Poppy

A friend of mine loves to paint poppies, and she does it with style and flair that I find it difficult to match.  Anyway, she showed me a "recipe" for the colors she uses, and I played around with her color choices on scraps of YUPO synthetic paper last evening and this morning before it got too hot upstairs.

Here is one of my miniature paintings - not too bad.  I enjoy working small and loose.  The YUPO makes it very easy to achieve loose bright colors, and it is wonderful for lifting out small bits of white and highlights.

Lately I have not been painting much, though I've been thinking about it every day.  The exception is figure drawing, something I do each Monday evening at UW Whitewater. The thing is, although I think I am improving my direct observation drawing, there isn't much I can do with drawings of undraped models.  To me, some of the drawings are beautiful, but I seldom show them to anyone for fear of embarrassing them.  Perhaps I am not giving other people credit, and am simply projecting some of my own timidity. 

Don't know.

I'm using the hot temperatures on my studio as an excuse not to spend time up there, even though there is a painting that I began last spring waiting for me to pay some attention to it.  I go in there, look at the start of the painting, and then think about doing anything else.  Clean the work table.  Prepare some papers for a collage.  Practice drawing hands and feet for figure drawing studio.  Draw a couple figures from a vintage photo.  Take a nap.

Maybe that's what I need to do right now.