Day 15 in the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge
(Actually on January 15, 2015)

Yes, yes, I know. I missed Day 14. But what a day it was yesterday. After working all day at the office, then coming home and having dinner, I needed to spend some time planning my music for this Sunday's worship service and practicing the half dozen or so new choir anthems that I just received.

Three and a half hours later, I realized I hadn't painted yet that day. So I decided to go down to my studio, do a little painting, write my blog, and then it happened. My computer decided it was not going to cooperate at all. After about a half an hour trying to write my blog on a computer working at a snail's  pace, I decided it was better if I just went to bed.  You know how it is.  Sometimes you just have one of those days.

But the good thing about this challenge is that there are really no hard and fast rules. You can paint a painting every day, you can paint one painting over several days, you can just plan your paintings, or you could just think about painting. The true purpose is to just get you painting. So that's exactly what I've been doing. Instead of going days, weeks, or even months without painting or even going down into my studio, I've been thinking about painting and actually painting. Not always my best paintings mind you, but at least I'm working at it again. And it feels great.

Allow me to regress a bit now.  I have to tell you that this last week during all this cold weather, all we could think about were our poor bees.  We only have one hive left after the bear destroyed the other two this past October. This colony seems to be safe and sound in the corner of our vegetable garden all covered up for winter.  But because it's been so cold, we haven't been able to check on them in quite a while. We worry that they won't have enough to eat over the winter because they're a newly established hive and got a late start building their honeycomb.

So this past week, I built a special feeder to use in the hive that we could easily slip in sugar patties to supplement their feeding over the winter. But we couldn't install it yet because it's been so cold. Watching the weather, we saw that it's supposed to get in the mid fifties tomorrow. So we will install the new feeder if the weather does get that warm. So needless to say, I've been thinking about bees every day for the last several days.

So tonight after choir practice I came home and felt that I wanted to do something a little silly for a change.  All I could think about were bees, flowers, and Valentine's Day.  So with that in mind, I just started to doodle and suddenly flowers became hearts that then became a whole flower bed of heart flowers, and of course a bee.

So here is my silly Bee Mine Valentine Bee.  This watercolor painting is 5" x 7" on panel.  Im hoping someone will like this one and buy it as a Valentine gift for their special someone.