Freesias and waves

“Lavender Freesias on wave pattern” ©Jill Rosoff 2011, 6″ x 11 3/4″, framed  $185.00

Freesia season seems to have come and gone quickly this year.  Or I’ve been so preoccupied with my website revision that I’ve missed it.  I got this one in, though!  The structure is so fun to dissect, and arrange on the paper.  

The wave pattern in the background was spurred by  I can’t believe I’m admitting this, a segment on The View.  Last month Ms. Walters et al had Glenn Lowry, the Director of MoMA on as a guest.  I was gobsmacked:  a segment about Art, specifically paintings, on a television talk show?  And that wasn’t about the heist of a treasured, irreplaceable painting, or a record-settoing price at an auction. Nice!  The discussion was about how to appreciate art.  And one of the pieces they projected was a Josef Albers painting that looks all white.  Then they zoomed in on it and up close its a series of narrow, horizontal oblongs in pale, pale tints of the spectrum of colors.  They are so pale, that when you back away from the canvas, your eye blends them, and it looks plain white.  It was looking at those pale strips of color that jolted me.  In a good way (read wow! not cattle prod).  It underlined for me the richness of colors, and how they relate or change as they are combined and juxtaposed.  

Now, obviously this painting isn’t a study of white, its about perception.  On this piece, look closely at the waves, they are more than just a spectrum of the coral color.  I had a little fun with them.   You can double click on the image, and it’ll open in a larger version.  Can you see it?

Nasturtium, for Earth Day

“Nasturtium and single leaf”  ©Jill Rosoff 2011, 7″ x 10″  $65.00

I love nasturtiums.  Is it nasturtia?  Their colors are wonderfully vivid, their design is curious.  And they smell really pungeantly earthy.  A perfect ode to Earth Day.

My mother grew them along with white daisies.  They made a lovely little bouquet in a glass vase, the white daisies contrasted to the intensely colored orange, red and yellow nasturtiums.  They’re also lovely in salads, I discovered a few years ago having lunch at a winery near San Jose, CA that is sadly no longer around.  But oh was that salad a revelation.

This painting’s germination came last monthwhen one of the people in my workshops brought in this lone flower along with its companion leaf.  I used it for a model while I demonstrated blocking in colors and shapes.  Later on I took the little demo back to my painting table and fleshed it out.  And voila.  

Have a good Earth Day!

Watercolor Workshops!

Detail, From Jen’s Garden, ©Jill Rosoff 2009

The Watercolor Workshops are held on alternate Saturday mornings, from 1o am to 1 pm.  All you need to bring is your passion and desire to learn.  

Here’s a recommendation a student recently sent to me:

“I would like to relate my experience in attending Jill Rosoff’s Watercolor Workshops.  I would like to believe I am an intermediate watercolor artist and have had some modest success in awards and selling my work.  I took Jill’s workshop after viewing one of her plein air exhibits and upon meeting her felt she could offer me her professional talents and teaching skills to further my hope of improvement.  Jill has indeed bolstered that in many ways.  Jill has a commanding presence to bring out the art that’s within you – if it’s there Jill will find it and you will be forever grateful for the experience.”

Harry C.
Del Mar, California

For more information about the Workshops, click on “Watercolor Workshops” under Pages over in the right-hand column.

The interior of a tulip

“Another Red Tulip” ©Jill Rosoff 2011, 4″ x 6″, $40.00

When you think of the image of a tulip, the shape that comes to mind is the shape of the whole flower atop that lovely long stem.  When the blossom opens up wide like this, which they’ll do when it’s warm, it shows off these wonderful inner glories.  How coy of them to have all this great-looking stuff hidden inside!  They almost look like poppies when they’re like this.  The fun thing is that when it cools off, the buds close up again.

This piece is painted on the last sheet of paper from the pack of watercolor postcard blanks I bought so many years ago.  I mentioned that pad two posts ago, on “Single Orange Tulip”.  Imagine what all of these tulip portraits would look like arranged together on the wall!  the orange , the pink, the two red ones, and there’s a purple one posted back on March 28, 2009.