Romantic Botanicals #66

 Lily and the Houseguests

Everyday I tell myself I will start painting earlier to beat the heat yet everyday I do dishes, laundry, exercise, breakfast, check in with the kids before I paint. I like to paint with a clear head, meaning that everything in the house is settled while I am out in the yard. Ideally I need to wake up at 6 on these summer days.

Bees come today and I feel so sorry for them because there is no place to land to get near the pistil with its nectar. They bump into the stamen and knock around into anthers and get covered in the pollen and cling on with their tiny legs to the bendy filament. Lily is not a friendly flower for pollinators.

I am still doing the fireworks on a flat background. I continue with the one stroke style but this time even more thick and goopy. I am playing with a brightness reversal of colour. The flower is orange but I am painting it blue and the background orange. It is like an after image when you look at something very contrasty.

romantic botanicals #66 Lily and the Houseguests,  July 4,  2016 oil on canvas 9" x 12"in the shade, 2h

bee hanging on to a bendy filament

bee hovering, swooping, searching for a way to get at the nectar.

this butterfly or it's friends (they all look alike to me) keep trying to get at my paints. They have been at it all week. I keep windmilling my arms to shoo them or it away.

I have been successful until today when one finally sat on my paint tubes until I told it politely that it was not a healthy spot to investigate. It left with no back talk. I covered up my paint tube box again.