geisha good bye

This painting is part of my series of paintings about geisha. I love the way the skin looks on their neck as it peeks out of their white make up. 10" by 10" watercolor on canvas, ( gallery wrap) 150.00 plus s& H

little red bud

7.5 by 5 $ 25.00 Its almost my birthday! one more day...

8 by 10 75.00 A watercolor on paper

I think these photos just don’t turn out at night as well as those taken in outdoor light. This painting is much more delicate than this photo shows. I think its the flash.
It is 11:54 PM and I’ve just finished this painting and hurried to get it on line before midnight. I’ve really been having a difficult time getting all these commissions finished. I had three this week, and two of them were larger paintings, I’m still working on them, I’ll try to post them later this week if I can

Barb's tulips

Ok let’s see if this is the one, I made sure to measure the painted portion of the piece so that it would end up being 8 by 10. The actual painting is larger but since its just white, the buyer has the option of framing it small or bigger.
This painting is a bit more whimsical. It appears to me that the one tulip in the middle is being held on to by the two smaller tulips.
I guess I’ll hit the hay… its 1:57 am and I have to take the dogs to get their teeth cleaned at 7:00 am.

Cherries 5

Big red Canna

This little watercolor painting is 5 by 7 and is framed to 8 by 10 and ready to hang. $50.00

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. 

Ancient Ritual 129 ACEO

This aceo ( Artist collection edition or original) is 2.5 by 3.5 watercolor on paper, fits standard size trading card  sleeves and albums.

I painted this yesterday but ended up staying up too late, got tired fell asleep & never posted my painting.  

So I'll post two paintings right now.

this one and the one I painted today.  I started it last night and finished it this afternoon.  

Koi Pond

8 by 8 watercolor on clayboard.


Now there calling clayboard, aqua board, I'm not sure if this is the new name but since most people won't know what "Aqua Board" is, I'm still calling it clayboard.

white on white

7 inches by 7 inches
Sorry for the odd size but these are the last of my odd size panels.

Watercolor on gessoed panel. No need to frame under glass. These watercolors are protected with a UV fixative (or varnish if you prefer). I have painted a companion piece for this white flower, also a Pink Lillie which came out rather nice and one big red flower. I painted one last night real late and three this morning because I got up at the crack of dawn before anyone arrived.
There’s a big storm coming in so I wanted to get my porch and deck cleaned up and my flower-beds ready for my annual flower planting.

Usually in the spring I get out in the yard and plant flowers and pull weeds from around the condo and the garden. Today I hired a helper and when we were getting everything cleaned up, two baby opossums popped out from under our deck. They were very cute. They looked like they couldn't’t see very well in the bright sunlight. Sort of like me when I first wake up. They were a bit confused because they got sprayed with a pressure washer, ( we didn’t know they were under there). When they came out they were all wet and looking pretty goofy. I know, I know, everyone thinks their ugly, but baby anything is pretty cute. One had black spots on his head. I didn’t know some had spots I thought they were pretty much all the same, grey and white.

Anyway If I see them again I’ll take a photo of them for you.

Big Red SOLD

four inches by four inches watercolor on clayboard.

The weather seems strange to me right now.... 25 degrees at night and almost 70 during the day. I have to change clothes at about 11 am each day. My allergies are acting up and I'm pretty sure its the Bradford pears, every year when they bloom I get the headache from you know where. The flowers are starting to bloom and I always enjoy being outside during the spring afternoons it reminds me of California with he mild temperatures.

I drove by the nursery looking at the flowers as I rolled by ever so slowly in my car knowing its still too cold to think about planting. The promise of spring was right there in all that lavish color and its hard to wait.
First things first, I need to clean out some more closets and also my back porch. During the winter months I let the back deck go and its a bit of a mess, all the flowers pots are stacked up against the fence dog toys laying wet and moldy on the ground and a pile of leaves I never picked up. The dogs have turned the deck into their private wwf wrestling area. They go out there and sit or lay in the sun waiting for a chance to go out beyond the fence gate and sniff the smells of a spring or just maybe they just want to check their pee mail.

Winter Trees

5 by 7 watercolor on Illustration Board.

Ancient Ritual 24.... a painting a day

This 4 by 6 piece is another in my abstract series exploring ritual and how we as humans mark time and the events in our lives with ritual.

Vibrant Red Flowers

This painting is another in a series of red paintings I have been doing of late. I don’t usually paint with red very much but it seems I can’t stop painting red subject matter. Also if your tired of the flowers, I can’t tell you why I have painted so many lately. Usually I paint a variety of subjects. Maybe there is a color therapist out there that can tell me if the red means anything.
BTW
This red is actually combinations of yellow, orange, red ,magenta, and green. Not all at once but in glazes…. colors built up so that some of the last color shines thru. When one layer dries, you paint another so that you get a glow. Building up the layers this way makes the color look like stained glass. The darkest dark is the magenta and green mixed together on the pallette.
The actual size of the painting is 8 by 12.
This piece would look great with a large white mat. $200.00

the negative and the positive

This little painting was painted quickly using the negative shapes as much as the positive. I love the fresh look of this type of work.

