J. Frederick Art: April 2012

I'm very excited. Today I signed up for the John Cosby Plein Air Workshop to be held next week in Austin. I've been looking at his work online and am so impressed by his colors and his style. I'm hoping I will be able to learn how he manages to render landscapes so beautifully and perhaps some of it will rub off on me.

"Texas Blues" 6x6 oil on board

"Fence Post" 6x6 oil on board

"Bluebonnet Hill" 8x8 oil on board

Last Thursday I painted at the most beautiful park filled with wildflowers in every direction. I have a series of paintings started at this lovely place called Turkey Bend. Expect to see more as I use up the photos I took there. I don't believe I've ever seen more wildflowers in one place before.

"Easter Challenge" 6x6 oil on board

"Wildflower Hydrant" 6x6 oil on board

I love doing the painting challenges on Daily Paintworks. This week I did their Easter Challenge. They posted a photo of some plastic Easter Eggs opened with some M&Ms spilling out of them. The challenge was to paint this photo or any other Easter related subject matter. I didn't realize till I started that it would be so hard. When I finally finished and posted it, I was shocked to see that I was the only one out of over 70 participants to use that photo. Anyway I was gratified to get a very sweet comment and a bid on the auction for it.

I went for a walk in my neighborhood and found a fire hydrant overgrown with wildflowers. I snapped a photo and used it to create my "Bluebonnet Hydrant".

Other paintings in the past few weeks include: