Snow Day

Posted on March 15, 2016 by janellmithani

After a winter visit to Oregon, I felt inspired to paint a snow scene with trees. I am still thinking of a title…

Oregon Bliss

I am thinking “Oregon Bliss” as the trees around my sister’s cabin were my inspiration. She certainly lives in a blissful place!

I had a wonderful time on my trip, visiting with family and enjoying all the beautiful scenery. I came home to 80 degree weather, here in Southern California. It’s amazing the difference in weather with just a few hours plane ride. 🙂

Have a wonderful, creative, day, Janell

A New Painting – Sisters

Posted on October 2, 2013 by janellmithani

A few months ago I posted about how I was thinking of adding these two little girls to a painting. I had created a sketch from a picture of my sister and I when we were children. Well, before I got a chance to start working on adding us in, I received a couple of inquiries about the painting. So, I decided to create a new painting with the two girls and give it to my sister for her birthday. SistersforBlog

While I was painting, I had a lot of time reminiscing about all the fun walks my sister and I shared while we were looking for wild flowers. We were fortunate to grow up in a small mill town called Hilt, located in Northern California. We spent a good amount of time roaming around the countryside. We had the best swimming hole! I was a total rock hound (still am) and loved going rock hunting.

Have a wonderful creative day, Janell

Garden Cottage Painting

Posted on January 8, 2013 by janellmithani

Happy New Year! Here is a painting I made titled “Garden Cottage.”

I think I would like to escape to this little cottage and spend the day painting. 🙂 I am really enjoying acrylic painting again, I just started again three months ago after about a 20 year break. This is the second painting I did this past Fall. I have done other mixed media work and I am still experimenting with the style and brushwork I like best. But I think my style is emerging…

I didn’t get much painting done in December, although I did make a painting for my husband for Christmas. Of course, I finished it the day before and popped it into a frame I had out in the studio just in time to tuck it under the tree. I have switched to working in acrylics instead of oils and I like the faster drying time. I have always painted fast a furious! So working in acrylics goes along with my style and much easier cleanup. I am really liking the full body acrylics, especially the ones by Golden. And all the textures and mediums…

I also love to take pictures and have a huge library of images on my computer to choose from. So I have no loss of subject matter, now… just need to make more time to paint in 2013!

I have been looking over art books and studying different techniques and brushwork applications as I work on developing my style. I just love research, actually sometimes I think I get so wrapped up in research that I can’t seem to get time at my easel. Below is the painting on my easel at about 2/3 of the way finished so you can see a bit of my process. I did a lot of toning down of areas to bring the focal attention to the little cottage. I also added some yellow and warmed up the tone of the painting. The finished painting is on a panel with 3″ deep sides and is 11″ x 14″.