Hollyhocks, watercolor, 7″ x 5″

Last year we moved to a new house and were thrilled to have a small garden.  My husband, who has the green thumb in the family, cleaned out the weeds, grouped the strawberries, chives, and mint into patches, and headed to the garden store. He came back with some plant sets and several packages of seeds.  He drew a diagram,  planted the sets and sowed the seeds.  Later we looked at the seed package for the hollyhocks again and discovered that they didn’t grow four to six inches high, making a nice border, but would be four to six feet tall!  When the plants, which wouldn’t bloom until the second year, were large enough, they got moved from the border of the garden to in front of the shed at the back of the garden.  This spring they grew large leaves and tall spikes with dark purple, almost black, large showy flowers.  They produce an amazing amount of pollen, which falls in large patches on the bottom side of each flower.

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120 Paintings

“It takes 120 bad paintings to know something about painting.”  –  Larry Seiler as quoted by Jeff Mahorney in his blog

Each painting is small in format and should be completed in about an hour or less.

My goals are to improve my technique, to paint faster, and to gain experience with a variety of subjects.