Green Tea Doodles

Looking up through trees – final …oil painting

Posted in art, haiku, painting, poetry with tags art, haiku, landscape, landscape painting, looking up through trees, oil painting, painting series, poetry, trees on 2017/08/18 by greenteadoodles

looking up through trees – 9

Here is the final (centre) piece of my “Looking up through trees” series. The underpainting for this one was a combination of cad orange and yellow.

Tom’s haiku for the overall piece is written in India ink with a stylus on the finished centre painting. This was an experiment and I am still thinking about how text can be integrated into oil paintings in the best way to look part of the art.

eagle forest sky
high above through reaching trees
rooted deep in Earth

Looking up through trees – all 9 paintings of the series together

I am quite happy with how this came together. Things don’t match perfectly but that wasn’t the intention. It’s the feeling of being there that I wanted to communicate.

This is going to be interesting to frame with small equal spaces between each panel. The gaps between panels will be black and the frame will have a black shadow gap at the edge. I may post the framed version once it’s ready.

snowflower mandala…

Posted in art, drawing, flowers, mandala, poetry with tags art, flowers, mandala, poem, poetry, Queen Anne's Lace, snowflake, snowflower, spring azure butterfly, summer, winter on 2017/08/16 by greenteadoodles

snowflower mandala

What could be more refreshing during August than thinking about snowflakes?! Given the time of year, thinking about snowflake patterns led to wondering about similarities with the wildflower Queen Anne’s Lace. In the end, this mandala is inspired by both but is neither one nor the other – and just when you’ve decided that it is really mostly a snowflake, there’s a butterfly – spring azure – lurking around the perimeter to make it flower-like again. Here’s a photograph that started me thinking about the texture of the Queen Anne’s Lace. (Check out his blog – he’ll make you see wildflowers with new eyes!)

Tom wrote a delightful poem full of both summer and winter for this one!

Subtle turning of the seasons
Marching bands of heat and cold
Crystals ringing changes, reasons
Why all flowers fade and fold
As the season of the snows
Overtakes warm summer lands
Winds of winter skirl and blow
Pearls of ice turn on the strands
Of twisting currents through cold air
Lacing patterns, tracing flowers
Melting as the summer fair
Escapes from frozen empty towers
Life propelled by turning centre
Changes leave before they enter

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Looking up through trees – 8 …oil painting

Posted in art, landscape, poetry with tags art, haiku, light, oil painting, poem, poetry, sky, trees on 2017/07/29 by greenteadoodles

Looking up through trees – 8

The under-painting for this one is cad orange and some cad yellow medium. Unlike some of the others of the series, there is no single large tree, but a characteristic texture of foliage, branches and light. I played with a variety of colours for the sky peeking through – blues, mauves, turquoises… That and the bits of under-painting that remain, give a nice vibrancy.

This is the second last of the series! The next post will include the centre piece and all nine 6″x 6″ paintings put together. 🙂

Here is Tom’s haiku written just for this piece – I don’t see any squirrels but I sure can imagine them!

searching bursts of green
ruffled breezes passing by
shaking squirrels on high

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Looking up through trees – 7 …oil painting

Posted in art, landscape, painting with tags art, cedar, haiku, oil painting, painting, poem, poetry, tree on 2017/07/26 by greenteadoodles

Looking up through trees – 7

This is one of my favourites of the series. I can really feel the height of this giant tree and the light filtering through! The under-painting was cad orange and while I found it a bit visually uncomfortable during the process for some reason, I think the end result is good. Curious.

Here is Tom’s mystical haiku written for this one.

bright starburst branches
tangled future, ancient past
rising to the sky

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Looking up through trees – 6 …oil painting

Posted in art, landscape, painting, poetry with tags art, haiku, oil painting, painting, poem, poetry, trees on 2017/07/24 by greenteadoodles

Looking up through trees – 6

This series continues to be so enjoyable to paint! There’s an infinite variety of greens to play with and the contrast with the various back-painting shades has been an interesting exploration. With this one, the back-painting was a warm enough red to be verging on orange.

Here’s Tom’s haiku written just for this painting.

mysterious sky
lies behind the palisade
sunlight filters through

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