Inspired by Nature

This summer, though my eldest daughter hobbled about from her foot injury, we went on our planned family vacation. Because she wasn't too mobile, we had to change our activities a bit. One day, we girls ended up taking a plein air oil painting class with a local artist. My daughters had each dabbled with oil paints in school art classes, but I've never touched oil paint before. We enjoyed our day immensely. Although we all sat on the terrace of the lodge, I think it's interesting how we were each inspired by different things. Now that I'm looking at the paintings we made -- I'm considering framing my daughters' art as gifts for the girls -- I thought I'd share them with you here. What do you think? Have any of you tried oil painting?

My youngest was inspired by a puddle:


My oldest was inspired by the hills in the distance, but changed the palette:


I was inspired by the cool shape of a dead tree:


I'm still inspired by trees, as you can see by my two recent journals. For this one, I photocopied some colorful leaves onto fabric, did a bit of outline quilting, then colored over it all with pastel crayons to give it a softer, painted look.


I used scraps here to create a background, covered it with mesh, then quilted all around to capture the pieces. I highlighted some areas with metallic paintsticks and glued some skeleton leaves on top.


Hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween! I'll be sad to take down the decorations.