A Pretty Great View

“A Pretty Great View”  ©Jill Rosoff 2009, 5″ x 8″, $65.00

I just went on my first away-from-it-all vacation in 5 years, back to Hawaii, an old favorite.  For me, Waikiki is one of my favorite beaches, you can sit and do nothing and still be completely entertained.  The view is spectacular, and even though civilization continues creeping in an taking over, there are still some things that will always be special.  And even though I managed not to pack my camera (egad!), between some sketches, my cell phone’s camera (!) and my deep memory, I’ve done some watercolor sketches.  Here’s the first one of the land of aloha.

Cup and spoon

“Blue Cup on Yellow Table” ©Jill Rosoff 2009, 5″ x 8 1/2″, $75.00

I’ve been away on vacation, my first real one in a long time, so please forgive my long absence from this blog!  It was really good to get away, leave all cares behind.  And Hawaii called, it really did.

This piece is an iteration of “In Blue and Yellow” that I posted on August 26th this year, revisiting the colors and the arrangements of the elements.  I rarely revisit a composition so specifically, but this one just pings with me.  It ended up dealing mostly with primary colors, with secondary and tertiary colors showing up pretty much just when their layers met one another, except for a little magenta I couldn’t resist using.

Chromatic cups

Chromatic Cups, ©Jill Rosoff 2009, 6″ x 10 1/4″, $100.00

This set of four espresso cups has appeared in many of my Coffee Cup series of paintings.  I found them years ago in San Francisco, I think, when I lived in Berkeley.  The colors caught my eye and I was smitten, which happens to me so often.  I thought I’d use them for  espresso, but they have modeled more often for paintings.  I like my espresso a’ latte!

I’m often in a place in one of these paintings where I want to show a difference between a shadow that is cast which is the result of bright light being blocked, and the shade on the side of an object that faces away from the light source.  Its a test to convincingly illustrate the differences–one is a surface in shade, the other is the blocking of light by an object on a surface.  Where is a shadow that is cast versus where is the lack of direct light.

Cups and squiggles

“Two Demitasse on tablecloth” ©Jill Rosoff 2009, 8 1/2″ x 5 1/2″, $65.00

One of the interesting things about this series coffee cup pieces is the choices I have for the environment the coffee cups are set in. More often than not in my mind its a kitchen or breakfast table, near a window with a view to a garden and sunshine is pouring in.    The visual questions are along the lines of:  will the focus be more on an architectural kind of layout, the color composition, or on the cups, the table surface, the other elements of the painting?  Ultimately the painting’s completion is due to a combination of them, but the journey on each piece is different.

If you can smell the coffee and the hot croissants…ahhh!  so much the better.

More Gerberas

“Gerberas in Green Bottle” ©Jill Rosoff 2009, sample clip of painting in progress

I first saw gerberas when I was working in a law firm (really!) in San Francisco oh so many years ago.  One day the sole female partner brought a bunch of them in to put in her office.  It was a ‘wow’ moment for me, watching her walk by with the bouquet.  I honestly didn’t believe they were real flowers.  I was enthralled with the oh-so-long stems, the vivid colors, and all of those long daisy petals.  And the backs of the petals were a whole different color, but really, simply a paler tone of the frontside color.  They were like bright fireworks frozen on to the end of an impossibly long stem.

What I’m showing here is just one section of a new painting in progress, a tall, narrow piece.  The full painting is 6″ wide by 24″ long.  I wanted to show just this bit of it here, zeroing on the petals.  The finished painting shows the full-length flowers and stems in a green glass bottle.  It will be available through my website (click on the orange tulips over there on the right) once it’s completed.

A side note, from the ‘who knew’ file: the stats for this blog show that ‘gerber daisies’ is one of the top searches and most often viewed posts on my page.  so thanks to all who look for and find the paintings!!

