One done!

 This may the last of my 2010 lavender series. I have so many 2010 wildflowers to paint before the 2011 ones are here!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.texashillcountryart.etsy.com

Paint on paper!

I took the masque (rubber cement type stuff that protects the white of the paper) off two paintings that I had started in early December.  Thanks goodness that it CAME off!  If this were August, it might have been stuck on for good.  One is a close up of lavender in a field and the other is the official Henke Ranch pun: a cedar tree growing up in the middle of an old  farm implement called a seeder.
I was tempted to do 100 organizational things like refilling all of my paint wells, and neatening up my files, but I got started and actually put paint on paper instead.  Are you proud of me?  I am.
In other arenas of encouragement, I have been listed by The Arts at Hill Country Scene as a Boerne artist.  I guess that means that I will have to finish these paintings and do some more! 

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.texashillcountryart.etsy.com

It is February

February is my time to go back to painting after a couple of months off for a life crisis.  I don't want to be one of those people who say, "I used to paint."  But I have faced the reality that painting falls off the bottom of the priority list during some seasons of life.  So I set myself a deadline of Feb 1.  And because of that, I painted a few strokes yesterday.  Not very many and not very good.  But I did it.  In the next few days, I hope to expand to something a little less symbolic and more creative.  I may have to go back and re-read parts of Art and Fear.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Lavender Field with Chair No. 3

I like this much better!

Lesson learned: it is worth doing a few smaller versions, even a bad one from (poor) memory, so as to work out the problems before starting on the good version.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

http://www.texashillcountryart.etsy.com

Moving up and on...

Therefore (see previous post), I have started Blanco Lavender Field With Chairs #3, this time as an 11x14 on really good watercolor paper.  (The paper I used for the birthday card was very unforgiving!)  As you can see, I have already sketched the general shapes with watercolor pencil and masqued the chairs so that I will be able to toss color about freely in the field and background.

Something inside me is itching to paint something big and if I improve enough on #3, maybe I will do a #4 that is a full sheet of watercolor paper (22x30 inches.)

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

http://texashillcountryart.etsy.com

I paint much better when I can see the reference photo!

Here is my second version of Blanco Lavender Fields With Chairs.  I like it much better and have decided that I am just not the type of artist who can paint well from memory!  This one is about 5x8 inches and was done as a birthday card for the friend who was with me the day we saw the lavender adirondak chairs in the lavender field. 

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

http://www.texashillcountryart.etsy.com

Found the photo, here it is: