"Spring Wildflowers" (watercolor on paper; 12" x 9")

"Spring Wildflowers" (12" x 9")

Let's take a walk on a beautiful spring day in the park. This is the Virginia nature trail at the Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA. I see blue woodland phlox and golden ragwort blooming. Dappled light on the path is as delightful!

"Spring Wild Flowers" Reference

Dappled light is the spotted light which comes through gaps in a tree canopy and produces the feeling of light and the airy, cheerful mood in a landscape and cityscape. I am teaching a in-studio workshop at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA on December 4 and 5, 2021.  We are going to create these happy paintings together through the mastery of edges, greens, and shadow colors! 

 

"Oriental Poppy Mystique" (watercolor; 8" x 6") sold

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The painting started out with a pure white background.  Photographing it turned out to be difficult.  So, last night, I turned the white background into something else.  A dark, mysterious background brings out the incredible form, color, and texture of red oriental poppies, don't you agree?

"Pink Peony Spring" (watercolor; 5" x 7") sold

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I was going through my 2013 spring photos.  Behold, I came across a picture that became transformed into "Pink Peony Spring".  Spring comes fast and furious.  When you don't have to capture them in paints, don't despair.  Just keep taking pictures.  Someday you will have all the time in the world and get to finally have fun!

"Red Poppy Passion" (watercolor; 5" x 7") sold

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I decided to paint poppies a little differently.  I glazed the flowers, stems, and pods in several layers (in the left flower below, you can see the first yellow layer), whereas the background was painted wet-in-wet.  The painting looks intense and tropical, doesn't it?  I love it!

"Red Oriental Poppies" (watercolor; 6" x 8") sold

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These are Oriental poppies, not the regular poppies.  Papaver orientale is a perennial flowering plant native to the Caucasus, northeastern Turkey, and northern Iran.  Having quoted from Wikipedia, all I care about is how huge and bold these babies are!  There is a batch growing in the nearby Green Spring Gardens Park, which I make a point of checking out during the season.

"Magnolia Season" (oil on stretched canvas; 14" x 11")

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 A grove of magnolias at their peak on a beautiful day is the ultimate spring delight.  I have been checking upon this grove at the Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA, to catch it at the right moment, which I did a few days ago!

I just started blocking in with opaque paints over the transparent underpainting.

All blocked in.

Now my job is to make these trees look like magnolias, not just any flowering trees with pink flowers.

A little more developed.

"Winter Goose Pond" (oil on stretched canvas; 12" x 16")

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Exactly a year ago, my daughter and I went for a walk after a snowfall in the nearby Green Spring Gardens Park.  Geese were swimming in the half-frozen pond.  I even caught a goose in flight in one of the photos.  As we were expecting a snow storm yesterday, it seemed appropriate to paint "Winter Goose Pond".  When I showed the finished painting to my husband, he said: "It looks cold!"

"Lotus Pond" (oil on linen; 8" x 8") sold

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I love everything about the lotus plant--its sculptural form, flowers, seedpods, and Buddhist symbolism.  Of course, I have to wait for five more months to see lotus flowers in bloom in my favorite park.  I went over there last Friday, a couple of days after the Nor'easter.  The scene below is what I found.  It's pretty, isn't it?  But I didn't paint it, because I know everybody is sick of snow.  Instead, I painted my favorite flowers.  How about that!

Geese in the lotus pond at the Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA

"Summer Garden with Hydrangea" (oil on stretched canvas; 12" x 12") sold

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Before

Something about "Summer Garden with Hydrangea" bothered me.  It felt like a faded old picture.  I decided to rescue a painting nobody seemed to care for.  I punched up the darks, got rid of the dominant sap greens, and played up the violet-yellow green complementary color scheme.  My new summer garden painting looks kissed by the sun, don't you think?

"Green Spring Day" (oil on linen; 8" x 8") sold

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The gazebo at the Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA

There were three of us painting together on this glorious spring day!

"Green Spring Day" blocked in with transparent paints.

"Green Spring Day" further developed.

On the morning of the May Day, I received a tempting email from a painting buddy. She and another mutual friend were going out to the Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA.  She invited the members of the Art League Plein Air Painters to join them.  I was torn.  After three days of rain, it was sunny again.  But I was going to stay home and do things around the house.  What to do?

