On Tuesday, I emailed the picture of the painting to the person who bought it and I realized that we had had a misconception of ideas. She really wanted to have one of her white pond lilies showing in the picture. I was much more interested in the orange day lilies!  But I realized that filling her wish would not be difficult. I brushed out the bright yellow that was there and put in one bright lily with a few pads, and another not so bright behind the reeds to the right. Then I redid the foliage in front of it to make it fit in. I added a little bright yellow there and also further left to highten the sense of light coming through.  I also lightened and softened the shadow on the grass going off the left, as I thought it was too strong and not a good shape. When you do commissions, you have to expect some changes–hopefully minor, like this one. Of course, I”m not getting paid for this, so I wouldn’t make too many changes!  (This is why I don’t do portraits!!!).  She seemed very happy with the picture otherwise, and hopefully now, will be completely satisfied.

Now to play with some black and white photos in advance of next week’s abstracting the landscape workshop.  It’s a follow up from the one done in April and this time, I’m going to make it a little more difficult!  Stay tuned.

I also want to extend an invitation to you–my readers–to contribute to this blog!  If you have a picture that worked for a particular reason or created an “aha” moment that you’d like to share with the others, please send a good jpg image (s) to me along with a brief writeup in Word.  It can be about the combination of materials, color usage, or whatever you think would be of interest.  Send as attachments in an email to: jeanhirons48@gmail.com  I hope you’ll take advantage of this as I think we would all benefit!  Your name will be in the title of the post. You can remain anonymous if you want, but I hope you will feel comfortable sharing your work with others. I don’t plan to give a critique but others should feel free to make comments.  My guidelines are to be kind, positive, honest and constructive!  The comments on Facebook are worthless–but still nice to get!

Geiser backyard, 16 x 20, pastelbord