Summer is my favorite season. Well, in the summer it’s my favorite. I love them all when I’m in them. I love their colors. Their smells and sounds. I love being outside in the weather.
What are the colors of summer?
My grandma had the most beautiful back yard. Flowers filled one side and along the back, with a tall white fence as backdrop. An arbor ran the length of the far side. And as the season progressed, grape vines climbed and wove in and through until the arbor was a mass of summer greens and plump purple grapes.
The flower beds were not formally laid out. They meandered. The seeds had been randomly scattered, to germinate and grow as they would. Veggies and herbs grew in their own sunny patch behind the arbor.
Life at Grandma’s house was a lot like her yard. Not so much peaceful as hilarious with color and laughter and personality, and of course, the promise of food and wines. 
She made a profession of cooking for any family or friends who might stroll through the always-open front door. And her home-made wines were, well, home brew. She’d grown up in the deep South during Prohibition and knew what she was about. Yum.
So when I thought of painting flowers in the early summer this year, I remembered my Grandma… and I picked up my Painter brushes and began dropping colors as she must have dropped seeds so many years ago.
And of course had to pick and draw the grapes, pushing for the wine…
What about summer textures?
These were painted with regular watercolors and scanned into the computer. The first I’ve called Heat Rising, the second Summer Fireworks. Both use salt, which I find difficult to achieve in Painter unless I scan it in and then use a grainy brush to reveal it.
- You are welcome to copy each to make papers to use as salt textures in Painter. (Just don’t print them as your own paintings please.)
- Or copy and place one or both on layers above your painting and experiment with the composite methods.
Grandma’s garden looked more like the first painting, but the second could be printed on vellum or at reduced opacity onto note paper for summer correspondence.
How do you paint your summer?
Happy painting…
