More Cold Wax Medium and Wildflowers

Tuesday night, I decided to do some quick studies with cold wax medium. I still had my piles of oils and cold wax medium on my palette, and they were still usable. Plus, I had just bought some 5x5 and 5x7 frames.  So I did a 5x5 and 5x7 of the wildflowers at the front of our driveway.

"Wildflowers by the Driveway" oil and cold wax medium on 5x7 canvas panel

"Wildflowers by Rock Wall" oil and cold wax medium on 5x5 canvas panel

I did most of both paintings with a palette knife and then the tip of an angled paintbrush. One thing I really like about using cold wax medium is the texture that I can get. I've always loved the look of texture in a painting, and I certainly tend to use a lot of paint.

Overall, I'm pleased with these two paintings. They're small. I finished both in about two hours altogether. 

Williamson County FCE Clubs' Cultural Arts Day

Many years before I started painting, I enjoyed doing crafts - lots and lots of different crafts. I didn't believe in myself as an artist, and so I did something more structured that I felt I could be more successful in doing.  I've done beadwork, macrame, rock-painting, weaving, stained glass, crocheting, knitting, sewing, and more recented, fused glass.

Last week, was our Williamson County FCE Clubs' Cultural Arts Day, and so I entered three of my crafts and one of my paintings into the competition. Here are my results:

This are the fused glass necklace and earrings I made. Fused glass is fun to do, although it's important to be careful! I like that no two completed pieces of glass are identical.  

This is another fused glass piece - a vase. This was particularly fun to make, and I love the way it looks.

These are prayer beads made with a cross of olive wood from Bethlehem. I got the crosses off Amazon.  I've probably made more than 100 sets of prayer beads over the past few years.

This was my solitary painting entry, and it got a second place ribbon.  Out of all the paintings, I could have chosen, I'm not sure why I didn't chose another painting. I like this one, though. It's my second painting of the wild flowers at the front of our property.

Paintings around our Farm

Here are a couple of paintings I've done around Dogwood Trace Farm - our farm.  The first one is from a photo I took at the bottom of the hill looking up at that distinct tree that is on the right of the path.  Ron says this is his favorite painting of mine because he goes to "the bottom" (the area behind out house at the bottom of the hill next to the West Harpeth River) all the time with the dogs.  So he always sees this tree as he starts back up the hill.

This past summer, Ron planted a lot of wildflowers above the rock wall at the entrance to our driveway.  Butterflies - especially lots of small yellow ones - flew all around the flowers, along with bees.  The mixture of colors was bright and striking. Here is my painting of the rock wall and wildflowers.  It's the largest painting I've done yet - 30 x 40, oil on cradled gessobord.