A Taste of Honey

Some time ago I painted a picture of a bee sitting on a purple coneflower, which I blogged about here. My sister is a fan of bees and beekeeping, and liked it so much I gave it to her as a gift. After a couple of my paintings had been rejected from juried shows she kept saying I should have entered the bee painting, as she was sure it would be accepted.

However, 1) I had already given it as a gift, so didn't want to take it back to enter, and 2) there was a small rip in the paper which is hardly noticeable, but which I felt a judge might notice. But the more I thought about it the more I decided to do *another* painting from the same reference, and the above painting is the result.

And sure enough, I entered it into the annual show of the West Essex Art Association, and the receiving and judging was today, and it got accepted!

But so much depends on the judge after all. You were allowed to enter two works into the West Essex show, and the second painting I entered, The Old Farm Pantry, was accepted also. This is the very painting that got rejected at the PSNJ juried show in 2009, and which prompted my sister to say I should have entered the bee painting instead. But today they both got accepted. :-)

Blue Heron at Dawn

I love Great Blue Herons. I've been away on vacation for a couple weeks, with no art supplies with me, so my pastels have not been touched since mid-December. But I had a lovely time in Jacksonville, FL, spending Christmas with my son, daughter-in-law, and 15-month-old grandson. It was chilly early in my visit, with temps down in the 20s at night, and even light snow flurries the day after Christmas. But it warmed up as time went on, and reached up into the low 70s by my last couple days there.

My little grandson woke up every morning about 6:30 AM and would come into my room to visit me, so those last couple days I put him in his stroller and took him for an early morning walk around their apartment complex, which surrounds a small lake. I always enjoyed seeing what birds might be at the lake, and the early morning was a great time to see herons and egrets. We saw this great blue backlit by the rising sun, and I just knew I wanted to paint him.

I got a chuckle when I realized that he is not my first Great Blue Heron painting. I did this blue heron painting just recently from a photo I took up in Canada back in October. Though my first one was this one from two years ago, where you can barely see that there is a bird, let alone its species, LOL.