“Orange Poppies, Blue Swirls 2″, ©Jill Rosoff 2011

To escort out 2o11, this is the last piece I finished last year.  It’s back to one of my ‘true north’ concepts, the orange flower on the rich blue background, this one using my patterned background from my Tapestri series.

I’ve been away from my blog for a little bit.  Christmas-time was busy, between filling orders, holiday events, rearranging my home a little, and enjoying the lights, decorations and general cheerfulness the holidays bring.  I always love watching the lights go up on people’s houses.  My new next door neighbors decorated their front garden with lights which were so fun to look at as I arrived home in the dark.

Its always a time of reorganizing and reassessing for me, to see where I want to go in the coming year.  We’re having summer weather here (84° today!) which has actually helped my mind set post-holiday blues!  So although the Christmas lights are mostly down and the mail once again is mainly bills and junk, (I love old-fashioned mail!) I’ve got new ideas for paintings, new ideas for silk scarves, and new watercolor workshops on calendar.

Thanks to all of you who keep coming and checking in with me, I appreciate it!

TA DA!   The reproductions you all selected are now available on my Etsy shop.  These signed and numbered, limited edition prints are $35.00 each, or $125.00 for a set of four.  

But! just for the next two weeks, they are specially priced at $30.00 each, $110.oo for a set.  And when you buy the set, all of the prints will be the same number in the edition.  Order by December 17th for standard delivery before Christmas!  Overnight is available for orders made up until the 22nd for an additional cost.

And by the way,  I want to thank all of my blog readers, for reading my blog and especially to those who have subscribed, I appreciate it.  And to all who participated in the selection of these reproductions, I appreciate your responding!

I’ve been in production lately, making scarves, holiday cards, and a couple of open houses, and I haven’t been posting regularly here.  Sacre bleu!

I’m painting poppies on the scarves now.  This one was the first one, and I’m doing more, in lighter oranges, yellow, pink and I want to do a periwinkle blue one.  This is chiffon, 15″ x 72″, they’re pretty fun on crepe de chine, and I’ve just done an 8″ x 60″ one on habotai silk, which has deep orange, light orange and yellow ones.  I’ll get them posted soon, not to worry!  It looks pretty good on my full-size articulated figure its on.  I need to name him…suggestions?

All my scarves are available through my Etsy Shop.  If you see one you like but want it in other colors, you can use the CONTACT button below this post, or convo me on Etsy.  I can take Christmas order up to about the 16th.

“Small Garden” ©Jill Rosoff 2011, 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″

Off tonight to do a presentation/demonstration to the Saddleback Art League in Mission Viejo, CA.  For this presentation I’ve deconstructed a painting that will be a part of my Tapestri Collection, showing the process I go through to make one of these paintings in four stages.  Using four different versions of a painting, I show the layering of content and composition, and how the transparent quality of the watercolors themselves build the intricacies and richness into completing a painting.

This little watercolor was completed yesterday, a small garden of Iceland Poppies and buds, cranberry red impatiens, coral bells, and lavendar star-shaped flowers.  It will go up for auction tonight at the Saddleback Art League, after my demonstration.

In the meantime I’ve got reproductions of the four images you all chose last week going to print, look for them to be available soon.  These limited edition prints will be printed on 12″ x 18″ paper, and will each cost $35.00 apiece.  They’ll be available through my Etsy shop.

And the winners who picked the final sets:  Congratulations to Lynne Purse and Janice Sheldon.  

Pre-order for Christmas

You can now pre-order these prints at the special pre-release price of $3o.oo each (normally $35.00).  Prints will be shipped in early December.  Tax and shipping will be added to the price of the prints.  This offer is good through November 30, 2011. 

How to Order?  use the Comment button below, tell me which one(s) you’d like to order, and I’ll follow up with you to complete your orders.  They’ll also soon be available on my Etsy shop.  

My enormous thanks! to all the 400+ people who visited my blog during this selection process.  

Above are eight of my paintings, with numbers next them.  Be a part of the selection process by choosing the four you think would make the best set to reproduce in this limited edition.  I want your opinions!

How? Simply use the COMMENT link below, and send me the numbers of the images like the best, the ones you’d like to own.  

The voting starts now, and ends at noon Saturday, Nov. 5, 2011.

SPECIAL PRIZE:  You could be the winner of a set of these prints for participating in the voting.When the votes are tallied, the names of two of the voters who picked the final four winning images will be drawn from a hat to receive a set of the prints.  These are digitally printed reproductions, using all archival inks and paper.  Each print will be signed and numbered in the edition of 100.

Questions?  Click on the Comment button below, and write in the numbers of your favorites.  Include any questions you have in the comment window, and post the comment.  I’ll get back to you as soon as possible!  And your email address remains private!

