October Sunday on the Lake

To the lake on Sunday with Sis and our friend, while DH stayed home to watch football. We rode around in the boat, beaching it a few times to explore the shore and trying to gather enough wild persimmons to make pudding. Summer seems to be a bit prolonged this year -- and that suits me just fine!

I did this quickie watercolor sketch last time we were out, taking only about 5 minutes so she wouldn't know I was drawing her. Yep, I'm just another step closer to sketching total strangers in coffee houses and burger joints ...

Sad Pear

Our friends lost their 18 year old daughter in an automobile accident early this morning. Tonight I tried to sit and draw this pear (which found its way from a box lunch into my pocket at a business meeting this last week) but just couldn't get excited about it. I hurried through and sat with a deck of cards playing game after game of solitaire instead.

I just want to say, love your children well, folks. You never know what tomorrow may bring.

Brown Blues

Now that September is here, and things are beginning to turn brown AND now that I've banished browns from my watercolor palette, I find I have a problem ... HOW DO YOU MAKE BROWN???

Really, I'd like to know.

Blackberry Lily

Blackberry lily, from my sister's yard. NOW I know how it got it's name!

This is in a new sketchbook -- it is 11" high by 13" wide, and is 140# watercolor paper. Much fancier than I'm used to, and I'm having a blast with it!

EDMWC - Collection

This week's challenge for the Everyday Matters group is to draw a collection.

I have a silly collection of cheese spreaders (with the RULE that they have to have a goofy, tacky figure on the handle) that I keep hidden away ... it was fun to do a silly drawing to match!

Windfall

Magnolia seed pod -- blown down by the recent winds, from the tree in the front yard. Inspired by Laura, although I could never do as well as she does! The details of the thing are driving me crazy. ANY ideas to "fix it up" would be very welcome!

Spider

This is not the most successful of paintings, but it IS a very important one to me. I'm getting over my fear of drawing in front of people, or of even being SEEN drawing ... I actually pulled a seat up to these flowers in the front yard, right at the end of the driveway, right where everyone could see me it they wanted... and drew.

Next thing you know I'll be sitting at coffee shops, drawing total strangers! :-)

Ontario 3: Leftovers

A couple more scraps from my sketchbook, and I'm finished talking about this vacation! I ended up filling nearly half a book, which is amazing to me because it used to take months to get halfway through a sketchbook!


Birch trees against the dark pines. I just can't figure out how to do the detail of the birches without losing the look of how they stood out, so it will just have to remain as is.


The fishing lure was painted before the trip. The WC of the point was started our first morning in Canada, but I didn't finish the last wash of darks until after we got back. I like this "sloppy" watercolor business!

On our last day in camp we had some dark storm clouds pass through. As they blew out, the sun was beginning to set, and that SPECIAL light (you know the kind I mean - all gold against the dark) hit the tops of the trees. I snapped a couple of photos, thinking it would make a good pastel landscape (which I haven't done in years, by the way.)


Now I'm having difficulty seeing how it should be cropped for the best composition. Anyone with any ideas?

Ontario 2: Northern Wildflowers

More from the Canada trip:
Anybody who's read this blog knows I can't resist a good garden, and the wildflowers in the north woods in late August was gardening at its finest. In the evenings when everyone else in our group read around the big table, I tended to sit with my sketchbook, squinting in the gaslight at some bit of a plant that I'd picked up that day.


Bunchberries in full bloom lined all the paths and grew in patches throughout the woods ... at least the part of the woods that were "walkable." I was so taken with these little guys, and wonder how well they would grow in a southern garden. They'd be a nice addition to my shady wildflower border!



One day, on a little sandy spot where we'd beached the boat for a bit, we found this little shrub. I could not figure out what it was! It was covered with what looked like tiny green pine cones, but wasn't any kind of conifer that I'd ever seen. I took my sketchbook and a leaf (that was stuck onto a piece of strapping tape and then covered with saran wrap ... I need to come up with a better way for samples!)... to the Voyageurs National Park office when we got back to Minnesota. The ranger there was REALLY helpful in identifying it as an alder bush. Of course, she knew immediately what it was ... and she said she grew up calling them "Barbie Doll Pine Cones." She also helped me identify some other wildflowers that I didn't know, even coming outside with me to track down a plant or two to look at, digging through bookshelves, and calling co-workers over for further consultation. Big smiles to the Voyageurs staff last Sunday!!! :-)



Wildflowers were also abundant in International Falls. This spotted jewel weed, or spotted touch-me-not grew along the driveway of the house there. Mom said she always called it "wild snapdragon" because the mature seed heads explode when you squeeze them. They were graceful and delicate and their coloring was exquisite ... of course, by the end of the week I was just too tired to do a good job with the details in the painting!

S-P-A-M

I'm sick and tired of this nasty pesky spam, so I've turned on the word verification feature for comments. I know, it is a pain in the neck, but probably less so than reading about exercises to enlarge certain body parts that I don't even possess.

