I want to thank everyone for the kind and encouraging comments on Facebook and the cards I've received wishing me a speedy recovery.  I am feeling so much better now.  My calcium levels are normal and so are the parathyroid levels.  Thanks so much and I'm pretty much back to my old self. 

I thought I was finished but I'll be touching it up tomorrow.  I'm going to lower the tree top a little.  The pointy top just doesn't work for me.  Of course, that means redoing most of the sky.  I think I'm going to add a little more roughage in the foreground to suggest dead grass laying down.  

The above are the steps I took to create this 12" x 12"  Acrylic on Gallery Wrap Canvas.  I always put the sky first but a lot of artists don't, especially plein air painters.  But with acrylic, it drys so fast, it won't mix with other paints like oils would.
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The last two look very much alike.  When I looked at the next to the last one, the buttercups looked as if they were in a hole, a foggy hole.  So I wanted to bring them up by adding more detail.

This painting was done for a fundraiser for the Smith Trahern Mansion in Clarksville.  The 2 Rivers Society of Painters is having a show in celebration of the 19th Amendment / Women's Suffrage.  They told us to paint anything that celebrates women and / or the Women's Suffrage movement.  In Tennessee, the yellow rose or yellow flowers were symbols used during the movement.  So I picked buttercups.  It's a yellow flower but it's a spring flower which mean new birth, new life.  The right to vote did give us a new life,  a new beginning  for women, one hundred years ago.   

If anyone would like to purchase this painting now, a portion of the sale price will be donated to the Tranhern Mansion, just in case Covid 19 interferes with our plans. 

​I really enjoyed painting this one. 

I've been out of the studio for almost two weeks.  I'm still feeling a little shaky inside since the parathyroid surgery.  I tried to go in and paint a little today, very little. I didn't do anything major to either of these two painting.  I'm hoping to feel better tomorrow and get these guys finished.  The first two images are of a commission piece I'm doing.  It's a 16" x 20" gallery wrap Acrylic. The last one is for the Smith Trahern in August. It's going to be a field of buttercups.  It's a 12" x 12" gallery wrap canvas Acrylic also.
I'll have to admit, I didn't feel like going in today.  I went anyway and the first half was a waste but I did feel better after lunch and got some color down. I'm pretty happy about that. 

In the last 11 days, I had an out patient procedure done.  I ended up staying the night in the hospital and so glad I did.  I have had problems with high calcium and high parathyroid hormone for several years now.  So they went in to get the bad gland.  You have four parathyroid glands the size of a pea or piece of rice.  You only have to have one.  If you have your thyroid removed, which I have, you are more likely to have trouble with your parathyroid.  The day after I came home from the hospital I talked with my art buddy Hilda and she passed away that night. I've known she wasn't doing well but she sounded so good on the phone.  I just wasn't prepared for the news that she had passed away.  So 11 days and a lot has happened, so it time to get back to the studio.  RIP Hilda! 

Talented award winning artist, Hilda Waide, my wonderful friend has passed away.  We met when I first returned to Tennessee after retirement.  Hilda and I belonged to the Tennessee Watercolor Society and while standing in line to drop off work for a regional show in Clarksville, I mentioned she looked familiar.  We had both been Art Educators in Davidson County Public Schools. Hilda retirement the same year I left to go to Georgia to teach.   From then on, we were the best of pals.   We joined the Downtown Artists Co-op in Clarksville and we would ride together to and from talking and laughed.  I really can't tell you what we talked about but we laughed the whole way there and back to Erin always stopping for at least one meal.  She loved hamburgers, homemade pie from Fitz's and her coffee.  She had 20 years on me but ran circles around me, I couldn't keep up with her. She was a unique, kind and wonderful person.  I will miss her terribly.  RIP Friend.