Turquoisebrush

I love landscape. I love to paint trees, water and mountains and skies. When I tried to start my own photography business I advertised as a natural light photographer.  I would take pictures outside with nature as the background for any group family pictures.  Nature is just so soothing and refreshing and peaceful.  I started to think about what type of artist I am and researched the different types of landscape types.   The three types are impressionistic, abstract and representational.  Representational captures the natural beauty.  Its more realistic that attempts to capture the essence of nature, sometimes it could look photorealistic but not always.  I like to portray the outdoors.  It could be rolling hills, meadows, fields, mountains, lakes, rivers, seaside and beyond.  I discovered that there are a few names that I've known and you may have heard about that are listed as 10 of the top famous landscape artists.  I've only listed the ones that I recognized. Leonardo de Vi

 

So the painting above these words with the purple, blue, and green was painted with left over paint from another painting.  This painting was also painted as trees in a forest but I posted it on my Facebook page and asked others to help name it and others saw flowers instead of trees.  They saw Spring!  I love to hear what others see and how it speaks to them.  This one I think I will call "Spring is coming"   I love this one! I love all the bright burst of color with the various shapes of flowers and the roses.  It also looks like it planted in the ground along a path mixed in with other green plants.   This one was an an attempt at abstract.  I like it and thought it was fun to work on.                                          I love the colors in this one!                                                                                                                                      The splendor of roses!                                             This one was fun, I

 These two were fun to do.  The one on top took a long time to blend layers upon layers of color for the sky to look how I wanted it to look.  My favorite thing to paint is the sky, a beautiful blended background can set the tone for the rest of the painting.

  This painting was a fun one.  I really was working at letting go and see what happens.  It is very abstract and not my normal kind of painting.  I had watched a few videos on how someone starts the process for their abstract art.  It really just starts with a mark on the canvas, anything from a shape or a line or a dot and then you just go with it.  Some plan out their colors.  I used what I had left on my palette from a previous painting.  Letting go and just doing can be just as creative as having a plan on painting a landscape.   It certainly leaves it the eye of who is looking at it to see what they can see in it and how it makes them feel.  This one I see flowers and leaves but deeper than that a tree, I enjoy the colors.  The colors are bright and they make me feel cheerful and upbeat.  I plan on trying to do more paintings like this just to help loosen the creativity.  Like I've said in the past I enjoy blending colors on a canvas and could do that all day on canvas after

 I live where we get all four seasons and sometimes all in one day. I'm surrounded by pine trees, which I love! Growing up in Chaparral NM our property had pine trees all around the perimeter that my parents planted after we bought the property.  I was born in El Paso TX and moved about 8 miles outside of town to Chaparral NM.  I loved living out there. I've lived in Albuquerque NM, Sandia Park NM, Fort Davis TX and have been in Flagstaff Arizona since 2009. I love nature before I started painting I had the dream of being a landscape photographer.  I bought a nice camera and practice taking pictures every where I went.  I even made a little money on the side briefly with taking a few family pictures outdoors for a about 4 or 5 families.  I took pictures at my brother's wedding and even was hired to take pics at an old fashioned Ball. I created several photo books and given them as gifts to family and friends.  I created a blog and tried to create a business as well called S

 

 Last week at work we had been dealing with the snow and getting to and from work, as if that wasn't enough we had a morning of no internet on Wed.  Now a days everything ties into having interest even our phone system at work so if there is an issue then nothing works.  We were all sent home that morning.  Instead of going home, I went over to my co-worker's house, which over the months she has become a really good friend, actually my best friend!  Anyways we had such a fun afternoon together!  She ordered pizza and we had a really strange movie on in the background and then we painted with watercolors. Here is my hummingbird, not too bad, just don't look at the other bird lol Kim and I Kim in action Here is my finished watercolor of flowers.  I like it! I ended up calling it Springtime Confetti. A nice little set up :) It is always a ton of fun being around my bestie!

  I love taking left over paint from previous painting and blending all of the colors on the next blank canvas.  I love blending colors, it helps me see my next painting.  As I I take my brush and spread the paint on the canvas I watch each stroke and how the paint lays on the canvas and how each stroke could be developing into something that starts to lead me to the next idea of what to paint.  I have discovered when I just let go and do this there have been times I feel like my creativity really starts to flow and some awesome paintings have come from this process. For example that is how the paintings below were created, using left over paint and only using the colors that were left. I have been known just to sit and spread and blend paint onto canvas' and then let them dry and walk away from them for a bit and then pull one out and look at it and then start painting.  I find it  soothing and relaxing to blend the paint on the canvas.