Deep Red Poppies

4 by 6 $50.00

I have been painting a larger painting... you can see it at... http://h20color.wordpress.com

This painting has influenced my daily painting choice. I painted this small 4 by 6 painting in a deeper red color.
p. s.
My husband is going to have another cat scan today. Maybe the Dr can figure out what is wrong with his right lung and why it is not healing correctly. Thanks for your cards and notes.

Ancient Ritual 19 ACEO

This little ACEO went thru about four color changes. Have you ever done that? You start out with an idea and pretty soon the piece looks nothing like what you started out with.

Watercolor and tissue paper collage

I made all this paper and then cut or tore it according to how I wanted it to look. I love the look of watercolor paints on tissue paper. It almost looks like stained glass. After I glued it all down and used a brayer to get it even, I spayed it with mat fixative so it will have consistent appearance.
I'm not sure what I'll call it. I have a great list of potential names for paintings somewhere. A while back I accumulated about 20 great titles, but now I need to go dig them out.

This is 11 by 11 inches and is mounted on Archival Mat board. All paints and papers are archival and 100% hand made. This would look great in a modern setting but could look nice in a traditional decor as well. This is for sale for $99.00, This took more than a day... more like two days but since I painted a bunch of ACEOs in between, I figure it still counts. The prep work took a long time and that doesn't really count.

My Blue palette

This is my blue Palette, I wanted to show you some of the paints I use.

I have all of these paints on my blue palette all the time and will use the empty place in the middle for a color which I may only use for a particular painting. I like to have all of my blues, reds, and yellows, separated on different pallets. It seems to make sense to me when mixing and when working with the various colors. I sometimes change a color here and there depending upon what I'm painting, but I find these are the colors I feel I need to paint the variety of subjects which I paint. Many of my paintings only have three or four paints used but I like to have them all out and ready to go, I don't like to spend time squeezing color out of the tube. Especially for these daily paintings, its nice to step up to the painting table and be ready to go in only a minute or two.

The paints are from left to right Paynes Grey - Mimariblue brand(MB), Cyan-MB, Antwerp-Windsor Newton (WN), Ultramarine WN, Cobalt- Cheap Joes (CJ) Permenent Violet bluish- MB, Andrew Turquoise -CJ, Cerulean- Daniel Smith (DS), Sap green DS, Hooker's green DS or WN Windsor green (blue shade)WN
With these blues I can come up with pretty much anything I need. There are reflective colors such as Cobalt and opaques like Andrews Turquoise and of course transparents like Cyan. I can achieve dark darks or the lightest lights, All of these mix well and make wonderful combinations. If you have a question regarding any of these paints I would be glad to help you, as I know them prety well.

Another Koi? yep... ACEO

This Koi is an artist collector's card and is for sale for $8.50 and since its so small, shipping is FREE! Its a koi fish as you can see, the colors are Purple, blue orange and red.... This card is signed and dated and can be the start of your collection!

Here 's how its painted. Start wet into wet. Wet the entire background all around the fish, then drop in the lighter blue color and allow it to burst across the paper, while this is still wet, place some dark purple or ultramarine blue in areas around the edges of the paper. don't stroke the paint on but drop it in. Then using a thirsty brush, ( ie: a damp brush which has had all the water taken out of it by squeezing with a paper towel ) pull out some of the color in areas to create a little drama and to also allow some of the white of the paper to show. This will help you have three very distinct values. Light medium and dark. If you like the small amounts of white in the background this is actually painted around and just allowed to be white paper showing thru. Some artists call these "little windows" and they are always in their backgrounds. I find I like them in certain situations but don't always put them into my backgrounds.

If you would like to try watercolor a good way to start would be to paint some of these Small collectors cards. They are fast, easy and fun! They will teach you to paint with a big brush because all brushes are big when your painting on a surface that is 2.5 by 3.5!

I sell these on ebay as there are just tons of folks who collect these small cards. Originals bring the higher prices the prints are usually .99 cents. its an inexpensive way to start an art collection and they can be displayed in a number of ways. On an easel, in a frame, matted in intersted groupings, or placed in plastic baseball card sleeves and kept in an album.
ACEO stands for: Atist collector Edition or Original some folks call them ATC which stands for: Artist Trading Card then there are OSWOA Origninal Small Works of ART these are post card size paintings or silghtly larger. I noticed someone even has a book out now on how to paint these and market them. Trends seem to come and go we'll see where this one leads. I only paint a few a week and since their so small I can usually paint them pretty quick with drawing or planning. That makes them fun to paint.
email me shantmarie@aol.com