"French Dinner Table with Rose Bouquet" (oil on linen; 12 x 12")

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The table is set for dinner at a shaded courtyard of a farmhouse in Provence, France. A bouquet of pink and white roses, wine glasses, blue plates, and silverware with yellow handles on crisp white linen table cloth beckon us to join in a laughter-filled family time.

Last fall, I took an online painting workshop with Dreama Perry. It took a while to finish the "homework" and I got around to paint "French Dinner Table" only at the beginning of 2018. It is a happy, sunny painting, auspicious as the first painting of the year!

"Alexander III Bridge at Dusk" (oil on stretched canvas; 12" x 16") sold

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Paris at dusk is the most romantic place in the world, especially, by the Pont Alexandre III along the Seine. It is the most extravagant bridge in the city, with its exuberant Art Nouveau lamps, cherubs, nymphs and winged horses at either end. I can see vaguely the Invalides in the distance.

Someone found my old painting of the same subject on the internet and asked me for a print. I said I could do better! I painted a larger, better version for the client, who proposed to his girlfriend on the famous bridge last year. They are now married and the painting is going to be the Christmas gift for the happily surprised wife. I love my job!

"Iris Season at Monet's Garden" (oil on stretched canvas; 11" x 14")

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Walk around the front garden with the Grande Allee at Giverny, France. The impressionist master Claude Monet designed and cultivated his garden with a great passion for decades toward the end of his long productive life. It is a slice of heaven on earth. My favorite time is when the irises are in full bloom. I can almost smell the heady perfume of these gorgeous flowers!

"Paris Notre Dame Nocturne" (oil on stretched canvas; 12" x 16") sold

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Paris at dusk is the most romantic place in the world, as the city turns into the city of light. Take a walk along the Seine River. The famed river looks like a moat guarding the equally famed Notre Dame in the Ile de la Cite. Ah, Paris!

"Mont St-Michel Dreams" (oil on stretched canvas; 18" x 24")

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The Mont St-Michel is one of Europe’s most unforgettable sights. The staggering location has long inspired awe and the imagination. Scamper, at low tide, across the treacherous mudflats in the Bay of Mont St-Michel in northwestern France. Head for a dramatic abbey reaching to heaven from a rock surrounded by a vast and muddy solitude.

The story of how the mount turned into a great place of Christian pilgrimage is colorful. Aubert, bishop of the nearby hilltop town of Avranches early in the 8th century, claimed that the Archangel Michael himself pressured him into having a church built atop the island just out to sea.

The dukes of Normandy, followed by French kings, supported the development of a major Benedictine abbey on the Mont St-Michel. Magnificent monastic buildings were added through medieval times. The abbey became a renowned centre of learning. Vast numbers of pilgrims visited, despite warring cross-Channel royals.

The sight of the distant silhouette of the Gothic island-abbey Mont St-Michel send tired sightseers spirits soaring today just as it did the spirits of weary pilgrims in centuries past.

"Monet's Rose Arbors" (oil on stretched canvas; 14" x 18") sold

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If there is the heaven for rose lovers, it will look exactly like this. I can stay in this garden of Monet's with a row of rose arbors forever!

"Japanese Bridge at Monet's Giverny Garden" (oil on stretched canvas; 10" x 10")

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The climbing roses are blooming over the famed Japanese Bridge at Monet's Garden in Giverny. Isn't it utterly romantic?

"Eiffel Tower Spring" (oil on stretched canvas; 12" x 9") sold

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It is springtime in Paris. The Eiffel Tower surrounded with cherry blossoms, I dare say, is the ultimate in romance!

"Wisterias at Monet's Garden" (oil on stretched canvas; 11" x 14") sold

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Visit Monet's Garden in Giverny during the wisteria season.  Wow!  In my painting, wisterias in the foreground frame the lyrical landscape created by the Impressionist painter.

"Paris Notre Dame Nocturne" (oil on linen; 9" x 12") sold

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Paris at dusk is the most romantic place in the world.  Take a walk along the Seine River.  The famed river looks like a moat guarding the equally famed Notre Dame in the Ile de la Cite. The cathedral is the birth place of the Gothic architecture, which I adore.  Unfortunately, the style is so ornate, almost phantasmagorical.  But, from the side, in dim light, and much of the enormous structure hidden, I can handle it!

"Alexander III Bridge at Dusk" (oil on linen; 9" x 12") sold

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Paris at dusk in the most romantic place in the world, especially, by the Pont Alexandre III along the Seine River.  It is the most extravagant bridge in the city, with its exuberant Art Nouveau lamps, cherubs, nymphs, and winged horses at either end.  I can see vaguely the Invalides in the distance.  Ah, Paris!

"Eiffel Tower Night" (oil on linen; 12" x 12") sold

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The Eiffel Tower, the iconic image of the most beautiful city in the world, becomes a dreamlike, sparkling jewel every evening.  Ah, the magic of Paris!

"Eiffel Tower Sky" (oil on linen; 14" x 11") sold

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Now I have recovered from my back trouble and finished the commissions, I am back to my daily routine of painting whatever I wish to paint.  I start with Paris!  Wouldn't you rather be in Paris, the world's most beautiful city, where even the sky is this exquisite?  The Eiffel Tower is just an icing!

I took some step-by-step pictures for you.  There is no doubt that my style is impressionistic!

I covered the white linen with a transparent underpainting.  The minimal drawing became mostly erased, which is okay.

The fun begins.  I began to lay down opaque paints over the underpainting.

Time to reintroduce some drawing.

The painting is about half way through.  Now I have to make it sing some chant-songs!

About this point, I realized that the painting was really about the harmony of three colors--orange, green, and violet.  With that, I became more purposeful in my choice of colors.

It's almost there. 

