"Red Tulips" - oil on canvas - 36x36" - Margie Guyot
This painting I kind of did by surprise. I'd planned on doing an entirely different scene, with totally different colors. On the way home from work on Thursday, I stopped at Kroger's to buy flowers in a gold or ivory color. But wow -- I saw these tulips and they just blew me away! Loved the hot pink wrapping paper around the pot, too. I knew I had to paint them when my heart started going on overdrive!
So I got home with them and had to rip everything off my little makeshift table (actually part of a large cardboard box, propped on a plant table). I'd had it set up for a scene with a teal/gold/ivory theme and that just HAD to GO! Just the weekend before, I'd unearthed this marvelously embroidered silk shawl (from a garage sale, of course). I arranged it on the "table" and composed around the pot of tulips. I'd picked a small bunch of forsythia from my backyard last weekend, which was a good thing. Michigan's weather has turned truly foul, with blowing snow and killer frosts, which threw the brakes on all outdoor flowers.
The cockatiel is really a candle (another great garage sale find). Actually, everything in this painting came from a garage sale -- except for the spectacular pink leopard stiletto booties. Oh, and the cool, swirly, hand-blown glass pitcher (on the right side) came from Goldner Walsh Nursery (in Pontiac). I love the way it distorted the shape of the leopard stilettos, don't you? It also looks good when filled with lemonade. But that's another painting for this summer.
Drawing the composition in is always the hardest part, but I MAKE myself do it. Too easy to find excuses to put off drawing, but the elves won't do it for me, so I gotta just DO it. Drawing in the complex folds of the hot pink trim on the pot of tulips was kind of fun. Hey -- it's SO much more fun than washing floors! Another thing I enjoyed about painting this one was getting to pull every tube of red paint out -- and using it. Some colors just can't be mixed. I started drawing this in on Good Friday and finished painting it on Easter Sunday.
So I got home with them and had to rip everything off my little makeshift table (actually part of a large cardboard box, propped on a plant table). I'd had it set up for a scene with a teal/gold/ivory theme and that just HAD to GO! Just the weekend before, I'd unearthed this marvelously embroidered silk shawl (from a garage sale, of course). I arranged it on the "table" and composed around the pot of tulips. I'd picked a small bunch of forsythia from my backyard last weekend, which was a good thing. Michigan's weather has turned truly foul, with blowing snow and killer frosts, which threw the brakes on all outdoor flowers.
The cockatiel is really a candle (another great garage sale find). Actually, everything in this painting came from a garage sale -- except for the spectacular pink leopard stiletto booties. Oh, and the cool, swirly, hand-blown glass pitcher (on the right side) came from Goldner Walsh Nursery (in Pontiac). I love the way it distorted the shape of the leopard stilettos, don't you? It also looks good when filled with lemonade. But that's another painting for this summer.
Drawing the composition in is always the hardest part, but I MAKE myself do it. Too easy to find excuses to put off drawing, but the elves won't do it for me, so I gotta just DO it. Drawing in the complex folds of the hot pink trim on the pot of tulips was kind of fun. Hey -- it's SO much more fun than washing floors! Another thing I enjoyed about painting this one was getting to pull every tube of red paint out -- and using it. Some colors just can't be mixed. I started drawing this in on Good Friday and finished painting it on Easter Sunday.
Labels: art glasses, cockatiel, Easter, embroidered, forsythia, garage sale, hot pink, leopard, oil paintings, paintings, shawl, stiletto heels, tulips
posted by Charlevoix Sax Quartet at 10:04 AM
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