The Latest.

This painting is just finished, "Caladium", a botanical watercolor. I haven't painted a purely botanical work in a long time, possibly years. Usually there's a bird or insect included but this is purely plant. I've painted this plant before, and added them to my garden, but until now they've never flowered. This one is flowering profusely, and it's fascinating. I learned that they are a member of the arum family, like the jack-in-the-pulpit, and the flower has a scent reminiscent of wintergreen- like the Lifesavers!

Here it is:

Inspiration

This is a recent photo of one of my gardens. The Siberian and Bearded Irises are both in bloom. The persistent cool weather is garden-friendly. The current plague of gypsy moth larvae is not. The trees are crackling with the sound of their munching, and they are crawling over buildings and dropping out of the trees onto defenseless humans below. Eeeewww.

Making the Best of It.

Having to take some unpaid time off from work has had a benefit. I had a chance to meet with the Reed-Turner Botanical Artists for the first time in well over a year to discuss our group's issues and actually draw in the field. It really was in a field, a prairie, and I had a chance to learn more about the prairie wildflowers, all while swatting mosquitoes. (Couldn't resist adding a complaint).

A Garden Party

I don't enter many gallery shows, but this one is tailor-made! "Garden Party" will feature garden-related art, and I'll be showing 3 original pieces: the Robin and Magnolia painting seen in the last entry, the Goldfinch and Coneflower, and the Nasturtium and Magicicada, both shown in earlier posts on this blog. Opening reception June 19, show will end July 16.

The Latest.

I try to cover all 4 seasons my paintings - Hmmm . . . can you guess which season this one is? Spring hasn't come easy this year but this painting is my way of celebrating its arrival.

"Sign of Spring", Robin and Magnolia, Original Watercolor by Anne Gilna

The Art and Plant Sale

It was good to get together with the Reed-Turner Botanical Artists, though art sales were slow. It just was. The artists are very talented, and we're keeping keeping on.

A Positive Sign

The NSUC show went really well. Every year I make an appearance to set up for this show, greeting the same volunteers, occupying the same booth space, and even seeing many of the same customers. Most of the same artists are there. It's very reassuring, yet strange that an entire year passes in between a show, and little changes from one to the next. Attendance was noticeably higher, in part due to bad weather (the opposite of an outdoor show) and free admission.

Back to the printer issue. It turns out that a new print head, again, was needed. We're giving it another try. It's working great presently, though by deleting and reinstalling the printer driver, the color adjustments I'd made were lost, and images looked too intensely colored, and generally off. I'm making the corrections, recalling the general tendency of the program to overdo it regarding saturation.