"Poinsettias" -- oil on birch panel -- 8x10" -- Margie Guyot

Finally the poinsettias are coming into the stores! I'd been waiting for these hot little numbers. I've been doing lots of plein air landscapes and things were getting to be dark & gloomy! There's nothing like a good dash of red to liven things up.

This is just a tiny poinsettia I picked up for $3.33 at the grocery store. I set it on a red brocade fabric my brother brought over from China. It was quite a challenge to paint, as there was a lot of detail to it. Of course I could have painted in all the little details, but I wanted to keep this "loose and juicy". The two Christmas ornaments must be well over 50 years old. They were old when I was a kid and somehow they survived moving several times.

This little plant is surrounded by a gold foil sleeve and it was reflecting in quite an interesting way. It was kind of difficult to photograph this. It's extremely wet and gooey and the light today was very dim. We're having a big ice storm at the moment here in NW Michigan. So the bulb on the far right was glaring. Really, it's darker.

Oh -- now I see the ice storm has changed over to snow. Yee-haw!