"Lavender Fields of Provence" (oil on stretched canvas; 20" x 16" x 3")

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What a busy week it has been!  I was painting inside one day, and gardening outside on the following day.  On Friday, I painted in the morning, then gardened in the afternoon.  I was so exhausted that I slept like a log for 10 hours that night!

Here is the "masterpiece" of the week.  It is lavender fields of Provence in the summer afternoon.  The blinding light and heat, the ever-present sound of cicadas and, of course, the lavender-perfumed air.  Do you feel all that?

For fun, I painted "Provencal Afternoon" in 3 D.  What do I mean?  I continued the painting into the 3-inch wide edges so that the viewer can enjoy it from all directions.  You will feel as if you are standing right in front of the lavender fields in Provence!

"Provencal Afternoon" viewed from the left side

"Provencal Afternoon" viewed from the right side

"Winged Victory of Samothrace" (watercolor on paper; 20" x 14")

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The famous ancient Hellenistic Greek statue at the Louvre Museum in Paris was the inspiration for the painting.  The 2nd-century BC marble sculpture of the Greek goddess Nike (Victory) was created to honor a sea battle.  Since 1884, it has been prominently displayed at the Louvre and is one of the most celebrated sculptures in the world.  Although headless, it conveys a sense of action and triumph.  I cannot imagine it with a beautiful woman's head, just as I cannot think of "Venus of Milo" with arms.  The power of imagination!

I visited the museum back in 1997 during a two-week trip to France with my husband. I was awed by the beauty of a chunk of an ancient marble.  I wanted to paint it and paint it well.  It was particularly challenging project.  The reference photo with a flat, interior lighting didn't give me much value variation.

I crumpled a thin piece (90 lb weight) of watercolor paper, which crackled (damaged) the surface.  A sacrilegious act, but I was going for an unfussy way to suggest the marble texture. The background interior of the museum was pained with minimum details, whereas I carefully punched up the statue as much as I could with the same limited palette.  It is a subtle, blue painting, which is curiously alive.  You can almost feel the breeze caused by the fluttering wings of the goddess, which is about to take off!

The painting was juried into the Art League show in Alexandria, VA in 2006.

"French Village" (oil on linen; 12" x 12") sold

"French Village"
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French village demo I

French village demo II

French village demo III

French village demo IV

French village demo V

Dreama's finished demo painting

On the second day of Dreama Tolle Perry's workshop, we painted a charming French village scene.  Architecture and landscape are two of my favorite subjects, so I was very happy with Dreama's choice.  My burning question was how she would approach architectural rendering.  As you can see in the first demo photo, she did some line drawing before starting the underpainting.  What a relief!

The third demo photo shows her dark/mid-tone underpainting.  Shockingly dark again! What about the pink sky?  We were in the throes of a French Revolution here!  In the fourth demo photo, you can see squiggly marks Dreama made with a color shaper (it's a rubber-tipped tool with which one can scrape out paints off canvas).  She used it to draw and add her signature.

The primary objective of the second day was bold brushstrokes for which she is famous.  She used ONE brush for the entire painting--Winsor & Newton Monarch flat brush (#14), plus a small palette knife.  With judicious and practiced use of these limited tools, she created her trademark strokes.  How about that!

Her bottom line?  Put down a stroke and leave it alone unless it really needs to be modified.  Please don't "lick" the canvas by going back and forth with your brush.  Don't make strokes in the same direction in a given section.  Don't paint from the same puddle of colors for the entire sky, or wall, or whatever.  Variety is the spice of life! Instead of making hundreds of strokes for leaves and flowers (I am guilty!), make a few suggestive strokes. Be a minimalist.

Yes, Dreama dropped some random colors here and there, especially along the edges, but in general, her choice of colors was based on knowledge.  Most importantly, what made her art so colorful was her beautiful grays as much as her bright colors.

One more thing.  Dreama is not a die-hard, plein-air painter; she is a good photographer.  You have to start with good reference photos.  It is hard to paint a sun-drenched scene with a picture taken on a cloudy day.  I will conclude my "Dreama experience" tomorrow.  Please feel free to leave comments!

"At the Louvre" (watercolor, 14" x 20") sold

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I love France.  I love her art, food, language, and way of life.  Many years ago, my husband and I spent two happy weeks in France; on the last day of our trip, we went to the Louvre Museum in Paris as a way of saying "au revoir" to this fabulous country.  It was the middle of March--the college spring break time in America.  We should have guessed.  The museum was mobbed; the long line outside was nothing compared to the crowd in the packed room where "Mona Lisa"--the most famous painting in the world--was housed.  Our eyes were blinded by the hundreds of camera flashes going off simultaneously.

Dazed, we wandered around the huge museum, until we happened upon this artist, busily copying Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres's "La Grande Odalisque."  I am not a big fan of the genre of odalisques, which seems to have titillated generations of male painters and their patrons.  However, the concept and design of the reference photo had always intrigued me and, several years later, I got around to painting "At the Louvre."

You could say that I used a minimalist approach in this painting, with just a bare minimum information to get across the message.  I even had the audacity to leave the shape of the odalisque in the copyist's version totally untouched as pure white paper.  By the way, this is a good way of learning to paint--copying Old Masters' works at museums.  The painting was juried into the Art league show in Alexandria, VA in 2005, and received an award in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Watercolor Exhibition by the Baltimore Watercolor Society in 2006.

"Hush, Baby" (acrylic on paper; 4" x 6")

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This is an old piece, but seemed appropriate for the season of angels.  It's an acrylic painting (on paper) of an angel statue in Burgundy, France.  The spots in the background that look like lights sparkling in the sky were created by dropping rubbing alcohol to the still damp surface.  The painting was juried in the Art League Small Works Show in Alexandria, VA in 2002.