"Painted Ladies"

For the past few months, my watercolor class has been working on a project - "Painted Ladies." We were each supposed to find and paint local Victorian houses. Traditionally, these houses are colorful - painted with at least three colors - and stand proudly in various neighborhoods...strutting their stuff!

Most of us groaned with this assignment. However, over the weeks of painting and critique, we all began to appreciate the what we were learning with this task. We were each to have three paintings ready to go for the show at the St Michaels Library during the month of November!

I began with the Parsonage Inn - a B&B in St Michaels. I have always been intrigued by its many angles and its fun turret. I painted the entire house several times before I figured out that what I really liked was the chimney and roof line. Here's what I finally came up with.

 After driving around town and looking at lots of photographs, I decided to paint the "Eagle House" - located on the grounds of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. The house has an interesting history - you can go to cbmm.org and read about it. Bottom line - it has an eagle on the top of its turret. Yeah, I am into turrets...   The thing that caught my eye with this house, in addition to the eagle, was the strong shadow across the front. I love these strong colors and light.

I still had one more to do. Several years ago I had done an ink drawing of a house for the local holiday house tour. I found my old drawing and decided to redo it in color. I picked just a section of the front of the house for this painting. After all, there is only so much fancy porch railing that I can do! What were these Victorian craftsmen thinking?  

We hung the show yesterday - what an amazing display. Stop by the library and take a look. And, of course, many of the paintings are for sale...