting shade you're probably thinking of. If you plop down under one of these babies, you get dirty, you are still hot, and soon enough, covered with ants.

Happy August!