My Tax "Vacation"

Work in Progress: Petunias-(C) Jeanne Guerin-Daley

Here's a pic of a work-in-progress. I have been so busy working on my annual [always huge] tax-paper-gathering job. After spending most of the day and evening on that, I was starting to go stir-crazy. I decided it was time for a change of activity in order to stay sane!

So last night, even though it was already quite late, I got out a quarter sheet of some "Artistico Fabriano" watercolor paper. Then I chose a reference photo from my collection of images that I had photographed of my summer garden flowers, grabbed a brush and attacked the paper! This image is about two petunia blossoms (the mostly undone areas of yellowish white right now) next to a fence.

I tend to waver back and forth between loose and tight techniques, depending on my mood and the application. The acrylic paintings painted for the Michaels workshops lean toward the tight/realistic... which is as it should be, for the purposes of teaching the basics.

But when I paint for me, I try to let out whatever needs to come out. Being loose is often a way I might start out. But this one, I actually started with a quasi-realistic light pencil drawing. Not too much details, but I did spend time on erasing and redrawing to place the objects where and how I wanted them. When I started laying down those beautiful colors though, I let the brush and my muse take over and had such fun!

One way you can tell that painting is your passion:
Your son tells you that it's getting close to two AM and you thought it was just past midnight. . . And, you don't care! You just want to keep painting!  Sometimes I wish we didn't have to go to sleep at night to recharge. I would have so much more painting time!

Stay tuned to see the petunias emerge...