Day 18 Seed Catalog

Day 18 Seed Catalog

It's spring time and our mailbox is full of new seed catalogs.

They are beautiful and open us up for a new hope of spring plants and flowers.

It is packed with beautiful glossy photographs of the most perfect flowers.

I was inspired to paint this gerbera daisy.

This needed to be painted in water mixable oil I thought.

I wanted to achieve a really loose vibrant look and feel.  

  Day 18 Seed Catalog

6" x 6" unframed oil on a panel

$50 + $6 shipping   

Because this is oil, it will take a minimum of 6 weeks to completely dry before I can ship.

Day 17 Market Day

Day 17 Market Day

Market Day 20" x 16" 

unframed acrylic on a stretched canvas

$200 + $20 shipping.
 

 We have two market days in Carrollton, KY.,

Wednesday in the afternoon and Saturday morning.

We also have a huge variety of products at our market.

But these two were spectacular this past fall.

Beautiful hardy mums and every kind of fall decorative imaginable.

Great job Monica and Mandy.

 

Day 16 Beauty on Display

Day 16 Beauty on Display

We're on the down hill slope in the 30 in 30 challenge.

6" x 6" unframed acrylic on a panel
$50 + $6 shipping. 

My husband and I have been farmers marketers for years.  We have raised everything you can grow, including four kids, in Kentucky accept for tobacco.  We've raised vegetables, fruits, berries, herbs, flowers, and even peanuts.  We've had green houses, gardens, and even built our own market on our farm in another part of Kentucky.  We belong to our local RiverView Farmer's Market here in Carroll County, KY. and have for years.

This is not our booth.  This belongs to another fellow farmer, Mandy, and she had the most gorgeous booth this past fall.  She brought in corn shocks, hay bales, all these pumpkins, squash and other kinds of fall decorations.  Mandy does all this work with two small boys who come and "help" her at the market.  They are old enough now they really do help, but she's been bringing them since they were in diapers.  Give a shout out to Houston and Patrick.  If you know them, leave a comment.

Hopefully where ever you live you regularly visit local farmers markets in your area.  Your food will be fresher, last longer, much longer, and have delicious taste you cannot get in a grocery store.  Besides, it is beautiful.

Day 15 Young and Lovely

Day 15 Young and Lovely

I've made it to day 15!

Can I hear some applause?!?

This time the challenge has been more fun for me.

My theme will seem sort of odd to some,

but I am going to a conference in late January for 4-H

and most of my paintings in this challenge have 4-H projects in mind.

My husband and I are both going and we will be learning how to teach projects

and how to work with the 4-H program.

 I have also been asked to set up a booth of my art 

and other attendees will have some time to shop among all the vendors.

Young and Lovely

was painted from a photograph I took at the 2013 Kentucky State Fair

and she was just that,

very young and very lovely.

She was much more cooperative than many of the old and wiser cows I photographed that day.

She stood there and let me photograph her as long as I wanted.

I don't know if she won anything that day,

but she won my heart

and that was enough.

Young and Lovely
5" x 7" unframed acrylic on a panel

$50 + $6 shipping

Day 14 Bella

Day 14 Bella

Meet Bella, she is one of the sweetest goats on planet earth.

Bella is one of the Nubian goats we raise.

Nubians are dairy goats and she is a great mama and a great milker.

My husband milks our goats and makes many varieties of goat cheese.

We can't sell the cheese because of the USDA and all the regulations involved.

We are a small producer so it would be cost prohibitive to build a cheese house,

install another septic system, 

as well as many other rules and regs,

so we eat some pretty great cheese.

She was named Bella because she has the markings of a Holstein cow

and one of our grandsons wanted to name her Bella after a cow bell.

She is just such a sweet goat but she is not as nosey as other goats.
FYI, goats don't eat tin cans, but they will try to lick out anything in a tin can.
They don't eat every plant, there are plants they don't like, but they will eat the bark right off some, but not all, trees,
They love cedar. 

They all have their own personalities and she's a sweetheart.

I'm really happy with this painting.  

I've been studying other animal paintings, especially the cats done by Diane Hoeptner,

and how she gets her cats to have that velvety look.

I asked her how many variations of gray does she use on her cat Cocoa and she said she starts with three but usually ends up with about five shades.

I studied the photographs I have of our goats and definitely saw a minimum of three shades of black, so I mixed up my black, took half of it and added white, and then took half of that and added more white,

and you can see on my palette where I also mixed some of the shades in varying amounts to get some of the highlights and shadows on all that black.
Naturally I had to do the same thing with white.
Whenever I paint white, I always start with gray and lighten it up in stages.
 

Thank you to Diane for your direction.

Click Here to go to Diane's blog.

Bella

5" x 7" unframed acrylic on a panel.

$50 + $6 shipping.  

Day 13 - Left My Comfort Zone

Day 13 Cuties

Lots of new firsts in this painting.

None of which were in my comfort zone.

Never painted fruit before  -  check

Never paintedfruit with a palette knife before  -  check

Never had my props roll away before  -  check

What comfort zone?

I had these cute little cuties

A whole box of cuties

And they are delicious,

So I thought, while we're doing things we've never done before, 

and completely out of my comfort zone,

Let's paint fruit.

And just to make it more difficult,

let's go for fruit painted with a palette knife.

And just when I thought I was getting the hang of the cutie on the right,

it rolled right off my table.

Then it lost its cutieness when I couldn't get it to stand back up where it was.

Absolutely out of my comfort zone.

So I worked on the cutie on the left.

Finally, right cutie decided to behave and return to its original position.
And we all lived together happily ever after.

It wasn't too bad being out of my comfort zone.

Day 13  Cuties

6" x 6" unframed acrylic on a panel

$50 + $6 shipping

Day 12 Rooster Power

Day 12 Rooster Power

I don't really know why I like painting chickens,

because I'm afraid of them.

This guy was so fun to paint.

I got the photograph from my go to website

Paint My Photo.com.

Gary Jones is the photographer

and you can click here to go to his blog.

What he posted on paintmyphoto.com can be used to paint from,

but I'm pretty sure he doesn't want anyone doing that from his fabulous

photos on his blog.

Copyright, ya know.

Anyway,

give my rooster and him a look if you can.

Rooster Power

6" x 6" unframed acrylic on a panel

$50 + $6 shipping