I couldn't resist the prospect of the plein air painting fun with friends on such a fine day.  It's been almost a year since I painted outside.  Despite the winds, chilly air, and numerous chatty onlookers, we enjoyed our outing thoroughly and vowed to go out more often this year.

As I have been meaning to do a series of spring garden paintings for May, "Green Spring Day" seems like the perfect piece to kick off my May Challenge--"Spring Garden"!

"Spring Woods" (oil; 10" x 8") sold; "Spring Woodland" (oil; 14" x 11")

"Spring Woods" (oil, 10" x 8")
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"Spring Woodland" (oil, 14" x 11")
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When trees start budding, they turn yellow green.  Leaves are not yet big, so they don't cast heavy shade.  Walk in the early spring woods.  It's airy and bright; it's an enchanting place!  Both paintings are based on a real place--the Virginia native plant trail in the Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA.  I haunt the park in early spring, which has always been my favorite time of the year.

Did you notice a red bridge up a small stream in the first painting?  Many flowers populate the second painting, In the distance, one can see the pink redbud in bloom. In the middle ground, the dainty white bells of the common silverbell arc gracefully above the carpet of yellow woodland poppies.  I think I captured in both paintings the light-filled atmosphere of springtime in the woods.

"Daffodil Season Collage" (oil and watercolor; print)

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Spring has sprung in the mid-Atlantic region.  Actually, it's more like spring has gone HOT.  It was 76 degrees yesterday.  Today's forecast is 80; tomorrow's, 85!  I fear that my daffodils will be finished by the end of the week.  Fearing such an eventuality, I was busily taking pictures of flowers from my garden yesterday when my daughter popped her head into the still life setting!

My darling daughter with spring flowers

This afternoon I am going to go over to the Tidal Basin before cherry blossoms come down as pink snow.  In the meanwhile, here is a miniature cherry blossom festival in my garden.

Mini cherry blossom festival in my garden

My Show Is Hanging At Last!

This wall over the fireplace has only my paintings.

Alice Kale is my partner in crime!

We hung our paintings side by side as we are such good friends!

Yesterday, after two days' delay thanks to the superstorm Sandy, we were able to hang our paintings at the Manor House at Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA.  It's been four years since I've had a show and I forgot all about how much work it takes! Last week I managed to finish three paintings, spending most time, sending out invitations and e-newsletter and framing; this week so far, I did only one painting. 

If you live in the area, please stop by to enjoy our show.  I hung 30 oils; my friend, Alice Kale, 18 watercolors.  They look great together! 

The Manor House is located at 4603 Green Spring Road, Alexandria, VA 22312. Their website is www.greenspring.org.  The Manor House is open between 12:00 and 4:30 pm on Wednesday through Sunday. Call ahead (703-941-7987) to make sure that it is open to the public on the day of your visit!

"Green Spring Gazebo" (oil on linen; 11" x 14") sold



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Gazebo at Green Spring Gardens Park

For the first time since last December, I went outside to paint yesterday.  It was not a paint-out, just a "let's go painting together if the weather turns out good" kind of thing; there were three of us--a friend of mine, myself, and a gentleman who happened to come to paint.  It has been cool lately, or a normal mid-spring weather, to which we were no longer used.  The temperature reached 60 degrees, sunny and pleasant to be outside. 

At Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA, our location, were school children on field trips, families with young children picnicking, old couples taking walks, and amateur photographers taking pictures of flowers.  We had plenty of visitors and admirers.  What can I say?  Plein-air painters should be paid for our service of making a place more picturesque!

My subject matter was the popular gazebo at the garden park.  I have painted it several times in the past; I might be obsessed about it actually.  The drawing is not easy, although I have gotten better at it thanks to practice.  The hardest part of painting the gazebo from the viewpoint I have chosen was making the architectural, hard structure not stick out against the dark evergreens in the background.  It was not a thick woods, just a screen of tall trees in the shade.  I wanted to capture the feeling of airiness and the gazebo melting into the happy, sunny, spring landscape.  Do you think I succeeded?

"Pasque Flower" (oil on linen; 8" x 10") sold

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Reference photo

Early last week, I saw this fuzzball of flowers at the rock garden at Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA.  Another visitor and I admired them, wondering what they were.  All I could say was that I used to have the plant in my garden, but that it died out.  I posted the picture on my Facebook page; to my delight, a fan informed me right away.  The power of social networking!

