ANOTHER FRAMED HYDRANGEA

I liked the way Bowman's Framing did my painting, Am I Blue?, that I took another hydrangea and had him do this one, too. Same matting and framing. You can't see it but there is a violet coloring mixed in with the brushed metal frame that matches the violet in the painting exactly - too cool. This one is just for me to hang on my wall.

(Sorry about the reflection but you get the idea.) Had a heck of a time getting the blues and violets correct in this one - my camera doesn't know what to do with that much blue/blue-violet/violet color!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

LIVE MODEL - WITH WATERCOLOR

I took the sketch of the live model done in my first Saturday Life Drawing class, traced the outline of the body onto tracing paper and then traced that onto watercolor paper...then I added a few light washes.

It has a ways to go before being completed but I think I'll add washes slowly and see if I can build up more definition. (And seeing it this way, I see the bar bends and definitely needs to be straightened.)

ALL THE WAY FROM SPAIN

My friend, Teresa Palomar Lois, sent me this lovely little surprise froggie on a calla lily. Jerry's photo was the reference and a group of us challenged each other at times to paint something together. This was one of those. Of course, mine was horrid (this was 2-3 year's ago and I'd only been painting 3-4 years then and didn't know how much I still had to learn - and still have to learn!). Teresa has always had a knack for watercolor and drawing. She makes it do her bidding (although that doesn't stop her from complaining a bit at times - we all are allowed to whine sometimes). She is one of my dear friends, even though we've never met in person.

Hop on over to her blog and check out her stuff - she's a keeper, that's for sure!

VISITING THE SIAG SHOW WITH DEB

I'm meeting Deb Ward this morning to get a personal tour of the Southern Indiana Art Guild show at the Lawrenceburg, Indiana library. Deb wrote about this on her blog recently - she has several paintings in the show but will be taking them down today :( We're going to have a coffee and a chatter, too, while visiting. Should be fun! If I sneak some photos, I'll share here later today.

Until then, take a look at this gorgeous sunset I had to get out and shoot this weekend. What a light show!

LATER THAT DAY....

Well, Deb and I met and we gabbed and laughed and had a great time and I did take a few photos before we took Deb's paintings down so she could take them back home. As we each were carrying out one in each hand, 2 ladies opened the doors for us and said, "My! Are you buying all of those?" We said no - but we should have said, "Yes! These are the best ones in the show and we just had to have them all!" ha ha The Lawrenceburg Library is huge with 2 floors and lots of space to show the paintings - even some beside a fireplace in the coffee shop - yes, I said coffee shop - in the library!! Now that's cool!

The coffee pot and pears is Deb's - painted with casein (a milk-based paint that, once dried, is done - she does some glowing work with casein and has, basically, taught herself how to use it).

The warm batik is by Cheryl, the lady who was with me when we had Deb's batik workshop at her place. She did this one, based on fabrics, and it's very intricate and interesting - and it sold :) Sorry, Cheryl, can't remember your last name, though :(

The teacup and books is also Deb's, and it looks great on an easel beside the fireplace near the coffee shop. I didn't get a photo of trains she had done (they were upstairs) before we took them down.

JERRY AND TSP PHOTO SHOW

Jerry and his TriState Photography group are having a show at Art on the Levee in Newport, KY. Here is the postcard with the information. If you're in the area, stop by and check out the photos - the show opens Sunday, November 1 and runs through the month of November. You can meet the photographers Saturday, November 7, from 4-9 pm. (That's George, our red-eyed tree frog, in the lower left corner of the postcard.)

Jerry has been working, choosing the photos he'll show and getting them matted and framed. Here they are, spread out in the sunroom. He may have others - they aren't sure how much space they will have so these are smaller pieces (11 x 14 and 14 x 17).

Jerry's postcard looks much more colorful than mine for the Viewpoint show - but it's an annual thing with different paintings each year getting in, so something simple to say it's their 41st year at this is how they do it.

Oh, and I was going to show you how the painting, Am I Blue?, looks matted and framed...Ken Bowman of Bowman's Framing in Ft. Thomas, did a great job on it. (It isn't 2 colors but apparently the warm color was coming from somewhere outside as I took this photo in the sunroom - there is some reflection from the windows, too...sorry about that). The frame is metal and there is a hint of the violet color running through it that matches the violet in the painting perfectly.

FINISHING SOME YUPO PAINTINGS

Finished the Cumberland Collage painting, putting some stamped leaves and other odd lines and things on the "frame" parts that were done with pure Inktense pencils. Then took the opportunity of a dry, sunny day and spray sealed it.

