Summer Landscape with Blue Flowers (Senior Citizen Painting Class)

What a treat to guide these wonderful senior citizens through an oil painting!

This was our 6th time to teach OLLI students.  Click HERE to see the others.

Everyone of them did such a good job with their landscapes!

Yes, it's a lot of work to get prepared for teaching an OLLI class, but it's all worth it when the students come in.  My teaching partner Julie and I couldn't have been prouder!

Favorite moment... One of the participants thought I looked familiar and we discovered why. I had her daughter in my 4th grade class about 30 years ago!!  Of course I remembered her!  She texted her daughter who texted back some specific happy memories she had from that year with me. Oh, happy sigh...

Oil painting on 11"x 14" Wrapped Canvas

Click Summer Landscape with Blue Flowers if you'd like to purchase my example painting.

Field of Blue Flowers II

My painting partner Julie & I will be teaching a landscape painting class for senior citizens in a couple of months.  It takes a lot of thought and planning, but we have so much fun with it.

Part of the preparation means being really familiar with this painting and very confident with painting it so that it becomes second nature.  We don't want to be figuring out what might work while there are a dozen new painters watching.

That means we'll each paint it again... and again... and again... paint it big... paint it small... paint it on canvas... paint it on canvas board... paint it in stages to use as models... paint it until all the kinks in the process are worked out... We hope!

This one was done last month and was a prize of the hen-coop contest.  

It was on a tiny 5"x 7" canvas.

This one was done a few years ago and is now hanging in its forever home.  

It was on a big 18"x 24" canvas.

 Julie & I first painted it in 2019 during a weekend at 

Welcome Home Retreat. (Click HERE to see photos and read about that!)

There's a great YouTube lesson that was out teacher for it.

We're hoping for as much success with this class as we've had in the previous sessions.

2019 - Still Life - Apple

2019 - Nature - Bluebird

2020 - Floral - Day Lilly

2021am - Landscape - Autumn

2021pm - Landscape - Autumn

2022am - Still Life - Strawberries

2022pm - Still Life Strawberries

Oil Painting on 11"x 14" Wrapped Canvas

[SOLD]

Field of Bluebonnets

Texans love their bluebonnets.  About this time of year photographs of fields covered with them begin to show up on Facebook. People plop their babies in the middle of them to take their pictures.  Couples get their engagement photos with bluebonnets all around.  It's clear why... they're simply, unbelievable beautiful. 

Ok... I have to come clean... deep breath... I have never actually seen bluebonnets growing in a field!  
I know!  I know!
I just haven't ever been in the right place at the right time! (I know my friend Karen is probably gasping in utter disbelief and disappointment.) 

Although when we were in Maine, the lupines were everywhere, and I couldn't take enough pictures of them. (I think bluebonnets and lupines are in the same family. So, does that count?)

I was asked to paint four large paintings, one for each of the main bedrooms of Welcome Home Retreat.  I started with this one because I had the idea for it.  

Not long ago I painted a field of blue flowers and loved the perspective the depth, so I decided to use that as my model.

I didn't have one reference photo to use, so this project was a series of making it up as I went along.  (That is not at all how I usually paint, but I had an idea and a confidence that I could pull it off... or at least a back up plan that I could paint over it if it didn't work.)

First, I kept this other painting where I could see it.  Second, I pulled up so many photos of bluebonnets... fields of bluebonnets... individual bluebonnets... leaves of bluebonnets... 
Because bluebonnets don't have the tall thing-y like the blue flowers in this painting, I wanted to add something in the background to draw attention and add interest.   I tucked a little cabin in the background, added some closer trees to push the treeline farther back.  And, because it is Texas, a couple of longhorns are back there too.  When Sheila suggested an outhouse, I laughed because, of course, I wouldn't do that... but... somehow an outhouse did appear... far away off to the side and back... as an outhouse should be! 

It had to be big... because...
Well, everybody knows...
Everything's bigger in Texas!

The trick to finishing this painting was simply getting enough but not too many bluebonnets.  I think there are about 13 zillion... at least it felt like it.  

I keep thinking that this whole painting was made from trial and error... but honestly... it all worked!  Everything I tried... well... turned out the way I'd hoped!  That doesn't happen very often!  
Nothing really went wrong... wait... ummm... there was one thing that did go terribly, terribly wrong during the process of painting this painting... If you haven't already, you really must read "A Painting Disaster Story."


Thanks to my sister, Sheila, for the opportunity and ideas.
Thanks to my art friend, Nelvia, for the advice along the way.


Original Oil Painting on 24"x 36" Wrapped Canvas
[SOLD]

Field of Blue Flowers

I can not stop looking at this painting!
I'm not a fan of blue (I know, I know!  Nearly everybody in the world is a huge fan of blue... sorry!) and this is clearly a painting about blue, but I love so may things about the piece overall. Honestly, it was an unexpected treat to like it so much.

This painting was the our biggest project of our painting workshop weekend at Welcome Home Retreat.  My Thursday-afternoon-art friends and I  traveled to Weatherford, Texas for 3 days being pampered, being very well fed, and being creative.


On other times we've had a teacher, but this time we had to come up with our own lessons.  Hooray for YouTube!    Julie & I would watch a little while, try to understand the colors and techniques, then turn to our canvases to try it ourselves. 


The whole painting was kind of one experiment after another. 

We got to use our fingers (in rubber gloves) for whisping out the clouds. We needed a fan brush for the trees in the distance. We used a big wide flat brush for the field and a color that didn't make sense at all until the end. There were layers of paint on our canvases that ended up being important when we dragged an erasing tool through them for some of the grasses. Then we got to load palette knives with lots of blue for the flowers. Finally a long bristled signature brush finished out the grasses.

Packing supplies for this kind of trip is tricky.  There's limited space in the car, but it's hard not to bring every single thing! Would you look at all those brushes!  Really?  Did I think I'd need all those?  


We began this painting first thing Friday morning, and stopping only for meals, we stayed with it until a late-night bed time.

What a fun day!  My sister Sheila worked across from me.  She was sewing gorgeous new pillow cases for each bed there. She finished all 28 during the weekend.  Can you see that little old machine she's sewing with?  It's a Featherweight that she bought (already old then) in 1970 when she left home for college.  She says, "It still sews like a charm!"

Our friend Jeanne was working across the workroom on her mixed media assemblage.   She looked up and said, "Oh, you're finished!"  I asked how in the world she knew that.  She said, "I can tell.  You have your signing-your-name face that you have when you're putting your signature on."  What?  Do I have a signing-your-name face? Hmmm...

Ta-Da!!!  
A pretty good day's work!


And a good fresh Coke in a pretty goblet is pretty standard sight at my art table.
Mmmmmm....

Does this painting
a.) Draw you in?
b.) Draw your eye back through the field? to the trees?
c.) Draw your eye up through the sky? to the clouds?
d.) Make you feel like taking a deep contented breath?

For me it was a yes, yes, yes, yes... 

Thanks to our YouTube lesson painter lessons.rybakow.com. (In case you want to give it a try... A little tip... He doesn't speak at all and has the most annoying music ever. Unless you want to hear an 80 minutes of that, mute the volume.)

Oil painting on 18"x 24" wrapped canvas
[SOLD]