jill polsby

Day 5: 2012 - The Sketchbook of 2011

2012-01-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

I've talked about it off and on over the last few months: The Sketchbook Project run by the ArtCoop in New Jersey. The final product from 2011 is due on January 31st. Nancie Johnson and I ran a "Conversation" in watercolor, sending pages back and forth from California to New Jersey, having a transcontinental "talk".

I'm now frantically binding the project into a book since there's no way at all that our project will fit into the original Sketchbook. The rules were that you could rebind, redo in any way at all as long as the original measurements of 5" x 7" held. Our book is going to be about 3/4 of an inch thick, with photos and envelopes and some kind of tie to hold the whole thing shut.

I've been dreaming about this, pondering this, wandering through the Dick Blick store's supply of bookbinding kits, went to a class there about making journals.......

I feel like I have a huge high school/college exam coming up that I need to cram for!

So tonight I started in on it.

Two pieces of thick chip board, cut to 5x7 size by my friends at Anthony's Framing in San Marino, California. They are the nicest group of men, always so willing to help me!

Then I covered the chip board with a nonspecific gift wrap paper, creating a spine at the same time.

This is what the outside looks like at this moment.

I'm using a bookbinding product, gummed linen tape, to create the hingeing in this project. I used it to make the spine, thinking that it's a pretty sturdy product. You can see it in picture one.

I'm messing with our photographs. Nancie sent me a picture of herself that she painted several years ago. It looks as if it was a photoshop image (which she didn't think was very nice of me to say) so I asked her to photoshop the photo of me so that we'd look kind of alike.

So she took this photo and changed it to this:

And then I cut them down the middle to see if I could create a combined person and have it look anything but really weird. It's not all that bad but I don't think I'll use it. I think I'll use full size photos that have been photoshopped.

Still working hard on it. Gotta get it finished tomorrow as the weekend is taken up with a 40th anniversary celebration. Our adult children are driving in from San Francisco and taking us out to dinner. Whoopee!

Day 4: 2012

2012-01-14T15:19:00.000-08:00

There's a painting blog I've been following for about a month now. A man, James Gurney, who dreamed up and illustrated Dinotopia, a book I've loved ever since the first time I saw it. I've asked permission of him to use parts of his blog in mine and then I thought that everyone who is interested should just subscribe to his emails themselves and enjoy his take on painting as I am.

http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/

james gurney, himself

Day 3: 2012

2012-01-08T13:20:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine knew to start my day, today, Sunday the 8th of January, with, I think, one of the most beautiful things I've seen in years. The site Ted.com features motivational and educational speeches by famous people. I've seen some of them over the years, but today's presentation by Louie Schwartzberg on the subject of Gratitude brought tears to my eyes and wonderful thoughts to my brain. I'd like all of you readers to watch this to the very end and then try to tell me that you weren't stunned by the beauty of his thoughts.

Open your hearts to the incredible gifts civilization gives to us.
Open your heart to expressiveness and let it flow through you that
Everyone who you will meet on the street will be blessed by you
Just by your eyes
Just by your smile
Just by your touch
Just by your presence
Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing one another
and then it will really be a good day.

…….intro

I didn’t have much money but I had time and a sense of wonder.

So I started shooting time lapse photography
It would take me a month to shoot a four minute roll of film because that is all I could afford
I’ve been shooting time lapse flowers continuously, nonstop, 24 hours a day
7 days a week forover 30 years
And to see them move is a dance I will never get tired of
Their beauty immerses us in color, taste and touch
It also provides athird of the food we eat
Beauty and seductionis nature’s tool for survival because we protect what we fall in love with
It opens our heartand makes us realize we are a part of nature and we are not separate from it
It also connects us,every one of us because it’s clear that it is all connected and one
It you could see myimages you might say
“Oh my god”
Have you everwondered what that meant
Oh means it caughtyour attention and made you present, makes you mindful
The my means that itconnects with something deep within your soul
A gateway for yourinner voice to rise up and be heard
And god, god is thatpersonal journey we all want to be on, to be inspired, to feel like we arecoonected to a universe that celebrates life
Did you know that 80^%of the information we receive comes through our eyes
And if you comparelight images to musical scales it would only be one octave that the naked eyecould see which is right in the middle
And aren’t wegrateful for our brains
That can take thiselectrical impulse that comes from light images to create images in order forus to explore our world
And aren’t wegrateful that we have hearts that can feel the vibrations in order forus toallow ourselves to feel the pleasure and the beauty of nature
Nature’s beauty is agift to cultivate appreciation and gratitude
Part of the gift I wantto share with you today is a project I’m working on called “Happiness Revealed”and it will give us a glimpse into that perspective from the point of view of achild and an elderly man of that world.

