Another from "City Evenings"

This one is "Seven-thirty" from the "City Evenings" series. Time for a walk with the dog to the corner store, from this winter evenings series. I just used it for my May newsletter.( Question - how did we get to May so soon?) As I said in my newsletter, I was definitely thinking about Edward Hopper when I was doing these paintings but I wanted to put my own spin on the idea and have present-day time too. I started all of these paintings with a dark under-painting, then used white chalk to draw the shapes. Then I used Transparent White over the chalk. I wanted a softer white than Titanium. I then worked at mixing both cool darks and warm darks for the painting. Some of the lights were warm, but fluorescent lighting is cool. There is a fair bit of Alizarin Crimson used in the brick building.
     I've got my 2016 paintings posted now - just go to the right-hand side, scroll down to where it says "View Loraine's paintings" , click on that - and you'll see 2016 - including "Five-Fifteen" - the paintings that started this series. Including "Seven-thirty", there are six more - but I think that is probably it for "City Evenings" at this time and I'm ready for more spring-like and summer-like thoughts. Now, if it would just stop raining.....

Lunaria or Honesty?

Here is another recent one --of dried "Lunaria".  Do you call it "Lunaria" or do you know it as "Honesty" ? This plant self-seeds in a dry area under the big evergreen in my front garden. It has purple flowers and heart-shaped leaves and then develops flat seed pods with brown outer walls. When they fall off, or are removed, the silvery interior walls are revealed. I wanted to capture a bit of the magical quality of this plant when dried. You can see why it is also called "Silver Dollar" plant - although I have also heard it called the "penny plant". I think you'd have to spray paint it copper to be a penny plant!  Lunaria is its proper Latin plant name , no doubt because it is a bit moon-like That is what I was aiming for with the darker background and the silvery gleam. I started with a dark under-painting - although it got modified afterwards in parts. I lightly painted in the seed pods with transparent white before working in other colours and eventually some Titanium white to intensify some areas. It ended up just a bit magical after all.