"Two Cups of Tea" -- oil on stretched canvas -- 11x14" -- Margie Guyot

"Yellow Primrose" -- oil on stretched canvas -- 11x14" -- Margie Guyot

Winter has returned with a vengeance! It snowed ALL day yesterday. A perfect day for painting in the studio. I'd found this vintage, striped table runner at a resale shop in Charlevoix last week. Loved the "cottagey" colors! I'm sure there will be more paintings with this cloth.

I love painting cups with tea. It's fascinating -- the colors change so quickly as the tea brews. These teacups are ancient, with "China" stamped on the bottom. Thin as paper. With little hand-painted bluebirds and flowers. It's a miracle they survived my move up north.

Because it was so dark & dreary outside, I had to set up a studio light to get some sense of sunlight and shadow patterns. Still, it's not quite as good as real sunshine.

The primrose plant came from Glen's in Charlevoix. I'm going to try to keep it alive until spring, so I can plant it in my flower garden.

I found I had to pre-mix all the colors of the striped fabric in fairly large quantities before doing the actual painting. I enjoy loading on the paint to get a "thick & juicy" look. Not only is the scene interesting, but I also like people to notice the beauty of the actual paint, its wonderful "mooshiness" and color.

Day #4 -- "White Duck" -- oil on canvas -- 30x40" -- Margie Guyot

This is day #4 of working on this painting. I'd been unable to get into my studio last week, due to a number of urgent tasks. And I had a house full of guests all weekend. Soon as they left this afternoon, I made a beeline out into the studio, turned on the radio to "Prairie Home Companion" and started in.

This was our 3rd day of bright sunshine here in the Traverse City/Charlevoix area, and it was quite a change to see my setup in actual sunlight. So I tried taking advantage of it to bring out a bit more definition in the shadows and highlights. Added the stems of the chinese lanterns (and their corresponding shadows). I was seeing portions of the white paper being backlit, so I added those changes. The glass vase was showing a lot of sparkle, so I spent a little time on that as well. Started adding a bit of the print detail in the yellow scarf. Played with the feathers a bit and added the duck's eye.

I took a short break and went back into the house for a couple minutes. When I went to the door, there were 3 deer out in the front yard, chewing on corn. The snow's about knee-deep here and they're having a hard time finding food. Soon they bounded off and I went back in to the studio.