Balancing act

 

Thank you Tom for finding the title. This painting has been a challenge to paint but for all the good reasons. I have enjoyed the process and am happy with the outcome. Now, I have a question :  is the egg going to fall?.....

One egg is un oeuf

How many French eggs do you need? One egg is un oeuf  🤣🤣 eggcellent!

Representational

 

I'm painting again and it feels good. A light blue ribbon can mean many things in today's society. For me, it also means : hue, value and chroma.....some oil paint and voilà! 

DEITES GRANDIFLORA

Deites Grandiflora plant information says this plant is commonly called wood iris, fortnight lily, African iris, Japanese iris or butterfly iris. The blossoms are showy and last just a day, sometimes two. This oil painting took me a lot more than a couple of days to paint.....well, I'm a slow painter.

Anyway, I wanted to paint this striking beauty on a very dark background to accentuate its "splendiferousness". I added a butterfly in complement to its name and to add interest to the painting though I'm not sure about butterflies flying at night lol.

Three is a family

Today out of the blue, I painted this 36x28 cms "ACRYLIC" painting.....and it was 35°C outside. Only a little cooler inside....anyway, what a challenge this was.  Acrylic dries so fast. No time to blend etc... but it was fun and I enjoyed the process. I'm thinking of glasing this little number with oil paint. We'll see..... however I'm so very glad I painted it. Am I  coming out of a dry spell?

Mr Eolophus roseicapilla "Take two"

When is a painting finished? Well, I am not too sure.  It was 7 months ago that I posted Mr Galah and thought this painting was done.....but.....recently I was wondering, what if I change the background again, would it be better? what if I change some of the colours of the fathers? etc.... So, this is just what I did the last couple of days. I'm happy with the results but more importantly I am glad that I had the "fearlessness" to change once again this painting. Now I don't think I will make any change any more 😃.

Mr Eolophus roseicapilla

Quite a while ago, I had wanted to paint a galah. I love those birds. One can see them everywhere around town and I often see and observe them when I go for my daily walks.
First of all, I would like to say a big thank you to Clement Tang from Flikr for allowing me to use his beautiful photograph as a reference for this oil painting. I really appreciate his generosity.
Well, I'm indeed really glad to have finished this painting. I know I would like to paint more birds in the future but for now, I'm unsure if I am going to do this anytime soon. You see, I discovered that painting feathers was not only very difficult but very challenging to say the least. Consequently, I think I will wait for a while before I try to paint them again.
When I started this painting, I wanted it to have a completely dark background. I tried that in the initial painting (see unfinished painting below), but later decided against it. I thought it was best to keep the sky blue like my reference photograph.
I think it is interesting to see the stages of a painting. In fact, after I had partially placed the black background, I changed my mind and ended up painting 3 different skies, all with different hue of blues. Even the galah had very different colours. Now, no one would guess that they are actually still there, under all the layers of oil paint. This is what I really love about the process of painting, one can always change the size, shape and colour of everything.
I am quite pleased with the results of this painting and I wish I could fly!

This is the initial painting with the very dark background. Perhaps I could have proceeded that way but at the time, it did not look or feel right. Anyway, no regrets now.
OK, back to painting....


PS: Thank you again Clement Tang from Flickr for the reference image.