Blogger: Blogger Dashboard

Blogger: Blogger Dashboard

Garden and Hibiscus Update

I want to take you around my garden for a walk. Come see a few of the goodies that are growing. First a stop at the Plumeria plant that is in the second season waiting to bloom, the Plumeria has such beautiful foilage. I can't wait to see the flower and smell it's beautiful frangrance.

.

to the right of the Plumeria are some yellow and orange daisy plants, and lavender in the front. Below is a top view of the Plumeria, I have to repot the Plumeria this weekend so it has more room to grow.

Below is my Russian Sage surrounded by mint, lemon sage and oregano with latrice shoots in back. The Latrice have beautiful purple flowers stalks!!

A cucumber flower!! mmmm... soon it will be a cucumber salad everyday for a month or two, followed by canning cucumber pickles!!!

Blueberries!! This is a four year old plant that gives us about a quart of berries. I planted three more berry plants this year because I love blueberry pancakes in the winter!!!

Lastly, I am happy to report that I am almost finished with my Yellow Hibiscus and it won't be long till I have it hung in my bedroom or hallway. I want to paint a series of Hibiscus and Plumeria flowers. I love the way I feel when I look at these flowers, maybe it's the "Déjà vu" of Hawaiin Island scents and trade winds. These flowers always make me feel cheerful and energetic!!!

I will take you around on more garden walks when the weather co-operates soon! Until then happy picking!!!

.

Hibiscus Fever

I want to do series of tropical flowers on a large scale. I drafted out a Hibiscus on a 12 x 12 gallery wrapped canvas with acrylics. Then I will refine the flower and leaves with oils. I hope to finish this by Monday July 4th!! Wish me luck!!! Have a great weekend out there. I hear the sun is going to shine!!!

Blogpost Update

Hi everyone, I was able to figure out how to get the "followers" and "comment" issues resolved!!!!! I had to do a google upgrade to "Google Chrome". Don't be alarmed when the directions state this will replace your homepage. You can always reset your home page. It's pretty easy. Just go to google chrome and upgrade!! Then sign in your account and type a comment, put the title of your page as the id and hit enter. Voila!! All the great functions of Blogger will return like magic!!! Give it a try.
Good Luck, Georgina

PAINT BOX: Sunday in the Garden with Art

PAINT BOX: Sunday in the Garden with Art: "sunday was a glorious day at the south shore botanical garden. 'Women Artists of Kauai' had a show and sale at the garden and the weather co..."

June Painting Notes

My daughter posted a picture of her canoe and I thought it would make a great painting to give her for her birthday. I'm in the process of glazing in the shadows and working on getting the color right on the trees. I have to redo the water on the lower left and reglazing the reflection. What do you think? Maybe I'm glazing and using too much oil!!!

My art instructor loves events of the Civil war. He makes statues of both Confederate and Union Soldiers and gives us a history lesson on the era while we paint. During the last session he became obsessed with painting Abraham Lincoln.  A town in CT had a Lincoln painting stolen that was painted by John Denison Crocker in honor of Lincoln's March 1860 visit to Norwich. The frame stood empty in City Hall until the town decided to have an art contest to see if the painting of Lincoln could be reproduced by a lucky artists to again hang in City Hall. The grand prize was $8,000. Marc entered the contest and was one of the 10 or so lucky artists who made it to the finals, but through some controvesy and disappointment of many artist who submitted their paintings in anticipation, didn't win.

To get a more compelling story you can read about this at  Artist's re-creation of Lincoln painting earns $8,000 prize . Any way...point being Marc started painting a collection of other Civil War soldiers and Lincoln.

                                 Marc's copy of John Denison Crockers 1860 painting of Lincoln

                                  Marc's traditional portrait of Lincoln painted after the Crocker one above

Marc working on Geneal Sherman

Oh and this is so cute! A new student on her third week who never "painted" before wanted to paint a pug! I think she is closet painter!! What a great job she did! She only paints in acyrlic and can't be swayed yet to paint with oil. We'll see if we can pursuade her before the end of the term!!

