Shadowbox {a little painting}

I’m a little bit shy about sharing my paintings. Partly because I feel it is one aspect that requires a good deal of practice (and patience!) yet I’m most sporadic in doing it…painting only when precisely the right mood strikes…usually a melancholy sort of mood. And partly because I haven’t really painted in such a very long time. I hadn’t even cracked open my oil paints since we moved and I last folded up my easel.
Yet last week I had the strongest desire to paint. So I started small, on an idea that had been percolating in my mind for quite some time. I’ve been wanting to put together a real shadowbox of some tiny objects from nature that I’ve been gathering lately…a soft, fluffy white bird’s feather, a tiny stem of pinecones, a smooth little piece of driftwood…and yet somehow that idea evolved into doing a painting of a shadowbox, where I included other elements that you normally wouldn’t be able to put in a real shadowbox...like mushrooms, a clump of moss, and fragile pieces of shell from a broken Robin’s egg.
My oil paints were so tightly sealed shut that I had to find hub’s vise grips to twist the caps off. Same for the canister of turpentine when it came to clean up time. Although messy, I love the richness of oils far better than acrylics. Next up perhaps I will put together that real shadowbox. And hopefully get back into painting more often as well!

P.S. Hope you're having a lovely weekend! We had a fabulous day yesterday with my parent's coming up for a little visit. We ate my homemade quiche, my mum's homemade cinnamon rolls (mmm!), played games, and took a refreshing walk in the chilly afternoon sunshine. Tonight Hub and I are looking foward to snuggling in and watching part 2 of Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist" on PBS. Anyone else watching this?