Finished the painting for my sister, too: Glad to Have Known Her (a portrait of our grandmother and her gladiolus she grew every year).

And what's next? Well, I've done so much work on the live model drawing (skeleton and muscles, too), that I thought I might just put some watercolor on that. Instead, I traced it on watercolor paper and, using the drawing as the guide, worked on that a bit. Will share when I get a photo of it.

LIFE DRAWING WITHOUT A MODEL

In class yesterday we used the same drawing from the live model we had during the first class. Then we overlaid that with a piece of vellum tracing paper and put down the muscles...as best we could. It was more difficult than doing the skeleton the week before but I was finally making heads and tails of it by the end of the session.

I started using green pastel pencils, but it became too green so I changed to brown, thanks to the suggestion from the teacher who said I was going for the Creature from the Black Lagoon look with the greens :) I still have some work to do on the feet and ankles.

Next week we go back to drawing from a live model.

MORE SHAKER VILLAGE PHOTOS

Just a few more for you to enjoy.

I'm off to Life Drawing class today.

SHAKER VILLAGE PHOTOS 1

We returned yesterday afternoon - still lots of sunshine and beautiful scenery although our trees are more beautiful right now than the trees down at Shaker Village - another week of two and they will all be in their glory. Had a wonderful trip - short and sweet.

I won't bore you with all the photos I took, but share some that show the village and different aspects of the place.

It's a photographer's haven with potential photos around every corner and they lay out different things inside the buildings, depending on the time of year. This is the autumn harvest time so lots of dried foods, pumpkins, apples, potatoes, corn shucks, etc. around.


















If you love animals, there are sheep, horses, goats, steer, cows, lots of cats running around, squirrels and red-bellied woodpeckers sharing the trees, and burros in the barn.

It's raining here today...supposed to rain for the next few so I'll be in sorting more photos and maybe choosing some to work with for paintings later...

SHAKER VILLAGE IN KENTUCKY

http://www.shakervillageky.org/

Going for a short trip down to southern KY to see the Shaker Village with a few of Jerry's photography friends. I imagine all of us (including me) will return with lots of photos.

Here are some pics from our last trip (it was bitterly cold in January so we were rushing from building to building bundled up to keep our noses from getting frostbit).

I did use some of the photos for paintings, but just a few were used (isn't that always the way with any trip, big or small?). This photo taken in the kitchen area was painted several times - a series of 5 that was required by Sandy in class :) It was hard for someone who doesn't like to paint the same thing twice, but I like these and the variety they show.

JOURNALING PAGES...

Some more journal pages I've been working on. Wish the pages wouldn't buckle so much but them's the breaks!

The theme is still travelling - where we've been, physically and emotionally. What makes us happy. Of course, the sea the sea the sea makes me happy! So a mermaid rising from the depths toward the full moon (a colored pencil workup for a painting that didn't turn out), and a sea turtle (a photo of a painting I did on yupo a long time ago).

And then we had to choose some travelling shoes. Since I'd rather be barefoot, I chose these blue crocs - roomy and easy to slip off when you have them full of sand from the beach...or full of leaves from a forested path. The words don't mean anything to anyone but me to LK said to overlay them or scribble them so others can't really read everything - which is what I did after drawing my travelling crocs at the bottom of the page, floating in water...perhaps a rogue wave came in and took them while I was building a sand castle on the shore.

Working on more ideas LK gives us to choose about 3 photos that say: home, family, something that touches our heart but we don't know why, something beautiful in nature, something cute, and so on...

FINISHED "GLAD TO HAVE KNOWN HER"

I thought this was finished but, due to the rainy weather, had not spray sealed it...so now I see a scratch on her arm where the paint has been taken off. Will have to smush that and seal it the next time the sun shines. (One does have to protect a painting on yupo - any moisture or pressure can take the paint off.)




I'm going to give this to my sister. Maybe an early Christmas present...

OH, THEM BONES, OH, THEM BONES, OH, THEM DRY BONES!

In our Life Drawing class Saturday I was tired from watching a 17-month old. And you can't do anything BUT watch him because he's on wheels, running around, checking things out within reach and wanting your attention every minute. Tiring but loads of fun.

