French Press & Biscotti

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Ah, Italy....Coffee and biscotti.. reminds me of climbing trips to the Italian Riviera with my friend Sue a few years ago. The majority of my foreign travel over the years has been ostensibly climbing related, but I always carry my sketchbook and camera. Sue and I used to go to Finale Ligure, and climb great rock, drink great wine, eat great food and drink the best coffee in the world. I had pillar-box red hair at that time - it's been almost every colour, including bright pink (which it was when I met my husband, but he still liked me anyway) Anyway, I'm sure us freaky coiffed, foul mouthed, drunken Brits weren't exactly model tourists, but we had a great time, and I painted a lot from the sketches and pictures I took. Here's a couple:

Italian Paintings and Sketches

Cup & Saucer

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I bought some new brushes a couple of days ago, and it's made a huge difference! I love the marks they make, and no stray bristles means more precision - strange then, that my brushwork feels so much looser in today's and yesterday's paintings. I think it's something to do with confidence, these two feel like the practically painted themselves. I also gleaned a cool tip from Brendy Vaughan's blog via Carole Marine, a couple of favourite painting blogs of mine - use the Munsell Colour Wheel. This has opened up more ideas about my use of colour, which in the past has been fairly limited, as a worked almost exclusively in black and white for many years. It's hard not to go a bit mad for colours and use all my favourite ones all the time, or just be a bit dull and obvious, and use 'natural' colours for everything. This will take some practice, but I've got every day....

My Little Teapot

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Yes, yet again more of my favorite beverage paraphernalia...

Work in progress..

This is the full version of 'Amish Schoolhouse at Dusk' in progress. Measuring 50x20", it's quite a jump up from the 6x4" study!

Amish Schoolhouse at Dusk

This is a study for a large piece I'm working on. I love the quality of the light here, and the starkness of the school, kids and trees silhouetted against the fading light. I'll post some progress pictures of the large one tomorrow.

Amish Blue/Green

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I've been told that the original reason for the Amish painting their doors blue was to 'advertise' the fact that the daughter of the house was available for marriage. I'm not sure that's true any more, since all the houses we saw had blue doors...or maybe there were a lot of single girls around? Anyway, I love that colour, and I've had an epic today trying to get it right. Turns out it's actually Thalo green (blue shade) mixed with white, which I had to drive 20 miles mid-painting to find. I don't think the photo does it justice, the original is a lot more luminous - but the camera just wouldn't capture it perfectly. I'm going to try again tomorrow in the natural morning light.