You think this isjust another day in your life

It’s not justanother day
It’s the one day that’sgiven to you today
It is given to you
It is a gift
It’s the only giftthat you have right now
And the onlyappropriate response is gratefulness
If you do nothingelse but to cultivate that response to the great gift of this unique day
If you learn torespond as if it were the first day of your life and the very last day
Then you will havespent this day very well.
Begin by openingyour eyes and be surprised that you have eyes you can open
That incrediblearray of colors that is constantly offered to us
For pure enjoyment
Look at the sky
We so rarely look atthe sky
We so rarely note howdifferent it is from moment to moment of clouds coming and going
We just think of theweather
And even with theweather we don’t think of all the many nuances that make it up
We just think ofgood weather and bad weather
This day, right now,it is unique weather
Maybe a kind of viewthat is never exactly in that form again
Formation of cloudsin the sky will never be the same ever again
Open your eyes lookat that
Look at the faces ofpeople whom you meet
Each one has anincredible story behind their face
A story that youcould never fully fathom
Not only their ownstory but the story of their ancestors
We all go back sofar
And with thispresent moment, on this day,
All the people youmeet
All that life fromgenerations
And from so many placesfrom all over the world
Flows together andmakes you
Like a life givingwater if you would only open up your heart and drink
Open your heart to theincredible gifts that civilization gives to us
We flip a switch andthere is electric light
You turn on a faucetand there is warm water and cold water
And drinkable water
It’s a gift thatmillions and millions in this world will never experience
And these are just afew of the enormous number of gifts to which we can open our heart
So I’m wishing thatyou would open your heart to expressiveness
And let them flowthrough you
That everyone whoyou will meet on the street will be blessed by you
Just by your eyes
By your smile
By your touch
Just by yourpresence
Let the gratefulnessoverflow into blessing one another
Then it will reallybe a good day.

other videos by Louie Schwartzberg: http://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_the_hidden_beauty_of_pollination.html

Day 155: Christmas Gift Ideas ;-))

2011-12-11T11:30:00.001-08:00

Watching Sunday morning news shows and saw the Heissmann trophy winner Robert Griffin's socks!

Superman socks with an attached cape which you can just see peeking out of his pants leg. The socks are now unavailable anywhere except on EBay for lots and lots of dollars. Would have been a fabulous Christmas gift if I'd known about it ahead of time.

So.......went looking for other strange ideas and found this:

Fish ‘n Flush Toilet Tank Aquarium Kit

Here's the text from the website:

A lot of people put interesting artwork, magazines, or even novelty toilet paper in their bathrooms to take your mind off what they are there to do. I’m not really sure that it is a good idea to be distracting someone that probably has attention issues to begin with, why else would they pay attention to these things, but if you’re going to do it, do it right!
The Fish ‘n Flush Toilet Tank Aquarium Kit is definitely doing it right. This aquarium kit turns your boring toilet tank into your own personal fish tank and will be turn your bathroom into one of the most talked about things in your home. The two-piece tank separates the flush water from the fish water, so you won’t have to worry about losing your goldfish to some random flush. Get the LED light and enjoy watching your fish all night long.

The kit includes everything you need to get your own 2.2 gallon Toilet Tank Aquarium up and running.

