Home Again

Back home tonight after a full day of travel. I'm glad to be home, but on the other hand, I could have stayed on the beach for a little while longer... yes, I sure could have stayed.

Wet

The Gulf of Mexico. The water into which I dropped my cell phone yesterday.

Electronics do not mix with salt water.

Blogging from Panera in Panama City Beach - no internet at the hotel. See you guys later!

On The Road

Florida bound! We just checked into our hotel in Georgia -- I'm so excited, I'm not sure I'll sleep at all tonight...

Carrot Tops

Doodles of carrots in the "junk book," which I remembered to quickly check this time to be sure that no inappropriate language showed up. (sorry about that earlier ... I don't even see the words as words -- they're just background stuff to me here.)

I did these with a brush pen set and a couple of colored pencils. Not sure what I think about the brush pens -- they're okay for something like this but if there's any detail at all I imagine they would be kind of tough.

The carrots ended up in soup. I included the tops in the stock as it simmered and they added a surprisingly pungent and peppery taste that I WILL go for again!

Someplace Else

From a photo of somebody else's vacation. I would like to go out to the desert in the American west and paint these red rocks from life. But for now, I have to figure out the next best step. I need to life the dark green up a bit on the hill on the right -- it looks like I cut it out from construction paper. Other than that ... where to go next? Part of me wants to finish up in ink ... colored pencil ... pastel ... gouache ... or just leave it alone and move on to the next thing? What do you guys think?

Shadow Shot Downtown

After spending the morning painting and then shopping for veggies at the Farmer's Market in Market Square, isn't it nice to find a place to stop and sit and rest your feet? Perhaps having a wonderful cappuccino ... maybe a panini sandwich on fresh bread ... or just a bottle of water with a friend.*

Visit Hey Harriet! for more of this week's shadow shots.

*Next time, Zelma! Next time we'll actually stop and sit down! :-)

Farmers Market

It was such a beautiful morning this morning that Zelma and I skipped out of the last hour and a half of watercolor to go to the Farmers' Market downtown on Market Square.

Yep. I would call this a perfect Saturday. Now if I just had some of Marta's empanadas...

Expect sketches later on - I'm off to work on the scanner now!
:-)

Aaargh

Life has come before art lately, so I was really happy today to have been able to actually SCHEDULE myself a solid hour this evening to work on a good sized watercolor that is very close to being done.

Of course, the very first thing that I had to do was move a few little things off of the drawing table, which has been used more for storage than art lately. The music was playing, the brushes were set up, the painting had been moved close ... very close ... and then ... and then ... sigh. And then I dropped two very big, soft, luscious pastels onto the hardwood floor.

Have you ever seen a glass EXPLODE when dropped onto a hard tile floor? Let me tell you -- lovely big, soft, luscious pastel dropped onto hardwood gives much the same effect, except with brilliantly colored dust rather than glass. Because they exploded so very close to all my watercolor supplies -- oh, no, let me clarify -- they exploded in the area BETWEEN me and my watercolor. It isn't like I could move the painting and then clean up -- oh NO -- I had to gently clean up in order to get to the painting, all the while fretting that turquoise and pink pastel, lovely and luscious that they may be, had gotten onto the gold and orange sections of my painting and ruined a fair amount of work.

And that took well over an hour to do. Sooo... no art tonight.

After that my sister and our friend Marcia came and made me go shopping with them, brutally forcing me to spend at least an hour trying on shoes. Oh the agony.
(hee hee hee)

THAT blue

It has been one of those weeks here, full of ups and downs. Eventful. A full moon kind of thing.

But in the end, the sky really WAS that blue today. In Tennessee of all places.

We went downtown for lunch on Market Square (Soccer Taco -- it was surprisingly good!) and then ended up at Coolato's for WONDERFUL gelato. I had Sicilian Blood Orange Gelato. Is that even legal?

There I noticed these coffee cups on the counter -- and am thinking about turning this one into a series of paintings. What do you guys think?

To A New Home

How nice to come home from work and see, on the counter mixed in with the junk mail and bills, an envelope that contains a check and a happy note from a gallery owner telling you that you sold a painting. Okay. Pretty nice. In fact, it trumped whatever else I was going to blog about tonight!

Miss Vanilla Cupcake -- I never took her picture after she was completely finished -- this is her in her penultimate* phase. In the end, she was warmed up and cropped down for framing and compositional purposes (see below). She was a sweet cow.
:-)
Warm thanks to the folks who decided to give her a good home!

(This is actually closer to the final crop. The silo was a distraction.)

*I had to throw in a word for all you NaNoWriMo people out there when may be running short on inspiration. PENULTIMATE. Use that one in a sentence and see where it takes you...
:-)

Blind Contour Friday

Blind Contour Friday, hosted by the tres talented Diahn.
Well, except that today is Tuesday.
And only a few of these are blind. (The others just kind of look that way.)

Hmmm... what else?
I made soup tonight.

That's all I've got.

Deserted Cafe

I used to just love the looks of this little cafe. When I passed it today, I stopped to photograph it for another project and saw that the door was partway open. There was enough light streaming in to see a little of the inside, and it looked a total wreck. I didn't get too close to the door! It just felt creepy.

I painted this last year when it was still open, when it was colorful and lively and smelled like frying bacon and fresh coffee -- and now I'm very glad I did!

NaBloPoMo 2009

It's November again -- already. And you guys know that means it's time for NaBloPoMo for those of us unwilling (or unable) to spend thirty days trying to write a novel*.

I'm planning on doing a bit of a blog re-do (some of those labels over there are pretty stale) and really need to blow the dust off the header this week. I'm also planning on doing some art this month. I'm going to be taking Kate Johnson's new on-line course this November, and am also working on a couple of paintings that may or may not be fit for public viewing -- we'll have to see how they turn out.

Of course, today, instead of painting I decided to spend a little time making homemade pesto. To make it extra creative, I took photos. Just for you guys.

You're welcome.

Happy November!

*By the way, for those of you who ARE doing NaNoWriMo -- here's some handy links:
Strunk's wonderful book The Elements of Style
and, of course, a Thesaurus, for those occasions when you realize you've used the same adjective six times in two paragraphs.
For those busy late nights when you need to stretch things out to make your word count reach that magic number that lets you shut down and finally drag your sorry ass to bed:
LyricsCafe -- you can squeeze a few hundred words from a good song, and
Every Poet if you would rather resort to classic poetry references to burn up some verbiage.

Again, you're welcome.