I love it when I crack open an organic free range egg and find that rich orange color. That means the animal has a varied and rich diet. Since I use eggs in my egg tempera paintings and my husband eats a lot of eggs, I am thinking about getting a couple of chickens for the yard.
I drink a lot of tea....usually loose leaf in a tea sock. But the beauty of this used teabag caught my eye as it sat disposed in its tea bowl.
Moving away from the dark background for a study in yellow and orange. Because of the diagonal plane the orange appears to be moving down the runway like a model on display.
I set this still life up with a black cardboard (with paint sploches on it) reflected into the orange squeezer. It gave me quite a challenge to paint. With all of the color reflected into the multi-planes of the squeezer it was hard to create definition....so I took a sharp bamboo stick and scratched into the paint to give it some sharp outlines. Then I added some hot color to the shadows and the painting came alive!
Yummy fuzzy kiwi. I heard on a radio show once that you should eat the fuzz as well as the inner fruit for the most vitamins and minerals. So I now eat them that way like an apple. You get used to it after a while, like eating a fuzzy peach. I planted another smaller variety without the fuzz in my yard, but I really like the big fuzzy ones the best.
The idea for this came from one of my internal visions that won't let me go to sleep at night. So I have to get up and find my sketchbook and quickly lay down the idea so that I can go back to bed. Then the sketch will plague me until I paint it. I have reworked this painting a bit since I took this photo, but it is in a show now, so this photo will have to do until I get it back.
When I started on this painting I sat with no preconceived idea. I just put out a bunch of pigments and tempered them with the egg yolk medium and just started laying down color after color, hundreds and hundreds of tiny brush strokes heaped one upon the other....eventually something started to appear. The "portal" part of the painting was originally on a diagonal to the painting surface. The idea for the tree just came to me as I painted, and then I added in a background landscape from imagination.
When we bought our charming bungalow house built in 1947 here in Eugene in 2005, it came complete with this 60+ year old camellia tree right outside the kitchen window. It graces us with flowers for several months and then lots of debris on the ground which houses unbelievable 4" slugs. Well, I try to overlook that part and just enjoy the rich blossoms!!
I found this charming figurine from WWII in a local thrift store and had to bring it home. I thought I would place him in the kitchen. I figured how could I have anything but a great day if I looked at this grinning yellow rabbit!!! 
I have painted this charming clown toy a couple of times in the past. In this version I played with the shadow to make the painting a little more fun!
I don't usually eat candy, but had to buy this charming can of mint balls just to paint it. This can has sat in my various studios just waiting for the right time to be painted. I finally sat down on the night of February 21, of this year, to immortalize the 'ole Joe in paint. The can will remain unopened in my lifetime.
