Watering Can Chickadee

12 by 12 watercolor on paper
Inspired by the birds in my back yard!

Lavender Fairy a work in progress

This is a 4 by 6 inch painting available at shantmarie@aol.com for 25.00

Magic Days

This painting is a traditional Watercolor on paper. 200.00 USD 11 by 15

its all about the tree, I love trees that have long gnarly roots that cling to rocks or the shore line, It just seems to be saying" I'm a survivor!" shantmarie@aol.com for pay pal invoice.

Midnight Poppies

This 8 by 10 inch mixed media piece was fun and even though there isn't any such thing as a "Midnight Poppies" I thought it would be a great visual feast!
75.00

Mystic moon and boulder

Watercolor on hot press paper. Mystic moon and boulders on top of the world. Its 5 inches by 8 inches $30.00 plus s& H Mystic Boulder was a painting that evolved without a plan. I love these little pieces of magic.

ACEO Show Koi

This is an ACEO.... Artist Collector's Edition or Original. This is an original... its Mixed media on masonite. $15.00 plus shipping and handling of $1.50

Caravaggio

This is one of my koi his name is Caravaggio, he is a beautiful white Koi with yellow markings. Unlike his name sake he is the sweetest koi in the pond. I name all my Koi after artists. I don't really know which ones are males and which ones are females.

Jewels

This piece was a commissioned piece and I only have a few more finishing touches and it will be ready to send off to its happy owners.

Reflective Lake

fall is approaching!

Koi Pond at Dusk

22 by 11 $200.00 watercolor on paper

This looks great either this way or Horizontal...

Koi reunion

8" by 10" 75.00 shantmarie@aol.com for purchase information
watercolor on gessoed canvas.

The white fish is called a Tancho ... now can you guess what the blue grey fish is called?

Ancient Ritual #133

8 by 10 oil on wood 75.00

This series seems to never end. I was planning to paint a red sunset over the lake. I’ve been doing a lot of blue water paintings and thought it would be nice to go to the red side of the color wheel.

After I got the yellow, red and gold on the panel one stroke led to another and all I could do was paint this painting. It took me about a minute to see the sunset wasn’t in the plans for the daily painting. If your new to this series it’s about customs and how we celebrate life’s events and the passing of time with rituals.

 

can you find the koi? 

Lake Wylie Memories

8 by 10 oil on wood panel $75.00
Here the painting is as a close up, as you can see it has a bit of reflective shine on the left side of the photo this will not be on the painting after tomorrow, its just that I had to use a flash since I finished it late and it was dark.

I was... as always busy today but had an unexpected surprise, my husband Art, brought home a beautiful aquarium and 20 tiny, tiny fish and a bunch of live plants. I set it all up and spent a couple of hours "playing" with it. I've owned many tanks over the years and really enjoyed watching the tropical fish swim about and discover their new home.

Running River 2

Here is the better photo of "running river".   It being an Oil painting I had to be careful, it is still wet.  While take the photo, I tilted the painting downward while holding the camera straight.  This way the oil wouldn't reflect back into the lens and look like sparkles.   

It works but you then have to use a photo shop type program to square it back up.

Sleepy Koi

Watercolor on gessoed paper $45.00

This little guy looks tired to me so I decided he can be called “sleepy”. If you have fish you know some of them are always swimming fast and darting around then there are those that kinda hide under stuff and only come out when your not around.  This fish is just a little tired and  he is hanging out near the bottom of the pond.  

Monet series, Fantasy pond

8 by 8 acrylic on wood. I added a bit of lavender to the blue because I some how think of lavender when I think of things that are surreal or fantasy..

If your interested its $50.00 and I take pay pal, checks & credit cards. shantmarie@aol.com.

I'm pretty busy these days with other projects and I have to either stay up very late or wake up very early in order to get my daily painting completed.

koi pond

This is painted on gessoed masonite & it's been sprayed with a fixative so it can be framed without glass. I have spent a lot of time lately looking at ponds and I guess it was just a matter of time before I painted a pond. With any good pond there has to be fish so I painted a few Koi to splash around.
I’ve had lots of fun painting the Monet series lately but I have to admit it…. one of the paintings didn’t quite turn out as well as I would have wanted. Every one has a bad day at times and I’m not blaming my brother BUT… I have told him numerous times “Don’t come over while I’m painting” but some folks including my relatives think painting for me is like eating… They think it looks so easy and I paint so fast that I could do it in my sleep. The think you can still paint well while having a conversation about something as insignificant or nutty as, say.. the problems of ebay or the election or even the compost heap. You get the idea. For me this is not true.
As an intuitive painter I have to be in my own space. but not wanting to be rude… I start in with the painting trying to get back to where I was before the compost heap became so important that he walked across the street to tell me about it.
I’m standing at the easel looking down at my painting trying to figure out where I was going next thinking it is almost done and as he talked and talked and talked, I kept mixing and mixing and mixing. Now, anyone who paints knows this alone is a recipe for a major mud fest. Even I knew when I was mixing it this can’t be good, but I kept trying, I painted and mixed and painted and remixed, trying to make it work, while occasionally saying “ “right” “Yeah?” ” really “ ”Hm”. The only color I was really getting of course was gray and no real values… so after he left, I took the painting outside to dry and this little painting must have had 1/2 inch of paint on it. Three days later and I’m pretty sure it isn’t dry yet. I should have scraped it off but I didn’t have the heart.

Monet tribute in red

7 by 10 acrylic on panel, plus  5.5 s & h

Colorful water painting

 This photo has a bit of glare on top it is actually red where it looks light at the top. Tomorrow when its  light out, I photograph it again.  Its 11 pm now and I just finished this painting, so I had to photograph it under lights. Of course...  this made a glare or reflective area.  I'm too tire to fix it and need to get a few more things done before I go to bed.   I hope you like this piece because after painting it tonight I thought of some other colors I would like to see how they work together. I think I'll paint another one with a different pallet. anyway... tomorrow is another day and as they say...so many paints, so little time. 

I have my life drawing session tomorrow very early so I'll be up at the crack of dawn.   Oh and I forgot to mention I bought some baby Koi.  I've had them for a few weeks but didn't want to post anything about them in case they didn't make it. Real confident huh? I've had lots of fish 

(including salt water) in the past but never Koi.  I want to post some pics of my little koi, their adorable, I know Koi can't be adorable but these guys really are cute.  Their pretty small but very active and have lots of personality.  I haven't named them yet, we're still in the salad days of our relationship.  We 'll see how it goes.  I had to put some ice in their water today ( the ice was in plastic bags)  it was nearly 93 degrees F.  The water was over 85 degrees F.  Koi can live in very hot water but I've been known to baby my pets.  

Check back with me and see the little guys. 

Perseverance Revisited

16 by 20 watercolor on canvas

$350.00

I painted this painting several weeks ago and hated the background, it was too colorful, too busy and didn't really show case the Koi.  Like in any play there can only be one star and the Koi have to be the star. Now, the painting is a better painting just because the background isn't competing with the foreground and the colors are cooler providing contrast and pushing the warmer color forward.