Goin' Bananas!

Ah, Saturday!  I love Saturdays, especially when it's a Creative Saturday with Lita.  Today was a Traditional Art day and Lita came over to learn how to use her oil paints that she had recently purchased.  It was also going to give me an opportunity to get back to working on two unfinished paintings, as well as starting a third!

First I need to show Lita how to start with an underpainting using burnt umber. I had an sketch of a girl and her horse that I was going to use as my demonstration.  Initially, Lita had drawn a little fairy and when we began to lay down the paint she was more focused on details than tones.  I quickly put the kibosh on her fairy by wiping it from her canvas...goodbye little Fairy! And hello....Bananas!  The Bananas were perfect...little detail but plenty of tones from the darkest darks of the stem, to the lightest light of the tops of the bananas.  I think for a few minutes Lita missed her little fairy but she was such a trooper and adapted very quickly to painting bananas.  She was now painting by viewing a still life instead of looking at a drawing or picture in a book.  Here are her hands at work using the technique of "lifting off" the paint from the areas of highlight:

While Lita worked on her Bananas, I did the underpainting on my image of the girl and her horse:

We let our canvas dry and headed off to lunch for some good conversation and food.  Lita shared the joy of her new, budding relationship and I talked about my recent genealogy findings.  We always have lots to talk about when we get together!  After lunch we headed back to the house to lay in the first thin layer of color.  At this point, I put aside the above painting and worked on a couple of paintings I have had sitting around waiting for color, Copper Pots and another one of Still Life Pears.  Lita put the first layer of color on her bananas:

I thought for her first oil painting ever, she was coming along well and understanding that the early stages are about tones rather than details. Her bananas are looking good!  I can't wait to see the finished painting, hanging in her kitchen!  And just maybe, her little fairy will make her debut once again on a Watercolor day.  But for this Creative Saturday, here is everything we did placed all together:

I'm sure it will take another Traditional Art Day with Lita for me to finally finish the paintings but at least I got one step closer today!

Later in the afternoon we headed to Jerry's Artorama so that I could pick up a few supplies and Lita could invest in some better paints.  I purchased a beautiful scroll that I plan on using for one of my many Pedigree Charts.  We ended the day with ice tea and chocolate at Starbucks where we sat outside and enjoyed the sunshine and the light breeze: 

Another perfect end to another perfect day with my lovely Lita!  How I treasure our Creative Saturdays!