Fragrant Evening Hymn

Last one!

The line is "Tearmann's peasant voices swell, in fragrant evening hymn."

"Fragrant Evening Hymn." 11x14 watercolor. NFS.

The thing I wanted to avoid doing was to have a painting of a bunch of people with their mouths open, like a hokey Christmas plywood lawn decoration. And I couldn't do another chapel window! So this one was hard to conceive. Finally I decided to use a gothic arch of some kind as the structure of the painting, to evoke the idea of the church and hymn without being literal. My husband suggested trees, but I couldn't fit them into the narrative easily, so I hit upon this idea, based on a gothic arch with three or four left-leaning arcs crossed by three or four right-leaning arcs. The houses in the picture continue the pattern.  And I hope the figures continue the narrative.

Now for the truly hard work of packaging this thing and trying to find someone to publish it!

Angel Dreams

I am only one painting away from being done with this lullaby project! (Assuming I don't decide to re-paint any of the images.)

Here is the painting for the last verse, which goes:

"A leanbhan O, the low bell rings

my little lamb to rest,

and angel dreams, till morning sings

its music in your breast."

"Angel Dreams." 11x14 watercolor. NFS.

I especially like this painting because the first iteration was so horrible, and I scrubbed all the paint off, leaving an interesting "underpainting" on which I painted my second effort. Sometimes I need to stop caring about the results, the paper, and the paint, and screw the whole thing up until I can relax and do what I want rather than what I think should be done. In this case, what I wanted was to pick up my watercolor crayons and sketch a bunch of wild botanical shapes over the colorful remains of my first painting. I think it worked. Don't ask why this kid fell asleep among a bunch of thistles without even a blanket. It's art. :-)