My Happy New Year starts in February this year

Well, not really!  Since I had surgery the first week of January, January is what you call a lost month.  Everything went fine, and I am happy to be up and mobile again.

I have painted a number of new paintings, and now I can share some with you.  I have been experimenting with ghost flowers in the background.  This painting is called Poppy Shadows.  It was painted on a gold toned piece of watercolor paper 11 3/4" x 10 1/4".  I used a technique called color sanding to add some texture in the painting. I have just listed it in my Etsy shop. Click on the painting name under the first illustration to go to the listing.

Poppy Shadows

I put one of these new poppy ghost flower paintings into the Artists' Guild Gallery, and last week I was notified that it was sold.  Yay!  It's title was Ghost Poppies.  It is shown below.

Ghost Poppies

Ghost Poppies was painted on a toned sheet of watercolor paper that had been textured prior to painting.  Then I added some texture with a roller before painting the poppies.

Enjoy!

Texture is fun, but more than that the added dimension it adds to a painting is becoming to me like putting salt and spice on my food.










The textures that can be added to every kind of two-dimensional media vary, but more and more I am looking at texture as a necessity rather than an addition to a painting. In this first example entitled Music For Martinis, texturing the background happened before the idea of the painting was hatched.





















In this next example, He Gave Me Flowers some of the background texturing happened as the abstract still life was being painted, but much of it was created after the fact.

The two examples are used to show that texture can happen at any stage of a painting to add interest and excitement to the artwork.

For added information about either painting, you may want to click on the images to read more.