In Vancouver it's the Cherry Blossoms.  

In Mexico, in particular, Lake Chapala, it's Jacaranda time.  These very large trees are covered in purple flowers and the falling petals cover the roadways and side streets in carpets of purple.

I was invited to paint with a plein air group here today to try and capture the scenery and the color of purple.  I've been painting indoors mostly because the weather hasn't been it's usual sunny self in these parts.  The weather is more like a regular overcast day in Vancouver.  However, it is definitely warmer and using watercolors on watercolor paper is a little more challenging.  Everything dries so much quicker, looks brighter than it is and needs some getting used to.

Saying all that, it was great to be in the midst of other painters, easels out, paints in hand, floppy hats moving to the rhythm of the painters' brushes.  Finding the right light and just an even spot to put the easel down wasn't simple.  However, I did take a folding chair which made the 3 hours much more durable.  We were in the shade of a very tall stone wall and that kept the early day cool and comfortable to work in.  Getting up, every so often, to admire all the other painters work was so inspiring!  Some were painting in acrylic, others in watercolors. Each person had a completely different feel and look of what it was that we had come to paint.  One of the painters, Steve, was providing advice and suggesting that composition was an inclusion of shapes, not necessarily detail.  I think this is an excellent reference, because it so easy to get caught up in the details and overwork the composition.

I posted the simple picture I created with the original scene in the background to the plein air painters facebook page.  We'll see if it gets accepted to be posted.  In the meantime, its good to be back to just painting rather than painting to a deadline for an art show.  I picked up the last pieces from the ASA show after the plein air event.  It felt good to enter the gallery and take the pieces off the wall, although it would have felt great if they had sold.  Now on to more painting....

Well, I am very pleased to write that the opening at Sol Mexicano Galeria del Arte was very well attended on March 6, 2015.  I have been working on a face page for the Lake Chapala Painting Guild and if you look for the page on facebook, you will see pictues and a video of the event.  We had a guitarist playing in the background and the weather was so much warmer than our previous show opening.

I really didn't appreciate, when I volunteered to be the official photographer of the guild, that it would take so much time to upload, reduce in size or send out pictures to the guild.  However, I am very happy how the pictures and video turned out and I just love the panorama feature on my camera!

The next show now to be announced is the 32nd Ajijic Society of the Arts Juried Show with the opening on March 14th, 2015.  The show will include all art mediums including jewellery and ceramics.  There will be ribbons awarded for various categories.  I am submitting two watercolors - the African Daisies and If These Old Doors Could Talk.

|As spring is in the air in Vancouver, I decided to review some pictures I took last year at Pike's Market in Seattle.  There was an abundant array of flowers and tulips on display in the floral section of the market.  After reviewing the pictures again, I decided on the parrot tulips.  Rather than painting them with the background of buckets and a mixture of other colored tulips, I decided to paint them alone with a simple wash for a background.  I began by making a basic sketch of the general form of the tulips I wanted in my composition.  Then I masked some white portions of the tulip petals.  I chose a palette of cadium yellow light, cad blue, daniel smith quinacridone coral and rose and then some violet and hooker green to finish some of the darks and accents. I completed a wash over the tulips with the yellow and then started bringing in the coral using various brushes to achieve the effect I wanted from the spiky tops of the tulip petals.  I finished with a simple blue wash on the left of the painting and kept the light coming from the right.  I used some splatters of the same color palette to enhance the white areas.  I enjoyed the process enough, that I'll definitely go back and paint some more tulips, but vary the background settings.