Two-piece Aquarium Tank, Dual-Filter System With Pump, Two Nine-inch Artificial Plants
Basic Aquarium Guide, Flushing System, Flush Valve, Fill Valve
Fits two-bolt tank to bowl configurations with a two-inch flush valve and a bottom-mounted, fill-valve inlet
2.2 Gallon Aquarium Volume Fish ‘n Flush 19.5″ length x 8.5 ” width x 13.75 ” height

Turn your bathroom into the most interesting room in the house with the Fish ‘n Flush Toilet Tank Aquarium Kit. Available at JL Ryan for $171.50.

You can tell I'm a'wastin' the morning, not painting. Christmas is getting awfully close and I'm getting busier and busier with all those frantic thoughts of ..... trees, decor, gifts, food

so I thought I'd throw the fishtank toilet out there for those of you who are looking for gift ideas! ;-))

Day 1: 2012 "A Great Year Ahead"

2011-12-07T15:35:00.001-08:00

I wake up every day determined to both change the world

and have one heck of a good time.

Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult.

E. B. White

from another day on the prairie blog

Everywhere I go, everyone I talk to, Everyone, absolutely Everyone, is thrilled that 2011 is gone, totally, over, through! And Everyone is absolutely thrilled that 2012 is here, the year of the Dragon, the year of good things happening to good people.

So here's to 2012, a good year, a good vintage, happiness, friends, having one heck of a good time.......all those things that make life wonderful.

Haven't painted since 2011, before Thanksgiving. Things get crazy in everyone's lives towards the end of the year and if you haven't figured out how to control yourself and your time? Painting time takes a backseat.

Today, because of a looming deadline of January 31, I painted most of the day away. The project?

"The Conversation" I've been having with my internet friend Nancie Johnson of New Jersey. The final version of the "Sketchbook Project" must be postmarked by January 31. We took the sketchbook issued by the ArtHouseCoop apart and created a conversation based on the book by Milton Glaser and Jean Michel. I've mentioned this book before because of its fascinating format. These two men had a long distance conversation with paint. Whatever was on the right hand edge of a page had to be continued onto the next page by the second painter until the final page of the conversation which was supposed to "wrap around" and connect back to the first page. I think Nancie and I did a pretty good job (as beginners at this long distance thing) and tomorrow I'll be photocopying it for posterity. Then I'm going to learn a few bookbinding skills in order to get all of the pages securely back into its cover.

As soon as I finish photographing our work, I'll show you the final progression of the two conversations we had. We both painted a painting to start the book and I'm planning on mounting one book visible from one side of the Sketchbook and the other book starting at the other, reversed, end of the Sketctchbook. I know this is all as clear as mud, but perhaps when I can get the pictures up you'll understand more.

And then to complicate my life with a few more deadlines, I entered the Limited Edition Sketchbook Project which has a deadline of April 30.

All of the sketchbooks get digitized by the ArtHouse Coop, which gets their funding from all of us who buy the Sketchbooks and participate. The books also tour the United States in various cities: This year the tour comes to Los Angeles!! Last year the tour went through San Francisco and my son and daughter and their friends went and looked up my book and Nancie's book (this is how we met - I commented via the internet on her book) (I think that's how we started) (maybe she commented on my book via blog watching).......

More on Day 2: 2012.

Oh, and in the interim, there was plenty of time to waste cruising around the internet looking at other peoples' blogs. Found some wonderful stuff out there which I'll be posting. It's absolutely amazing to me how many talented, talented people there are out there!

Day 153: A retraction - a little retraction

2011-11-30T13:55:00.001-08:00

I reacted way too fast, with not enough knowledge to Annelein's blog post for today. Her artwork wasn't stolen! She has licensed her artwork through an agent and the agent, obviously, "sold" her wonderful rooster/chicken paintings to the calendar company.

Annelein said that she wished she knew how and where her artwork was going to be used, but that it was wonderful to know that her agent was active on her behalf.

I'm sorry I leaped into the fray so quickly, but my comments about the other two artists still stand.