Thanks so much for participating!

“Orange Poppies, blue swirls” ©Jill Rosoff 20111, 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″

For those of you near Mission Viejo, CA, I will be demonstrating of my process of painting watercolors on November 8th for the Saddleback Art League.  Showing a painting in various stages, I will go through the steps I take as I make a painting.  At the end of the demonstration, one of my paintings will be auctioned off to benefit the League.  

The demonstration is open to the public.  The parking is free too!

Tuesday, November 8th, 6 to 8:30 pm

Mission Viejo City Hall, Saddleback Room

200 Civic Center Drive

Mission Viejo, CA 92691

As you enter Glimpse

On a wonderful raspberry sorbet-colored wall

During the Artist Talk, with my large painting of Tulips on the wall next to me.

Me with Glimpse founder Lynle Ellis (right) and her mother Lynn (left).  Oh! and a couple of my paintings.

“Busy Busy Busy”, “Gerbers in Vase” and “Berry Corn”

All images ©Jill Rosoff.  All rights reserved.

Photography by Sue Rosoff

This piece will be included in my show coming up in San Diego.  The opening is on October 15th, so come if you can!  The gallery is called Glimpse and is in the fun, up-and-coming North Park neighborhood.  The owner/curator, Lynle Ellis, ASID, has selected over 50 pieces for this show.  Please come, and tell your friends who live in and around San Diego about it!  The show is open to the public.

GoSee at Glimpse, 3813 Ray St.   San Diego, CA  92104
Artist Talk, 4:30 to 5:30 pm,  Reception, 6 to 9 pm

This reduced image of this painting doesn’t quite do it justice, especially what I’ve got going on in the background.  You can double-click on the image and a larger version will open up, and you can see the detail.

I think about blueberries when Fall starts and Thanksgiving is coming, because that’s when my grandmother would make her “blubry” pie.  She’d say it in her Boston accent, it was always a two-syllable word with her.  But I’ve since learned that blueberries are perrenials, they grow year round.  So much for a blueberry ‘season’!  

“Soft Afternoon Light, St. Tropez” ©Jill Rosoff 2011, 11 1/2″ x 8 1/2″ $300.00

This past spring I went on a truly terrific trip with my mother, a cruise along the coast of the Mediterranean from Barcelona to Rome.  Our fourth port of call was to St. Tropez, home of Brigitte Bardot and Bain de Soleil (for the St. Tropez tan!).  It was early enough in the season that it was still fun, not overcrowded, but still very warm and wonderful.  And we were there on a Saturday – market day in French villages – so the town square was filled with vendors selling everything from fresh-picked vegetables, fruit and flowers to cotton clothing, shoes, purses, real turkish towels, scarves and more.  We had the best time zipping through the stalls, finding our treasures before it all closed down at 12:30.  I think we bought more there than on the whole rest of the trip put together.

This trip was special for me.  I fell hard for the architecture in Tuscany years ago, while I was taking a graduate printmaking course in Firenze.  I spent a month in that wonderful town.  It had been too long since I’d been back, so I was looking forward to more of it when our voyage cruised into Italy.  We started off, as I said, in Barcelona,and I fell for the architecture in Barcelona, Valencia, St. Tropez, the ancient ville in Monte Carlo.  And I realized that that I really love coastal Mediterranean architecture.  The variations country to country, the colors, the homes sistered up next to each other, the balconies, the railings, the windows, the shutters that are an integral part of  liveability in the hot summer climate along that coastline (in California we all too often see shutters simply as architectural decor, rather than useful components of a natural cooling system).  There’s something wonderful about two houses sitting next door to one another, and the windows are not quite even with each other.  Like musical notes on a line of sheet music.

I also love the colors they use.  They’re lovely, light almost sherberty colors, that time and weather bestows with a patina that gives those fresh, wispy colors a certain gravitas.  And then there are the simple, graceful details of those shutters, wrought iron railings, the edge of the tile roofing, and the addition of 20th C plumbing on the facades of 200+ year old structures.  In the transparent world of watercolors, to get the building surfaces to look substantial I use layer after layer of paint, sometimes smooth layers, sometimes scrubbed on, to get the effect I want on the stucco, each pale layer painted on using a range of very similar colors, which creates a richer, fuller texture.  I start with the largest areas of color, and then built in the architectural details, leaving the darker areas: the shadows and the wrought iron, which serve as punctuation, to the very last.  Et voila!

A special note:  This was a big month for me and this blog!  I posted my 100th posting, and viewers to it went over 20,000.  I want to thank you all for continuing to visit my blog. I hope you’ll continue to come back and to tell everyone you know about it!

Thank you so much!