Spring beauties......

How wonderful it was to return from a wonderful, and much needed, vacation and see my Spring garden beautifully welcoming me home. Before we left I had sprinkled all my perennials with fertilizer, just hoping that the extra dose of nutrients would coax some additional blooms. I guess my experiment paid off! These gorgeous blue poppies on the left have never bloomed like this before! So many at one time! I love them.

I looks like my azaleas survived our harsh winter as well. This poor bush is so misshapen from all the heavy snow its had to endure over the last few winters- it's shape is none to pretty, but the blossoms are spectacular! I was so surprised last night, as we arrived home, to see my azalea bushes awash with color. What a treat! I would have been so saddened to have arrived home and missed these Springtime treats.

A Quebec City beginning....

It's so much fun starting a new painting. After going through a lot of my reference photos, I settled on my photos of Quebec City. What a gorgeous city it is! It's like visiting an old European city without the cross-Atlantic plane trip! We had such fun on our trip there a couple

summers ago. I took photo after photo during our sightseeing strolls through the narrow streets of this charming city.

I finally settled on a view of the city, seen in the photo on the left, taken in the morning, before too many tourists clog the streets. I took a lot of time on the drawing, getting the perspective down pat. I know it's hard to see in the photo here, but I wanted to show the amount of pencil work necessary when doing paintings with a lot of detail. I put in some sky color, plus some early washes of color on the buildings. What I like so much about the photo this painting will be based on are the small patches of bright morning sunlight dappling the old stone buildings. The foreground will be in shadow, and the sunlit sections will be more in the background, toward the center of the painting.

This will be a fun painting to do, especially at this time of year. We are crazy busy, and although some artists shy from heavily detailed paintings, this kind of painting is actually relaxing for me. I hope I can do a series of Quebec City paintings. Now for those extra hours in the day......!