More desert blooms

I am beginning to feel almost like myself again, and I am grateful to be able to type that. Hopefully, as my strength returns, so will my desire to write more for my blog!
I hope to make up for my lack of posts with dazzling photos of wildflowers. I will also post a painting or two.

The flowers I have been loving lately are blue clumps of the desert bell. They are the most divine blue color, and it amazes me how many of them seem to grow right out of the rocks!

I have also been taking photos of the fading Joshua Tree blossoms. They do not seem to open in the shape of a star, even though many of you have told me that is what they are supposed to do. The edges of the flower stay curled, and some of them drop before anything else happens. Some of them do have the beginnings of what looks to be seed pods, although they are quite green. Go figure. I will continue to watch and photograph, and we shall see if anything else appears.

Here is a painting, as promised. Lee had asked me how many layers of paint I have put on these paintings. The answer is, it varies. I would say between two and six. This one has a layer of acrylic medium, applied heavily with a palette knife, a layer or two of acrylic paint, applied in washes. And then a final layer of oil paint, applied with a brayer. So I am actually rolling the oil paint on, rather than brushing it. With this painting, I also used Q-tips and the edge of my palette knife to remove areas of the oil paint, so you can see the acrylic underpainting. I like the direction this painting is taking me in, and I intend to continue to explore this. This painting measures 25 x 25 x 2.5". It is called "Terra".