Pasque flower (or pasqueflower) is also called wind flower, prairie crocus, and Easter Flower.  Why Easter Flower?  Because the flower blooms in early spring (around Easter), and Pasque refers to Easter (Passover).  The know-it-all wikipedia says that the showy part of the flower consists of sepals, not petals.  Who knew?

"Spring Woodland" (oil on linen; 14" x 11") sold

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Reference photo for "Spring Woodland"

Uncommonly pretty "common silverbell" bush

Double-flowered bloodroot

Woodland poppy

Virginia bluebell

Jacob's ladder

Foamflower

Trillium

Dwarf larkspur

Redbud

Lately I have been haunting Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA.  I was afraid in particular that, if I were idle, I would miss the dazzling explosion of spring wildflowers along the Virginia native plant trail, as spring was zipping us by stunningly fast.  Early spring flowers that should be still with us are all gone; azaleas and lilacs are already blooming.  For two weeks, I went to the garden park every other day; I was "casing the joint," so to speak.  I was there on Tuesday afternoon.  Woodland poppies and Virginia bluebells were finally blooming in plenty.  But the sun was on the wrong side.

So I went back on Thursday morning.  It was a partly sunny, partly cloudy day--not an ideal condition for photography.  Fortune, however, favors the persistent and determined.  As I entered the wooded trail, the sun came out to stay.  Wow!  I saw several plants which I have never seen.  The park authorities have been busy and kind with labels, but they couldn't possibly tag all the clumps of ground-hugging wildflowers.  Alas, some lovely flowers will remain nameless for me.

A couple of years ago, I had painted woodland poppies--"Woodland poppies in Spring Woods."  I wanted to paint them again, hopefully better this time.  "Spring Woodland," however, turned out to be a different sort of painting.  The cheerful, bright yellow, woodland poppies are there, of course.  But they are just one of the many flowers that populate this airy, light-filled, enchanting, spring woodland.  In the distance, one notices the pink redbud in bloom.  In the middle ground, the dainty white bells of the common silverbell arc gracefully above the carpet of yellow poppies.  In the reference photo, I noticed other tiny flowers on the ground as well, which I decided to edit out.  I think I captured in the new painting the atmosphere of springtime in the woods.  What do you say?

"Woodland Poppies in Spring Woods" (oil, 20" x 16")
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"Springtime at Manor House" (oil on linen; 14" x 11") sold

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Reference photo

The house in the painting could be any colonial-style house common in northern Virginia.  But it is not.  It is the Manor House at Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, VA.  The entire park grounds used to belong to a plantation owner long time ago, and you know what that means in the antebellum South.  It is now owned and maintained by the Fairfax Country Park Authorities; much of gardening work is done by volunteers.  A nice change, don't you think?  The Manor House is open to the public a few days a week for teas, gift shopping, and art shows. As a matter of fact, I have had a couple of solo shows in the building in the past.  Naturally, I am quite fond of the place.

I took the picture a couple of weeks ago, when daffodils just started blooming.  Right above the yellow daffodils you can see a big clump of Lenten roses, which I edited out in my painting.  Beyond the house the saucer magnolias are at their peak.  It is such a happy picture that I just had to paint it.

"Glorious Magnolia" (oil on canvas; 12" x 16") sold

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Reference photo

I didn't know I was such a lover of magnolia.  Having had so much fun painting "Magnolia Season," I decided to do another magnolia painting.  Can you guess when and where I took the above picture?  Yes, it was on the same day and at the same place as the picture for "Magnolia Season."  I walked around to get the best possible shot; it is indeed picture perfect.  Even the sky with streaks of clouds is fitting for a happy mood.  The new painting is more a landscape than a floral painting, taking in the surroundings in which a group of saucer and star magnolia trees are blooming.

While working on "Glorious Magnolia," I realized the reason for my newly-found enthusiasm for magnolia.  Painting magnolia from distance is not much different from painting another favorite flower of mine--cherry blossoms.  As I couldn't possibly paint gazillion cherry florets, I didn't even try to put in thousands of magnolia bud dots.  I also had to make sure that I painted in darks under the puffy clouds of pale pink flowers, suggesting magnolia branches in the shadow and a row of trees behind the stars of the painting.  A happy discovery and a handsome painting.  Life is good.