Mom and daughter watercolors

Two new art works for your viewing pleasure today--the shark picture is by my daughter, Jemma (you can see more of her work on our joint web site, www.salume.org). This piece is now hanging in the Foster City Community Center show. It's not a very new painting, but it sure looks cute in the show.

The leaf picture is the one I showed you recently "in progress"--I finished it this weekend. It's a large one, about 30 inches by 40 inches. After I painted the entire thing, I had to paint over the background areas with a light purple glaze to give it more depth. That took awhile!

Painting in progress

I went to a painting workshop in Sonoma last weekend, and decided to start a new, smaller painting as the huge leaf painting is just too large to lug around. Here is a picture of it "in progress"--you can see that it's like filling in the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I do small areas at a time, and try to at least get enough painted so I can concentrate on the shapes, not just the outlines.

Two Roses

Before I got into my "dried leaves" painting series, I did a lot of flowers and shells, on white and spattered backgrounds. This is one of the spattered backgrounds. I drew the roses from life, instead of taking a photo first like I do now. This meant I had to paint it in one session before the roses wilted.

New work

Now you can see a large watercolor "in progress"--I took a photo of these leaves on the ground at the Honolulu Zoo. Enlarged them on my computer and then transferred the design using Saral paper (it's like carbon paper--you put it on top of the blank paper, put the photocopy on top, and trace the shapes.)

The little photo quilt is boxes of flowers I saw on a tour of Oku nursery in Pescadero a couple of years ago. I was amazed at the bright colors all lined up so neatly, ready to be shipped. (www.hmbreview.com/articles/2005/07/13/community/community_news/story2.txt). This year's tour is July 15, you can choose which nurseries and farms you want to see. Info at (www.wliinc2.com/cgi/foxweb.dll/wlx/cal/wlxprofile?caleid=1473&cc=HMBCVB.)