Day 153: Another rant about stolen artwork

2011-11-30T13:33:00.001-08:00

Heard from Annelein Beukenkamp, in Vermont, today that her artwork was "stolen" by somebody and turned into a calendar that a company in Canada is selling! How rotten!! This makes artist number five or six who has had their art "stolen". Jean Haines of Watercolours with Life in England realized that someone was copying her fabulous paintings of racehorses and selling the finished paintings as if they were their own originals...........Jean was forced to take all of her racehorse paintings off of the internet so that it couldn't happen again. How rotten!! A crazy friend (and I say that with admiration) who writes "Flourish in Progress", Elizabeth Jayne Liu, had her whole total blog stolen by a man who would just copy her blog and post it under his name.........she googled something on her blog one day, trying to find out if there more of that cartoon or item and instead found her whole blog!

With the internet so available I guess anyone who wants to be lazy and cheat and not do their own homework, or painting, or research, or............can just steal from other people. I'm not sure how anyone can truly protect their work. We've all been so generous showing our work not thinking for a second that somebody would copy it and sell it.

Perhaps we all need to put big "copyright" signs on top of the work as it's displayed - but then all of us are being punished for the few horrible thieves out there.

Day 2: 2012 Miranda July and "A Handy Tip for the Easily Distracted"

2011-11-22T17:07:00.001-08:00

I'm involved with a book festival in Pasadena: The Pasadena Festival of Women Authors. Our event this year is March 3, Saturday with a fabulous lineup of new women authors and two well known: Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey (A Woman of Independent Means) and Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes) and Susan Straight (Take One Candle Light A Room ) and Heidi Durrow (The Girl Who Fell From The Sky) and Michelle Huneven (Blame) in no special order.

Because we are always on the lookout for new female authors with a new book, I've been coming across Miranda July lately. Not known to me previously but the name is sure known now. She just won the world's richest short story competition, the Frank O'Connor Award, for No One Belongs Here More Than You. Someone sent me the above video just because I've been asking people if they know anything about her. We just might have to track her down for next year's Festival!!

My friends know that I have a seriously warped sense of humor which is why I find the above video enchanting. Count yourself one of mine if you find yourself with a slight smile at the end....or maybe even a big smile?

Day 152: Two days to go and the Turkey is a'gettin' ready

2011-11-22T16:22:00.000-08:00

It's easier to work on the computer than it is to go to the grocery store, pondering what you might need, what you might cook.......I have the best of all possible worlds getting ready to happen. My two adult children are returning to the nest, one with her new dog Gertrude and one with his wonderful girlfriend and her two children.

A full house and a house full of gratitude

that this is where they choose to be.

My best possible world? A houseful of family.

I'm going to be cooking a turkey the incredible way that the Los Angeles Times figured out several years ago. Go to this link if you're curious. You've never tasted a turkey like this!! It's called the "Judy Bird" after Judy Rogers of the Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. This recipe in the Times created so many questions that it had its own follow up pages in the Food Section. Here is a discussion by Russ Parsons the Food Editor.

The rest of the menu is up for grabs. Because everyone likes to cook and everyone has a new recipe or two, we actually go to the store on Wednesday and Thursday to buy what we need.....and we've never had a bad meal yet!

Reading the Wall Street Journal the other day created a hunger for a fine roast chicken because of the article with 3 chicken recipes. We cooked the first one, the "Naked Roast Chicken". OMG is all I need to say. Here's the link to the three recipes. This chicken recipe is very much like the turkey recipe above if you're wondering why in the world I'm talking about it.

You can tell I'm far away from painting even though I did work, yesterday, about 2 hours on the drawing of a little prairie girl. Can't wait to paint it next week.

Here's to all of you having a wonderful day together, with family? by yourself with a fire and a good book? in the rain? in the snow? in the gorgeous 70 degree blue sky weather of Pasadena, California? This weather in Southern California during the winter months is why all of the east coast had "winter houses" here. Blue, blue, blue skies. Purple San Gabriel mountains. White, white clouds. Because of rain a few days ago our mountains are actually dusted and look like this. It's spectacular and we're grateful.

