New Years resolution! to start painting more again. I stopped painting almost when I was caring for my father in law. Just didn't have the time or energy to contemplate painting, I think i painted about 5 or 6 paintings in a year.

Now it is time to start putting in the hours again. I am a happier person with myself when I am painting everyday!

The calendars for the Manressa Animal shelter are up for sale at this address http://www.cafepress.com/manresa. it is a fundraiser for the Manressa Animal shelter in Manressa, Spain.

i have been working on this painting since monday. i am not quite done but decided to post so people can comment on it.

Cheryl's watercolor musings
i finished my first project in Zan's group.it turned out ok, not my style, but i learned a lot, i may carry some of it over into another painting. one thing i have learned over the past 2 yrs, is that i am in constant change, and if i am not i am losing ground with my skills. I am always on my quest to do a better job, create better art, do more and do it without taking 2 weeks to create a painting that i am excited about.

weekend, i was hoping to gather more photos for references for painting photos. i want to paint a lush scene of tropical foliage and needed more green photos of bromiliads and banana palm leaves. the greenery was great, but i was early or late for a lot of the specimens. i still took some great photos. here is a few favorites i will paint

I started painting this last friday and finally got around to taking a photo of it and posting . the painting is of asian pears and trying to get the two pears to read correctly was a struggle. the leaves were fun and easy. i like to paint things that are droopy and look real as opposed to things that are unnaturally perfect. btw the peaches painting and the azaleas painting will be in the Manressa animal shelter calendar on th front cover, what an honor this is!!

These are two of the many calla paintings i have done, the one with a ribbon won an honorable mention at the San Ramon art walk festival in September. I was very pleased because it was the first art show i had entered since i was in college, and I got a ribbon!!

The peaches were going to be pears, and then i decided that they would make better peaches and voila!! they are peaches ;)

This painting of white azaleas is an 11x14 that will soon be finished as a 22x30. I like to do a small version to begin with to see if i really like the subject before i invest the time into painting a full sheet

here are two more that i have done. I am not very good at landscapes so i am working on them, and trying to capture loose and not my usual i have to have everything perfect style.

I decided a few weeks ago to start blogging my art. I wanted to begin doing a painting a day to chronicle my growth and keep notes about what i was doing and thinking when i painted some paintings. I bought a magazine by American Artist last week called "Watercolor Highlights". It has 20 tips on how to do watercolor sketches, and I decided to start doing them, even if i don't make a finished paintinig from them immediately. The pear study was the first attempt of doing a watercolor sketch without a lot of drawing. The leaves could be better, but the colors turned out pretty nice. i was looking at some red bartlett pears when i painted this.