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Sunflowers and Lavender

Tuesday, July 31st, 2012

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Umbria’s Hill Towns, Monterchi

Monterchi, an ancient Umbrian hill town, is only a few miles from our villa and the perfect location for our first day of painting in Italy. We set up our easels on the patio of La Pieve Vecchia (a fabulous restaurant on the road to Arrezo) with fields of sunflowers all around us and Monterchi on the hill. We painted all morning and then the spouses joined us for a delicious lunch. The owners of La Pieve Vecchia Restaurant are friends of the villa’s manager, Vincent, so they invited us to their 10th Anniversary celebration with a band, dancing and a 3 course dinner Friday night. We all felt like we were at a family country wedding with grandmothers and children dancing and eating and drinking until well into the night. The Italian people are so gracious and the next thing I knew we were all drinking champagne from a neighboring table and I was dancing with somebody’s great-grandfather. The best, however; was the woman doing “the Line Dance” with her dog (a terrier I think) in her arms. Saturday morning we started painting a little later…

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Bibbi Painting in Italy

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

8″x 10″ Sold

Afternoon by the Swimming Pool

We just got back from 2 1/2 weeks painting in Italy and I don’t want to rub it in, but it was HEAVEN! I rented an 8 bedroom villa in Umbria and had 15 really fun people for 10 days of painting, eating, wine drinking, touring, shopping, and laughing! What a great group! We would start after breakfast and the 8 painters would paint until 1:00 while the spouses toured, played golf and shopped. Then we all would drive to a charming restaurant close by and had a gourmet lunch (with wine) then usually back to the villa and time around the swimming pool. Then nap and most nights we picked up a simple meal at a farm-B&B down the road. Dinner at 8 on the terrace while we watched the sunset (more wine) and then a rousing poker game for some… I usually went to bed.

Yes, I will definitely do this again next summer.

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Seabirds on the Rocks

Tuesday, July 17th, 2012

20″ X 24″

Painting Moving Water

Most of the time you are not really painting water but the reflections on the surface of the water. The waves break up the reflections and where they break, is really where you can see the color of the water. Most of the time it’s a pea-green color, but when the sun shines through it at the top of the wave, it can appear yellow. If there are rocks, then underneath the surface it will be a darker blue or purple. All this sounds complicated but it’s really not. The next time some member of your family chides you about drinking beer on a dock, just tell them you are examining the colors of moving water.

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Evening Swim

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

30″ x 30″

Summer at the Beach

When our children were small we bought a beach house with 2 other families in Galveston. Now our daughter has a child of her own and their beach is in California. No, it looks nothing like Galveston, but for me, beaches and children just go together. Our last visit to California, I took many photographs of the beaches of Northern California and this Summer I have been painting larger paintings from these reference photos. In this painting I was working on thick and thin paint. The trees at the top were painted with a large brush in thin turpentine washes and after it dried I painted the sky around the tree shapes. Kind of like cutting the trees from the sky. This is a very useful technique and it keeps the trees from looking like they are stuck onto the sky. 

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Robin’s Nest

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012

Available at Holland St. Gallery

Holland St. Gallery

I have just picked up a new gallery on the square in the charming town of Bellville, Texas. The owner, Kathleen, is delightful and she has a large gallery with a stable of local Texas artists. Their focus is on traditional Texas landscapes, perfect for your chic farm house in the country. It seems half of Houston is spending the weekends in sophisticated rustic luxury just a short drive from “Our Fair City”. Whether you have your own little slice of Heaven or not, you might want to check it out! This little painting of a Robin’s Nest would look well just about anywhere.