Anyway, so even though I was tired and knew a migraine would be in my near future (every time my rigid schedule changes, I get a migraine), I loaded up my stuff and went to class and we took a vellum overlay, put that down over the figure drawing we did last week, and began working on - the bones. Did the whole skeleton within the body we had created, using good anatomy books and a smaller-than-lifesize (unless you are about 5 ft tall) skeleton in the studio. At times, the teacher (Charles Frymier) would hold out the arm or foot to show you how the bones would look from the position you had drawn the body = very helpful. I did not get the ribcage correct and was working on revising that when the 3-hour class ended. And there was no whining or cussing or throwing things at CF, either, so I guess the students are all either very dedicated or very masochistic! ha ha

Using a red/pink pastel pencil on the vellum laid over the original drawing, this is what I came home with. I will revise the ribs, using the anatomy book the teacher said was one of the best (Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist by Stephen Rogers Peck). Not elegant, by any means, but I did it. And I'll work more on getting the ribcage correct today while the Bengals are on TV.

Next week we do another overlay and put in the musculature - whew!!! CF is making us earn our right to be in the class!

And I did get a migraine - but not until after loading up all the grand's bags (he has more stuff than a diva on tour!!) and getting him in the carseat (a chore for someone not used to doing it on a daily basis) and taking him home. And he chattered and sang and was great all the way and smiling and happy when we left him. He has such a great personality! But don't take my word for it - just look at this face:

PASSING IT ON...

The seven artists I'd like to pass the Kreativ Blogger award to are:

1. Ginny Stiles
2. Myrna Wacknov
3. Paul Kasmir
4. Brent Perkins
5. Vicki Greene
6. Suzanne McDermott
and
7. LK Ludwig

I could rave about all of their work - and their exceptional talent and giving to others by sharing their techniques and knowledge - but I'll let their blogs speak for themselves. Do stop over and check them out - you may just find a new favorite to add to your blogroll - because whether your "thing" is traditional watercolors or wild and wacky in your face painting, drawing, journalling, or anything in between, you will find it here.

THANK YOU, CINDI!!!

Cindi included me in her list of bloggers to receive a Kreativ Blogger award. I am honored to be in the list of artists she chose - some were old "friends" to me and some were new. Do check them out on Cindi's blog here: http://onepartwater.blogspot.com/

And to pass this on, I first have to list 7 things about me and then send it on to 7 bloggers. I will do that later this weekend after thinking about some old friends and maybe some new bloggers out there who can use the push towards their sites. Seven things? Hmmmm....

1. I always felt very short until I married Jerry and met his adult daughters, both under 5 feet tall; now I feel tall when we have a family gathering.

2. Although I don't spend enough time with my grands, I love that marrying Jerry meant I got to be a grandma without having had to go through the work of being a mom!

3. Anything blue - clothing, paintings, skies, rivers - is uplifting to me and I prefer cool colors to warm any day.

4. My favorite seasons (contradicting the cool colors thing) are autumn and spring.

5. I convinced people for a long time that my middle name was Sam. It's not.

6. I don't like to wear shoes and remove them as soon as I get into the house and Jerry has to tell me to put on socks when I get cold because I don't have shoes on. I go outside to get the mail barefoot and walk around the yard barefoot. I guess that's from years of wearing those pointy-toed high-heeled dress shoes to work.

7. Ran out of things - you can make one up and share it here if you want!!!

SWAP ARRIVAL

My SWAP painting arrived on my doorstep...this black and white cat that looks remarkably like the old black and white cat we have in the house called Smudge!

Thank you, Jan, for this painting. It's on 8 x 10 canvas and is acrylic and looks just like him.

I don't think my painting has arrived to my SWAP partner yet - haven't heard anything so I assume it's still travelling...

GRANDPARENTS' DAY

Yesterday morning, Jerry and I got to visit our granddaughters at their school for the annual Grandparents' Day open house. There was musical entertainment from the Suzuki players first with a short talk by the principal and then we each took a room and visited with a grand for a while, switching about half-way into the time frame to visit the other. Jocelyn's teacher had lots of questions for us so I didn't get to spend much one-on-one time with Joss but I did get to watch Alaina do some math work and then she read me a book about sponges. I wish we could have spent the whole day and actually seen what they do in a normal day, but of course all the kids were wired since it definitely wasn't a normal day - there must have been 500 grandparents trying to get into the school!! Makes me realize what it's like for parents who have to drop off/pick up their kids every single day and drive and wait and drive and wait and...

And this afternoon we pick up our grandson, Devlin, and get to keep him overnight with us while his family goes on a short camping trip :)

A few photos taken by Grandpa Jerry...