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In Blue and Yellow

“Blue and Yellow Cup” ©Jill Rosoff 2009, 5″ x 8 1/2″, $75.00

This is the newest addition to my series of paintings of coffee cups.  There is something quiet and peaceful about sitting with my coffee in the morning, waking up, sun shining in on the table, sorting out my thoughts, planning the day.  My friend Paula did an etching of a coffee cup and spoon that I saw years ago at her house, which stuck with me ever since, so along with my morning coffee fix, she and her print are is as much an inspiration for these paintings.  This one also became a color homage to the  kitchen at Monet’s house in Giverny.

First plumeria of the season

“First of the Season”  5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″  ©Jill Rosoff 2009,  $100.oo

Here it is.  This was my first plumeria bloom this year, that I watched and waited so patiently for.  The view is from the top of the plant, its just 3′ tall, so I look down on it when I’m next to it.  There’s many more now, a gift that keeps on giving.  Thanks for the cutting, Mom!   And the pink plumeria tree downstairs in the patio started blooming 2 days ago.  Smells like heaven!

Midstream on many pieces

Plumeria buds on my deck

I got a brilliant idea over the winter and put one of my plumeria plants on my deck outside the sliding glass door from my dining room.  My living/dining/kitchen is on the 2nd of my 3 storeys, and my plumerias are all on the back patio.   So this year I have been able to watch one of the plants bloom.  It’s been a lovely and happy process, filled with anticipation, especially once the buds showed.  See above.  Painting coming soon!

I have four paintings going right now on my painting table, three  small works in my coffee cups series, and one (so far) of the plumeria, which also has the very lyrical name of frangipani.  It suits my multi-tasking head to do this, to have so many pieces going at one time, but it lets me work continually.  While a layer of color dries on one piece, I work on the next.

And  I’m about to start a larger one of blue hydrangea, recalling my post in June about blue flowers, which I am constantly drawn to.  I love that up close all the petals can be different colors, from pale green to lavender to periwinkle to purple, and when you back up and look at the plant as a whole, its blue.   I have a couple of my hydrangea paintings on my website –click on the orange tulips over there on the right–in the Blossoms and Gardens section.  The hydrangeas are another boon from Trader Joe’s, my treasure trove of goodies and flowers.  And it’s getting to sunflower season!

From the garden

“From Jen’s Garden”  ©Jill Rosoff 2009, 7″ x 10″, $100.00 matted only

My sister’s garden is a treasure trove of inspirations for me.  The roses are scrumptious, the oriental poppies and sweet peas too. The seasonal flowers pop up as their times come, so the garden changes all the time.  And it seems like new ones show up each year, little surprises that I hadn’t seen before.  This was a bouquet of flowers she gave me earlier this year, roses, cosmos, and a dahlia, or maybe its a zinnia.  I couldn’t resist painting them.

Summer and periwinkle

Starting top left, going clockwise: the blue flowers on the tree next to my house, then jacaranda, campanula, and 2 photos of the lilies of the valley across the street.

I’m taking a step out of my typical posts for this entry.  It occurred to me  the other day that it’s curious that at the beginning of summer, when the sun is a light, yellowish-white globe in the sky, at its hottest and brightest all year, that many of the flowers that bloom at this time of year are periwinkle, almost perfectly complimentary to it on the color wheel: the jacaranda, campanulas and agapanthus (more poetically called lillies of the valley).  They are the most wonderful color of periwinkle (also a fun word to say, and named after a tropical plant related to vinca.  Oops, side trip.)  Blue violet in juxtaposition to the sun.

So here’s a peek at what I see in my immediate vicinity these days: my neighbor’s jacaranda tree fills the view out the sliding door to my deck; across the street the front yard is packed with agapanthus plants whose buds are about to burst open like violet-blue fireworks.  Then there’s the campanula that’s planted in the large pot with one of my plumeria on the deck, lovely star-shaped blossoms overflowing the edge of the pot.  And finally, a small tree with amazing little blue flowers that is growing at my front door.  I have no idea what they are called, but I love them.  If only my blue hydrangea was blue-ming too!