Feeling Blue? - Think Hydrangeas!

Nothing beats the blues better than a cheerful painting, and the bright colors in these paintings will pick you up quickly. Thanks to Jill for suggesting I show these to you.
10" x 10" (25.4 cm) oil on stretched canvas with a 1.5" gallery finished side (no frame needed).
I love to paint hydrangeas! For one thing. I get to use my favorite blues. I like putting them against the orange and yellow background because it really makes the blue shine! I also like the texture I can use. Lots of thick oil paint gives them such a neat texture. (a closeup so you can see the texture)
The painting with just hydrangeas is in my Etsy shop.
http://www.bearhollowcreations.etsy.com/

This one with my violin in it is hanging in my office. It is 18x24 oil on stretched canvas.
18x24 oil on stretched canvas

These flowers are hanging in my lovely wife's office. She loves purple flowers, I love the blue hydranges and the red roses are for love. How sweet is that?

(This entry copied from the EtsyLux blog - www.etsylux.blogspot.com )

Hydrangeas in a Green Vase

This is my latest oil painting. I've had it close to finished for a very long time, but things have been rather crazy around Bear Hollow, so I haven't painted much for many weeks. I thought I had used cobalt green for the vase, but I just looked and it is thalo green. However, in this picture it doesn't look very green to me. As I've mentioned in other posts, my camera doesn't do purple and apparently it doesn't pick up this color of green very well either. The shelf isn't so black in person either. Perhaps someone should buy me a nice camera for my birthday...



This painting is 10x10 inches - oil on stretched canvas.

Handbells ACEO

I needed some ATCs which is the trading version (no money is exchanged) of ACEOs. ATCs were the original idea. ACEOs were invented as ATCs to sell on Ebay. Anyway, I made some ATCs with handbells on them for a ACT trade Thursday at JoAnn's Etc. Unfortunately I realized too late that I will be out of town for the trade day and I have already promised to bring cards. So I took cards over today for my painting instructor, Jean, to trade for me. Here is a picture of some of them. They are handbells and notes ringing above the ground.

Fall Leaves ACEOs

These were one painting originally. I didn't like the composition of the piece after I finished it. I tried matting it different ways to make it look better. I decided a week or so ago to cut it up and make ACEOs out of it. I like how they turned out.

My First ACEO for sale

I"m trying something new. I've always liked seeing other artists' ACEOs and I've seen that other people actually buy them, so I've made some. This one is from a set of five that I made. I'll post pictures of the others later - perhaps tomorrow. They are watercolor paintings painted on watercolor paper then mounted to a playing card. I hope to not only sell these, but to attract people to my shop to buy stained-glass art and bigger paintings.

My Violin

I really enjoyed painting this. The hardest part for me was getting the color of the violin. I tried many different ways to get brown using raw umber, burnt umber, burnt sienna and raw sienna and I tried adding other colors to those colors, but nothing looked right. I wanted the color that my violin is, not just some brown. I ended up using orange and blue! and the darker parts are orange and purple. for those of you new to mixing colors, when you use two colors that are oppostie each other on the color wheel you get brown or black, so it makes sense that I could get a brown color this way. I love the way it turned out. I've had many very nice compliments from people on flickr. You can read them here if you are interested.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bearhollowcreations/367513867/in/set-72157594427085595/

I thought you might like to see how the painting looked in progress.

Cheryl's Flowers

Cheryl wanted a painting for her office. She loves purple flowers, I love blue flowers and the red roses are for love. How sweet is that? And of course no color is more beautiful than cobalt blue so it's the perfect vase color. The yellow sets all the colors off beautifully (if I say so myself).

The camera doesn't pick up the purple very well. The purple flowers look kind of blue here, but they are a nice deep purple in person.

When I began this painting I had a red vase. You may notice how the flowers change as the painting goes along. for instance the purple flower on the lower left had a petal that wasn't connected correctly. It just wasn't right. I fixed it as I finished up the painting.