Sunflowers

 Looking at sunflowers and painting.

A few studies towards the end of the summer.

Did you know there are orange sunflowers too?

Pyrrole Joy

 Continuing with the Magic City theme here is a city of the south.  

I am in love with Pyrrole orange. I find it such a joyful colour. Pyrrole pigments were only discovered in the early 1980s. Pyrrole orange is a bright mid orange that is transparent and gives lots of variety when mixed with other pigments.

Fun fact: Orange was not used as a name to describe a colour until the Middle Ages when the fruit was imported into Europe. The range of colours we call orange were previously described as yellow or red.

My magic city in this painting might be called "The Red City" or even "The Pink City" if orange was not a named colour.  I like that.

Whatever it is called it feels (to me) quite joyous. And yes it is also quirky and idiosyncratic. It was a lot of fun to paint.

Tulip Time

 It's tulip season and there are some extraordinary tulips in bloom. This is an attempt to capture one of them as it changed over time. Tulips just don't stay the same they open and close their petals and bend their stems to dance in the vase. Catching these changes in paint, ink and crayon. I tore up the drawing and re-assembled the pieces in an attempt to communicate my experience of the flower.

Red vase in winter

Another fruit of my digital experimentation working out how to make interesting and attractive images on my iPad.

A New Year Flower Mandala Dance

More digital drawing - planned as a dance the footprints turned into a spiral as I worked on the piece.

Butter Lamp

Here is a study on the ongoing themes of warmth, worship and fire  - 

Sunbird

....continuing the theme of the Phoenix....