Some new paintings

This week has been a busy one - Monday was watercolor class, Tuesday the book store and watching Burn after Reading in the evening, Wednesday girls' day out with 3 friends (2 of whom were just passing through town on their way up north), Thursday shopping (I bought one blouse) and lunching with DH (sort of like a date), Friday to the library to pick up Twilight, finishing ATCs for year of color blog, and painting all evening, Saturday pick up SHARE order, create "free shopping" layout for SIStv, paint all afternoon, and go to potluck dinner with friends, and today do laundry, watch Twilight, and catch up on blogging. This afternoon I will go to the library to pick up an instructional watercolor dvd, watch the Sprint race on tv, and hopefully begin quilting on another of my quilt tops that were pieced while we lived on the sailboat but never quilted. Dinner will be a typical summery type of meal - chicken legs, potato salad, and cole slaw.

Oh yeah, I forgot that I took a few photos, posted some to flickr for the year of color polka dot scavenger hunt, and one to Tie one on, Amy Karol's blog about aprons. I keep telling myself that I am not going to enter contests or drawings but I keep doing it. I find so much inspiration out there on blogs and I just want to participate. One of my goals for May is to submit some layouts and projects to magazines.

In the two paintings above, I was working on different kinds of backgrounds. I tried creating deep darks in the iris painting. In the lemon painting, I used only a very few colors: I first did a wash of yellow all over the paper except where the edges of the bowl would be, then I painted the lemons with 2 different yellows and some green and burnt sienna. The leaves are combos of sap green, yellows, and a little ultramarine blue. The cast shadows are done in yellow ochre.

Have a great week!