Sunflowers provide a never ending inspiration; I absolutely love these flowers with their huge heads and bold, bright yellow shapes. My challenge for this piece was the size. Larger paintings are my forte. This is scaled down to 5.25 by 7.5 — very minuscule for me. I edited the seed-head and just added a spiral […] more »
Looking through my sketchbooks, I decided to work from a sketch done around 2005 of my garden tulips. I used an archival matboard for the support, instead of watercolor paper. No background was planned initially; I worked with various paper scraps and color shapes to achieve an unusual background. Leaves are at the edges and […] more »
I couldn’t resist doing another bicycle collage, but found this one a challenge working in such a small format. As with my previous biking collages, I used pieces of an Iowa map to add interest to the design. Each of the small circles are pieces of the river on the map. The composition is colorful and […] more »
This artwork came about by way of request, but I have been thinking of doing one of the indian corn for a long time. I worked from my original pencil drawing done in 1980, which is very detailed and took me many months to complete. In the collage design my drawing is simplified — just […] more »
This piece was inspired by the interesting shape of the violin, and it was something that has been on the back burner for a while. When a friend asked me if I had any collages of this particular subject, I jumped right in and designed a piece. My favorite part of designing a piece is choosing […] more »
Flowers have always inspired me, and this piece was special because I wanted to try this in collage instead of the traditional watercolor methods. I began with a loose contour drawing of this Christmas plant and experimented using colored pencils in my sketchbook with unusual colors. I decided to limit my palette and edited my contour […] more »
Here is another still life of my garden flowers, which are lush and prolific this year. These are mostly daisies, with a couple sunflowers tucked inside the vase for color. My objective was to paint them wet-in-wet, taking advantage of the watercolor properties of mingling pigmented colors on damp paper. The grays were mixed using […] more »
The inspiration for this painting are my garden sunflowers. This year they are mainly dark yellows and rust-mahogany varieties. I never get tired of painting sunflowers. I love the large seed pods and triangular, wispy leaves surrounding the heads. The sturdy stems and huge leaves are a big part of my design too. To me, sunflowers […] more »
Now that it’s spring, you will notice my paintings are full of fresh flowers. I love the pale violets and lavenders of the coneflowers, and the orange and rust-colored centers. They attract numerous butterflies, bees and other interesting insects. My general plan of attack is to take numerous photographs, and if I have time, I […] more »
Many of my paintings are part of a series. This was the first depicting a selection of my brushes and palettes. Here, I collected all my painting materials and set them up outside in direct sunlight. I prefer a casual set up and don’t spend a lot of time arranging the items. I take many […] more »