Sheesh. And do they ever leave you a way to spam them back, or call them at 4 in the morning, or tie up their secretarial staff with annoying questions that just waste THEIR time??? NO. They do NOT. (Otherwise I would DO those things and several others that I could think of real quick like.)

Hmmmph.

...now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Fishing Trip - We're Back!

We're back from our fishing trip in the woods of north - eastern Ontario. This has been an amazing and wonderful week! After flying to International Falls, Minnesota on Thursday, we spent Friday driving to Woman River Fly In Camp in Ear Falls, Ontario. Saturday morning we were flown into the wilderness in a little plane that landed on the lake and dropped us off at a cabin, leaving us with no electricity, phone, TV, radio, or other such annoyances until we were picked up a week later.



The days were spent fishing, and I figured out pretty quickly that you just can't manage a fishing rod, a rocking boat, gusty winds, and a sketchbook all at the same time. Well, at least not successfully. I tried to take a little bit of time every day, though, to draw something from the cabin. The little rocky point (above) was one of my favorite morning views, as were the boats by the docks. . .


We had propane for lights at night and for hot water, and a solar powered pump that brought water into the cabin from the lake. The one thing we did not have was indoor plumbing. . .

The OTHER little house in the big woods. (The outhouse, also known as The Waldorf...) Can I let this count as the EDM weekly challenge for "architecture"?

GONE FISHIN'!!!

Well, tomorrow in the VERY early a.m. we leave for our fishing trip. Finally! Why is it that four or five major things always come up in the two weeks just before vacation? Or is it that everyday life is that busy all the time, and we just don't notice?

Anyway, in the meanwhile, while looking under the bed for a suitcase I found this old watercolor that I did probably 15 years ago. I've never been able to decide if I like it or not -- I mean, I like it, but can't decide if it is hangable. It's kind of moody, don't you think?

Well -- I'm off to catch the big one and do as much drawing as I feel like! Be back soon!

Books: EDMWC

I could only take a few minutes to sketch the EDM challenge for this week -- draw a book. We're busy packing for vacation, and I have this stack of sketchbooks and watercolor pads sitting on the table, ready to go. We're going to the true wilderness and have a weight limit, so I have to trim down my supplies quite a bit more!

Ode to a Tomato

My first tomato in the patch out back, ripening on the bush, drawn for the Everyday Matters Weekly Challenge. It was pointed out by another EDM group member (who also drew a tomato for the vegetable challenge) that tomatoes are actually fruit, not vegetables. Oh well.

I was really taken by the play of light and shadow when I saw this, and did the underpainting very quickly in the back yard. The rest of the sketch was completed later on in the week at the breakfast nook table, and I think I lost the freshness of what I'd originally intended. It looks incomplete to me, but it also is beginning to look muddy and overworked, so I quit painting and am now just, well, considering things.

Meanwhile, this tomato in real life was viciously attacked by hungry non-human creatures just as it turned truly red.

Other stuff this week: We finally got high-speed internet. I've spent more time than I care to tell surfing around the net and reading old e-mails from friends who send links to sites with funny videos. I could never watch them before, so now I've caught up.

I read The Painted Garden, a great art / gardening journal sent by L, and am truly enjoying the inspiration. Thank you so much!

We found a great peach ice cream recipe -- very easy to make, fast, and light in texture since a custard isn't used in the making. Not the recipe for you if your favorite ice cream is a heavy Ben and Jerry's flavor ... it will be more to your liking if you tend to think ice cream is just a bit too rich.

2 1/2 pounds peached sliced
3/4 - 1 cup of sugar (to taste)
1 pint half-and-half cream

Puree the above in batches in a blender or food processor (I like the food processor -- it leaves better "chunks"). Pour the peach mix into a gallon ice-cream freezer container, and add:

1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1 (12 fluid ounce) can evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 - 3 cups whole milk (as needed to fill to the fill line)

Freeze according the ice cream freezer instructions.

Sunflowers

DH brings flowers home from the grocery store every weekend. This weekend he got a bunch of sunflowers, which I dumped into a blue pottery vase. I feel very VanGogh this afternoon ...

Glassware: EDMWC

Attempting to paint glassware for the Everyday Matters weekly challenge. I obviously need to do more work! It seemed like a good exercise to work on mixing greys for the clear glass, although scan seemed to separate the colors so that the "stuff" on the left side of the top glass turned out blue. I haven't a clue what that is all about. I'm also taking this scan as a lesson on a way to check for mistakes -- the inward WOBBLE on the right side of the wine glass was not at all obvious to me when I looked at the page -- on the scan it jumps out at me like crazy! I shall try to correct it, but am really tickled to see that the scanner is such a good composition, etc tool. The light also kept changing, which made the reflections, highlights, and shadows change -- perhaps glassware is best done from a photograph or under artificial light. I refuse to move further away from the window though, so there!

