Snow....

I've been waiting for taking nice picture of snow scene around here since last year. But we haven't had enough snow.

Maybe enough through the night but when I get up in the morning and ready to go..... always half melt or start raining and doesn't look beautiful anymore.

So, I decided to paint the first LITTLE snow we had in this year before having "ENOUGH SNOW".

Add a bright colour

Once in a while, I feel like adding much more bright colour in my painting rather than only
" blue and green".  Here they are vivid orange.

I always see this tree in my neighbours when I go for a walk.  I haven't notice it becomes such a beautiful colour in the fall. Because most of the fall I wasn't here but in Japan.

I was lucky enough being here to see all the beautiful colours in Squamish in the fall.

I was going to paint only one painting but made two. One has a little bit more leaves than the other. Well, it happened accidentally, anyway.

Cascade

When I saw some kind of ivy flowing down on the tree, I was so impressed how beautiful they are.
But "painting those ivy" is totally different story. How can I paint so many leaves? And can I make it like flowing down tree? Well. let's try.

I started this scene at the end of September, 2012. Then, of course, I demolished 2 canvases. Finally the third canvas survived and I think I finished painting and titled "Cascade".  I've already had a title before I started this painting.

Yes, this is the first painting I finished in 2013! 

Looking up the sky

I thought there were quite many artists submitted to the street banner competition. But turned out only 7 submissions by the artists plus 13 elementary school students. And I wasn't even chosen top 3, either.

 I found the winner's design in the newspaper and I think it's far better than mine. So I was able to accept I wasn't the winner without upsetting. 

After the EXCITING(?) street banner competition, I felt a little empty and didn't know what to paint.  But one day, I was walking my every day route in the nice day and just looked up the sky. Here, there was a blue sky and beautiful clouds and shadow of the dry trees.

I went home and took out one of the "demolished" canvases. Demolished means I often put the solid colour of paint all over the canvas in the middle of the painting when I feel this painting will never get better or something so wrong. And hide it under the bed. I always keep some of those canvases under the bed. And I don't feel like using a new canvas, I take it out and start painting on it pretending this is a "coloured" new canvas.

Took me 3 weeks to paint this "LOOKING UP"painting.

Street banner design competition

It's been a exciting, frustrating and disappointing weeks. But also a very good experience.

When I found "Call for Artist" for the street banner competition, I was SOOO excited. I submitted the same competition 3 years ago and ended up the 2nd place. So my design has never flown in  the  Squamish sky.

More over, there were several confusion for me to submit this competition. First I received the old guidance for submission and that wasn't effective for this time. But I recognized it long after I've sent my submission.

Even my submission wouldn't go through to SAC by e-mail as they wanted me to do. So I tried to send it from 3 different account including from my husband's e-mail account. But never accepted. Each one came back.

At that point I was panic. Then I decided to follow the older guidance for submission and sent my original design paper to SAC knowing the newer guidance said "don't send in your original design".

Then I could contact the chair person of SAC and she was kindly accepted my submission to her own e-mail account. This time it went though. STRANGE?????

Yesterday was the day the winner should get the contact from SAC or DOS. No one contacted me, of course. My dreaming day is over...... Well, it was something wrong at the begin with.

The 4th painting of sunset from my window

I painted the first "sunset painting from my window" more than 2 years ago. I had so much trouble to make bright clouds. I wasn't so happy for the result but I couldn't make it any better.

The second one was painted last year. I used vivid orange almost whole canvas. Because I couldn't make nice soft orange clouds that I wanted to paint. But I liked it.

Then, I tried and tried and gave up several times and left it some time. Finally the 3rd one was done used rose violet colour. Titled "Rose Violet Sunset". I wanted to paint that beautiful soft purple clouds for long time and I think I did it. I liked this one very much.

After that, I wanted to try another orange sunset again. I had to repainted the canvas 3 times but I could finished it at last.

I don't think I'm going to paint sunset a little while.

Blue and green again...

Another 24"X12" painting has done and turned out my typical "BLUE and GREEN" painting.

I never intended to use only blue and green in my painting but my landscape always turns out blue and green. Now I'm even curious about how far I can go.