My Violin and Piano painting

Here is a painting I completed recently. It is of my violin and piano and painted entirely from life. I set up in the lounge with palette and easel and worked on it every day for a week. The violin is one I was given on my 18th birthday full of enthusiasm to learn, but as painting has taken over I have had to drop many things in order to give that priority. Still, no excuse really, I should practice sometime! 

But I do play the piano every day. The music in the painting is Chopin's nocturne no.2, one of my favorite pieces at the moment. Though you would find it hard to tell from my loose rendering of the notes!

Music Piece 16":x20"

Here are a few photos taken during the process. Forgive the bad quality of the images; taken with my phone.

Yes I have two pianos! Lucky girl, though the one I'm painting is atrociously out  of tune.

I loved painting the piano keys, so much fun figuring out how to bring them to life with as few strokes as possible.

The last Rose of Summer (Or Autumn!)

     I painted this in one afternoon during the week. I had been working on another painting with reference only from my imagination and it wasn't going so well so I washed the old paint of my piece of  frame glass I use for a palate, picked the last rose in the garden, mixed fresh colours and began to paint. I learnt how to make another shade of brown. All the colours I have in oils are the primaries plus white which is probably a good thing to teach me colour mixing, but it dose feel a bit limited at times. 

 

    I had been wanting to paint a rose in a loose painterly style for a while and from life; fortunately there was still one small pink rose on the bush for me. The box was once my grandmother's sewing box. I didn't spend much time arranging because I just wanted to paint, so a set the box on my desk and placed the rose on it 'any old how' and began. It is on a 10x10 inch canvass, a square shape which I have never used before. Apparently composition is hard to get right in a square, as you can probably tell!