I spent last week in south Florida with my daughter and grandkids, but now I'm back to painting in my studio and have finished this second spring painting I've been working on. As I did in the first one of this pair, I drew butterfly-like shapes in alizarin crimson and filled them in with a wet brush dipped in color in order to get a translucent effect. Next, I added berry-like shapes in light blue violet and parchment, and filled them in with a small brush.
Both these paintings remind me of the butterfly garden we visited in a Boca Raton nature center near the beach. We also saw iguanas, lizards, alligators, turtles, and scads of wonderful birds in Florida. But it is spring in Ithaca now, too, so we'll soon have our own butterflies to observe.