I'll admit, also, that my heart just isn't into this challenge since my mind is still focused on fruit. Peaches and cantaloupe are calling my name still, as are the sunflowers DH brought home from the grocery store last night. Serious study of glassware will just have to wait.

Best glassware I've seen so far from the EDM challenges just HAS to be Laura's at Laurelines, both her stuff for the challenge itself and her post a few days earlier about her gourmet husband's breakfast cooking. I keep asking her if I can borrow her DH one weekend for Sunday brunch, but she refuses. I guess I'll have to keep living vicariously through her blog!

Meanwhile - other stuff from the week:
We got to spend last weekend on the boat - Just Loverly - and I haven't drawn much since the rest of the week was spent catching up on neglected chores.

A friend and I were talking the other day about our southern phrases, and we were joking about how in the south you can say anything, no matter how terrible, about someone, and then finish the slam with "bless her heart", which makes it all okay. That's a long standing joke about southerners, but it is really and truly true! The phrase is sometimes used to imply deep sarcasm.

The coffee maker blew up the other day, and at the big electronics / appliance store we saw a refrigerator with flat screen TV in the door. Yes. You read it right. In the door of the refrigerator. This means that you don't even have to get up during commercials to get a snack. For some reason, this just blows my mind still.

I reckon some people probably feel like they NEED a refrigerator with a TV build into the door, bless their hearts.

New CD for this month: Israel Kamakawiwo'ole "Facing Future" It's a fun summertime listen -- wa-a-a-y mellow!

Another Peach

A quickly done little peach sketch. I didn't let the washes dry before proceeded to the next -- the peaches were turning brown before my eyes and they smelled so GOOD!

Fruit: EDMWC

Peaches, which are a naturally good subject for practicing with transparent watercolor. I got these to paint (yeah, right -- only to paint!) and then lucked out, because the Everyday Matters weekly challenge this week was FRUIT! I set these guys up on a shoe box covered with a white dinner napkin and a black notebook propped up behind them to get rid of background distractions, and went to work. For once I'm on time on a challenge!

I'd wondered in the previous post what advantage there could be in using non-staining (lifting) pigments for glazes. I think it works pretty well for peach fuzz, although I did a final layer in Alizarin Crimson, which is staining. I don't really care for the napkin folds, although I didn't really focus too much on them; I especially don't like the yellow on the bottom left fold. The background is layer after layer of staining pigments, and I'm considering doing another layer of ACrimson, but I'm not sure. Anybody with any ideas on that?

Dunes Experiment

Experimenting with lessons from Jeanne Dobie's book, Making Color Sing.

I read this book about 20 years ago, I guess when it first came out, and remember it being one of the most instructive watercolor books I'd ever seen. The other day, I checked it out from the library again, and, after re-reading the whole thing, decided to go through the lessons with a watercolor pad one at a time.

At the beginning of the book she really emphasizes using transparent non-staining pigment (aureolin, rose madder genuine, cobalt blue, and viridian). I tried doing this in pretty much those colors alone, but have had trouble in that the underlying layers of paint lift off anytime I try to darken any of the passages. The horrible blue on the side of the little building was supposed to be a nice cool grey glaze, but it kept coming out whatever color I glazed on top. I never could get the grasses on the dunes right, and finally, in utter disgust, mixed in a little quin gold. I won't say this is the worst watercolor sketch I've ever done, just the worst I've ever let anyone see. My question is, what is the point of glazing with non-staining pigments if you aren't planning on lifting off, and how in the world do you keep it from lifting off when you work the subsequent passages???

AARGH!!!

Foot: EDMWC

This week's challenge for the Everyday Matters group is to draw your foot. Not the prettiest of subjects in some cases, mine included!

All the responses to the challenge were good, but Deborah's at "It Was This Big" (her July 14 post) was my favorite, and she wins the best perspective prize as far as I'm concerned!

Clothing: EDMWC

Catching up on old Everyday Matters challenges. This one was to draw an item of clothing. My blue jeans were lying on the table, folded, just out of the dryer -- what better item of clothing to draw!

Old: EDMWC

Everyday Matters Weekly Challenge: Draw something old. I have a very old quarter-sawn tiger oak writing desk that is just one of my favorite pieces. These are a couple of details of a drawer handle and a bit of the carving on the drawer. I kept getting distracted by a vase of hydrangeas sitting nearby, and decided that since they were an old fashioned flower after all, it would be okay to add it to the page.

The photo is from a scrapbook of my grandmother's dated from the autumn of 1925 to the spring of 1926. We found the scrapbook several years ago after she died, tucked away in a closet. She and my grandfather were dating at the time she made the scrapbook, and the book is full of photos of their "gang" of friends. I don't know why she never shared it with us -- did she think that she and her friends acting up and having fun would have made us take her a little less seriously? Did she just forget about it? Did she think we wouldn't be interested?

I have to admit that scrapbook has been on my mind and taking up my time lately. I'm working to reproduce it, which has turned out to be a tougher job than expected. But with photos like this:


Who could resist?