"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.

"Dogwood Sky" (oil on stretched canvas; 8" x 10")

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Look up at the sky when dogwoods are blooming on a sunny spring day.  This is what you will see.  If this painting doesn't lift your spirit, I don't know what will!

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

sold

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.

"Dogwood Sky" (oil on linen, 11" x 14") sold

sold

Do you remember the old days when we used films for the cameras and brought them for development to grocery stores and drugstores?  I am sure you have stacks of shoe boxes full of pictures that never made to the album we were supposed to work on rainy days.  They got forgotten and became history.  These days, we have megabytes of photos eating up our computer spaces and collecting virtual dust.  Facebook helps somewhat, but do you really look at your friends' album postings with care?

The other day I found a photo of my neighbor's dogwood flowering in an old box and decided put it to a good use.  Dogwoods are common where I live.  They are not yet blooming, but when they do, boy, they brighten up neighborhoods with their white and pink flowers.  I remember reading somewhere that they are a very old specie that was around the times of dinosaurs. 

Dogwood flowers, despite their prehistoric pedigree, have a contemporary sculptural look, which I like.  Against a cloudless blue sky, they are simply stunning.

"Pink Cherry Blossoms" (watercolor on paper; 5" x 7 1/2")

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A dusting of snow last night, and quite chilly today in northern Virginia.  More images of warmer days to cheer you on.  "Pink Cherry Blossoms" is another watercolor painting that was juried into the Small Works Show at The Art League in 2002.  I was busily uploading my old artwork on paper onto my website over the weekend, and kept finding these small paintings.  Perfect!

"Crab Apple Blossoms" (watercolor on paper; 5 1/2" x 7 1/2")

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One to two feet of snow in Minnesota.  Luckily in northern Virginia, we didn't get the freezing rain that the weather forecasters had been predicting.  Winter is here.  Let's think warm, like spring time.  The inspiration of the above painting came from the brilliantly back-lit crab apple blossoms in my backyard.  This jewel of a watercolor painting was juried into the Small Works show at The Art League show in 2003.