"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.

"Red Primrose" -- oil on panel -- 11x14" -- Margie Guyot

Don't you love this intense red? I saw this little plant at the grocery store last weekend. I don't think I could chose a favorite color, but if somebody was twisting my arm, I guess I'd chose red. Or yellow. No -- wait....

We went through a week or so of totally blah weather: cloudy skies, with very little interesting views to paint. And when it's down around zero, I like to have something inside the studio to work on. I believe I can plant this primrose outside in the spring. I have some yellow primroses and what the heck -- I should go back to the grocery store and get one in every color!

The vintage tablecloth is from a garage sale, of course. The rose glass is from my favorite aunt, Aunt Madeline. If you've been following this blog for a while, you would probably recognize the frog. I thought the viridian-green of the frog went along well with the viridian-green in the tablecloth.

Although there are 3 big southern-exposure windows on my studio, it's been too cloudy to cast strong shadows. So I had to pull out the studio light to create a sunlit effect.