Hello there!
How are you?
I’m hot and bug bitten and slightly sunburned (I leave the sunscreen by the door, when will I learn to PUT IT ON?). I’ve been keeping myself occupied in the garden as the pace of growing has accelerated in the warm weather and out in the fields painting the shifting crops of our beautiful area.
I sowed Emiko cabbage for the first time this year and they are beautiful when the light glows through the leaves. They are tender looking, more like giant rosettes of lettuce than my usual cabbages. As the note on the sketch says, I heard a vole nibbling a 2 ft tall sunflower he’d chewed down. I caught him eventually but not till after he ate about 10 lbs of potatoes. He was HUGE.
I am currently obsessed with strawberries. The ones I inherited from the people who lived here before us aren’t productive. They make beautiful blossoms in the spring and then nothing. Sigh. Instead I go picking at Green Bluff, but I need to buy some bare root plants next spring and make a patch of my own.
A fast color study of a barn in a canola field up north. They’ve all faded now in the heat, but as I drive around, I can see the sunflowers starting to grow. Perhaps this will be the year of yellow?
A more detailed painting in the same location as the above quick sketch.
Painting done in the studio
8” x 10” painted in the field
This field is a little further north. The Coors Beer billboard made me laugh. Man, I think we all need to chill. I could certainly use some.
Very fast painting of the strawberry field up at Green Bluff after I’d picked about 20 lbs of strawberries. I made fruit leather and my husband and I probably ate around 10 lbs ourselves!
Facing the opposite way, painting a stately barn and then I rabbited off to go make fruit leather. Strawberries don’t last in a hot car.
Igor Shiplin is a Russian painter (now deceased) who I discovered recently and I love his bright, impressionistic color and interesting compositions so I added him to my 100 Day Project master copy list. We’re past 80 days. The first 50 days flew by and the 10-15 days after that weren’t too hard but from the 65th day onward, it has really gotten tough, but I won’t let this beat me. I’m going to get to 100 days!
Igor Shiplin, gorgeous sunshine on a lawn.
David Dibble is a contemporary painter who has a great take on the trope of painting barns. He manages to make them his own.
David Dibble
David Dibble
Hope you are all doing well. Are you gardening or walking, reading or at the lake? What are you up to these days?