Turquoise is a beautiful color.  It’s a stone that can be made into stunning jewelry.  I love nature, all elements of it. I find the color to be relaxing and reflective.  Turquoise means tranquility, soothing and peaceful. It’s a calming color.  It evokes the perfect feeling that sets up the moment to be creative and helps me to let things go and only focus on the moment to create.

Here is a an example of a painting step by step. I enjoyed doing this sweet little painting.

Last year I played around on canvases that I have re-painted over and trying different techniques too.  It was fun to let go and create like that, it helped me be creative and to relax.   This one turned out to be a forest of cherry blossom trees down by some water. I did this one with limited colors and on a small re-purposed canvas. The next two with the flowers in purple and below in blue were on re-purposed canvases and just strictly not doing a ton of thinking and just trying different things out.  I think they came out cute. I really enjoyed doing this one with the trees.  Doing the background was the best and fun part about it all! This one I love the way it looks so fresh and bright and new, the perfect Spring day! This one is on canvas paper.  I enjoyed this one too. Painting on paper is a little different than on a canvas.  I prefer canvas but have started to re-think it and might try to paint on paper more often especially to practice technique.

  The other day I challenged myself to have a little fun without having a plan.  I'm pretty sure that is the best way to describe abstract.  It was so much fun!  There were times I'd try to stop and think about what I was doing and I'd push myself to stop and just do.  I also found myself closing my eyes at times too.  It was so much fun! I used painters tape to tape down two small pieces of canvas paper to my work space and then I chose a few colors of paint and brushes, sponges, and palette knife and then I went for it! I love how both pictures turned out! I sat there turning each one in different directions to see what I could see each time I did that and it was fun and hard to decide which way I liked them the most! I plan on either putting them in a matted frame or just a simple frame. I think on the days I want to paint but not sure what I want to do I will do this again, it allows me to still be creative and get painting out of my system in that moment.  Plus it'

 In the beginning I started to seek out different methods of painting with different tools, like every day household items from tracing paper, to a paper towel. I enjoy being creative and finding other things or ways of doing something is so much fun. For this one I took a coloring page from one of my coloring books.  I took a pencil and scratched the pencil over over the back side of the coloring page.  Then I put in on the canvas board and with the pencil side down and then I traced the picture. After I that I outlined the drawing with black paint to have outlines and then I painted it with a brush and paints instead of treating it like a coloring page with markers or pencils. It took a little time to do but it was fun and it made a cute painting. This one was so much fun! I followed a tutorial for this fun abstract one!  It started with various colors of paint just dotted on the the canvas board and then a piece of saran wrap was placed on top.  Then I took my fingers and sort of fi

  My mom painting her funny gal One night my mom and I decided to pick these funny ladies to paint.  I love how hers came out (the one on the right), she has an attitude and it fits.  We both wanted to try something different. In the beginning I found that I was okay at looking at a picture of a character or little cartoon type of critter and being able to paint it.  It was fun and I enjoyed but I wanted to be able to just jump right into painting those big amazing paintings with landscapes and such.  It doesn't work out like that, I had to take my time and practice.  Soon I started to look up little quick things on techniques and the different types of brushes to use.  I couldn't wait until my  next paint night with either with my daughters or my mom, but before too long I just started to mess around with painting at home.  I bought a canvas paper pad to use to practice the little things I learned and then I'd buy the 8x10 canvass to start to use what I learned.

  Over time whenever I would visit my girls in Phoenix or when they would come home we would have at least one night of painting.  When I'd go to my mom's (pic above is at my mom's house) we would spend at least one or two evenings painting. We would look forward to looking up ideas on Pinrest and see what would come of our choice. Before my youngest moved out we used one of the walls in her room to start a collage of her paintings and mine too.  It was a very cool looking wall with such a huge variety of subjects. In the beginning it seemed that I could only do cute fat birds, chickens, owls, and frogs.  I couldn't really do landscape or trees very well.  I've since practiced and have found that I can't stop painting trees ha hahaha! I did this frog for my daddy.  He loved frogs.  Ironically this one was done around his birthday in July of 2020. My mom fell in love with my chicken! :) I think she named it Penny.