Small Oils for Christmas

The oil painting group I work with on Wednesdays had our holiday lunch today and exchanged small 8" x 8" paintings for christmas.  It was a great way to get us working on something small and fun with oils. 

I started out painting an Amaryllis but when it wasn't going too well I painted a still life of Cassia flowers from a shrub at the gallery courtyard just as a back up.  The Amaryllis eventually came around and was taken in the exchange today.  Both oils are pictured below.  

The Amaryllis painting has a metallic gold background that I was trying out after looking at a lot of advertisments of a major Klimt show.   I really didn't realize where that impetus came from until I looked back at some blogs I follow and saw all that gold in his work.