June happenings!

Carnival 2011

I thought I would share our family's Sunday before Lent event held every year for as long as I can remember since meeting my husband. My husband's family called it Carnival! It is celebrated on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday to mark the beginning of Lent.  We have the traditional  lasagna dinner with italian pastries on that day.

Cream Puffs

Chocolate Eclairs

I carry on this tradition now for our family but  have changed it a little by adding the "Mardi gra" effect with masks and beads for decorations, mainly for the grandchildren to enjoy and have something other than the religious values to remember.

Our granddaughter Sarah has a birthday in March and since the lenten season started later this year  we decided to include Sarahs birthday into the days feastivites adding to "Mardi gra" theme. Our oldest daughter made a "Mardi gra" cake for Sarah! 

The fondit is also homemade, I secretly think she may be the next cake boss!!  I'm so proud of her!.

Thank you for enjoying this event with us!

UFO #1

I started  this painting in the fall class of 2010. We took many photo's of an organic nature for a composition that we could agree on as a group. We prepped a double thickness 10 x 24 bainbridge board with liquitex past gel, once that dried the  shells and the marble vases were drafted in with an HB pencil, then an acrylic wash of adobe tan was laid over the entire piece. After the abobe tan dried I painted in with acrylic with the blues, grays, diazanine purple, van dyke browns, flesh tint, buff titanium, oranges and alizarin crimson lest not forget the whites and greens over the sketched in shells and vases and background.

The oil overlay was added working the curtain, table cloth, marble vases and shells from right to left with the same colors only in the oil paints. I am stuck on the shell at the left of the picture, and I am still adding glazes over the marble and large shell to create depth. I will keep working on this a little at time until I get it right! 

 I'm on a mission over the next couple of weeks to actually try to finish the half dozen or so UFO's hanging around in the basement. Last night I finally finished my dream beach scene after lets say.... three or four years!  Now that I've taken  art classes on a regular basis, I feel a little more confident mixing colors and actually can make a cloud look like a cloud. Although these clouds are kind of bumpy because the paint aged from when I plastered it on three or four years ago, and couldn't be scraped off or painted out.  I framed this and have it hung in the guest room called my Island room! It's 16 x 20 and with the frame it looks great over the bed.

                                                    I think I'll this call "Dreams of Kehei"

Now on to the next UFO now that I'm on a roll!  

What's been keeping me busy?

My winter art class is over, and I have completed four still life oils! I framed all of them wih black plein aire frames and hung them in my dining room and foyer. I think I like painting more than I love to sew. (I can hear my stash calling me to come play with them for a while too) Now that I have learned the technique to create compositions, I see more paintings coming in the near future. I would love to paint some jalopeno's for my daughters kitchen. What do you think?

Two peppers


Sweet and Sour

Red Hot Aubergine

Bittersweet

Long Cold Winter!!

It's been awhile since my last post, I have been busy between vacations, holidays, Monday night class, Thursday night grandchildren and Friday through Sunday recovering from grandchildren and just plain trying to stay warm! It has been a tough winter with over 3 to 4 feet of snow and ice and battling the air temp between -8 to 20* since the beginning of January 2011!! I have to get on a roll again. Over the January break from classes I accepted consignment to shorten 15 mens long shirt sleeve cuffs along with 4 womens wool suit jackets.  Have to admit I was good! Approached them like piecework ripping pinning, color coding threads, gave a quick shot of steam to set the seam, folded and completed within a week (to my surprise) and an extra $202!! Sorry didn't have time to take pictures I always think I should have taken pictures after the fact, why is that????

Here's a 9x12 oil of the Kalalau Mtn Ridge in Kauai. .I think I need to tweak it a little bit more and blend the clouds in lightening up the blue.  What do you think?