PHOTOJOURNALLING - MORE PAGES

The theme for the next entries is "Journeys." Travelling and moving and places you have visited come to the forefront - and that can be actual travels in reality or travels in one's mind.

Here are the pages for that (so far, and I say so far because one can always change these journal entries with more photos, scribbles, extra papers, etc.)

I'm using a Canson journal that is made for scrapbooking - it's brown kraft paper pages are heavy but could be heavier when I paint on them so there is no buckling. Also, journalling takes patience - you must wait until the glue and paint dries before you press the book down to get the buckles out (which I don't always do and then end up with pages glued to the backs of other pages and it ruins a photo...so more patience is needed). I don't even know where I got this book but I have 2 of them and they must have been an impulse buy at some time, perhaps from Dick Blick or Cheap Joe's.

Now I'm supposed to take a photo of "my travelling shoes," and I don't really have a pair of shoes that I consider my constant travelling shoes (well, it depends on where you're going and what the terrain is like and whether it's winter or summer or...a girl has to have many pairs of travelling shoes! ha ha). After I choose one pair, then I begin on the next themed entries about travel...I think I may have covered that in these two pages already but I can always add more and expand. Lisa (LK) gives us questions to answer and tips each time on how to create pages using interesting effects...like using white gesso over your black and white photo and then using colored pencils to bring out just a bit of color in the photo = very cool effect.

PHOTOJOURNALLING

From the photojournalling online class I'm taking from LK Ludwig. It was a bit hard to start but now I seem to be getting more into it. Here are some pages...

The first is a single page spread, using black and white photos on glossy paper and scratching into it with a heavy duty needle (for sewing leather so it's heavy and 3-sided), then adding words here and there.

The second is a double page spread. Brushed black acrylic gesso on the left side and, when that dried, took regular gel pens and wrote some things that came to mind when thinking about the 3 photos I'd chosen so far.

The themes were Resonate and Echo so you can see those words dropped in here and there. And, yes, that is me on a pony. A man brought this pony around our neighborhood and, for a price, a kid could wear the cowboy get-up and take a very short ride on the pony and then he'd take a photo, which Mom and Dad would buy. Since we had very little money, I'm surprised that both I and my brother were allowed to do this - and I still have the photos.

The next theme is Travel and I've begun on that for the next few pages which I'll share later...

"When I grow up, I want a pony.

I'm gonna ride her from dusk 'til dawn.

I'll brush her mane

and feed her sugar cane

and keep her in safe from the storm.

If I had a pony

I wonder, could I be your girl?"

--- Kasey Chambers (one of my fave singer/songwriters)

LIFE DRAWING - FIRST CLASS

I think I am going to like this class, struggle through this class, and enjoy and learn from the instructor, Charles Frymier.

Here's what I did in the first class. Time flew by as I was really into a zone with this one and, with the many pointers and helping words from CF, I think I accomplished something pretty good. I have to tell you, when I began it was like I didn't know what to do and I felt that rush of anxiety (this is too hard!) and had to slow down and take it bit by bit until it began to come together. It's been more than a year since I was working with a live model - maybe two years??

Our next assignment will be hard - very hard. CF said so and asked that we not hit him because he bruises easily! ha ha We will put the skeleton and musculature on vellum overlays to lay over this drawing and try to fit the pieces, learning where the leg bone is connected to the thigh bone...and so on. I think I need to buy a few more kneaded erasers!

Now I have some homework to do for my photojournalling class...

RADIANCE BY MARILYN BISHOP

Well, I am now the proud owner of Radiance, a watercolor monotype, by Marilyn Bishop! Isn't it just gorgeous?? It flows with energy and power and is like lava flowing into the deep dark blue of the ocean.

If you live in the area, do stop in at Caribou Coffee Shop (address is on her blog) for a coffee and to see her 15 paintings/prints on display in that great venue. There wasn't a single one she had that wouldn't be a fabulous addition to your walls at home :)

I left Radiance there on the walls so Marilyn can put a red SOLD sticker on it. I think, psychologically, that helps others open their purse-strings and buy something they might normally be hesitant about. But I have to tell you, you won't get better original artwork anywhere for less - she has extremely reasonable prices (I mean, even I could afford anything in the show).

And good news! Ken gave me a very generous discount on matting and framing Am I Blue for the show :)

I am one happy girl, in spite of the eternal aspect of rain...who cares...I'll put on my crocs and go jump in the puddles! I hope you are having as great a day as I.