Day 154: English painter Jean Haines

2011-11-06T12:13:00.000-08:00

Peggy Reid, a watercolor teacher, told me about an English blog: Watercolours with Life, run by Jean Haines.

Juicy, delicious, colorful, enchanting........not enough words to describe her work. She lives somewhere in Great Britain, undisclosed location.

Look at her painting of an owl!

and then there's this beginning painting of a hare,

not a rabbitt.....this is Great Britain!

and then yesterday I made note of the fact that Jean's famous horserace paintings were being "stolen" via the internet, painted by someone else, and sold by someone else so she's had to take all images off of the internet. Not fair! She has an exhibit going on at the Wey Gallery in England. If you take a look at her work, as shown at the gallery, you can see some of her fabulous race horses. Hope no one steals those too!!

Day 151: Another bit of humor

2011-11-06T12:10:00.001-08:00

Chuckled out loud. Thank you my Maineac friend!

-----Laugh for the day......

Click on the link to see the latest DUI test.

Day 150: A bit of humor midweek

2011-11-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

Click on the cell phone. Thank you Barbara.

Day 149: The Army of Women and the Month of October, 2011

2011-11-02T11:15:00.000-07:00

This month, October, 2011, has been dedicated in so many ways to Breast Cancer, its research, its organizations, its causes. Football teams have been wearing pink shoes. I'm sure if the basketballers had been doing their jobs rather than on strike, they too would have had pink on their shoes or their uniforms. It's been an interesting month seeing everyone's involvement.

For about 2 years now I've been involved, as a volunteer, with the Avon/Susan B. Love "Army of Women" and have asked you, all of you, several times via this blog, to please become involved.

Last Sunday, October 30, was a huge push across the nation to get to the one million mark of women who are willing to be part of this research project. I spent the morning at the Panera Bakery in Glendale, California approaching every single woman above the age of 18 asking for their help and participation. There were 4 other wonderful women there and between the 5 of us, we signed up 78 women. By signing up, I mean they were willing to give us their email address and their name. The involvement after this point is totally up to them. By releasing your email address to the Army of Women you will receive one email. It will ask you if you are willing to receive one or two emails a month regarding breast cancer and women. Here is the link to become involved: https://www.armyofwomen.org/getinvolved

There are studies going on all over the United States, using women, not lab animals, to see if they can isolate causes of cancer. One of the women this morning, for example, is of Eastern European Jewish extraction. She took part in a study that only involved her sending a sample of her saliva, in a provided kit, to the researcher on this particular project who happens to be in Milwaukee? I'll have to go back and read up on that one to get the actual fact. I volunteered about a year ago to have blood work done at a local lab, paid for by the Army of Women, and the blood would then be sent to a project where they are comparing people who don't have cancer and who don't have cancer in their families, with families with genetic markers. Easily done! I have been part of the Women's Health Initiative, a project that's been going on for probably 15 years now. I volunteered early on in the WHI because they were trying to find out if hormone replacement caused problems, if nutrition made a difference in menopause - all kinds of things having to do with women. I think because of the WIH, I was sent an email by the "Women's Army" and I signed up immediately. I don't have cancer but I know so many women, and men, who do that I feel it's necessary for every single one of us to get involved who can.

So please do me and every woman the favor of at least looking at the Army of Women's website and signing up.

http://www.armyofwomen.org/

Day 148: Early snow in New York

2011-11-01T18:34:00.000-07:00

My son sent me this photo from the NY Times, showing the first snowstorm of the "season". Enjoy it. It's gorgeous. It's so amazing the amount of damage it did to those trees, fully leaved out in fall colors. The snow was heavy and wet and really tore the trees apart.

and then all the power and the gas were lost......brrrr! But look at this photograph as if it were something to be painted. Wow! Those headlights, that red coat, that John Salminen blur of the architecture.

xxx...xxx...xxx

A friend and watercolor painting teacher, Rose Sinatra, sent out a few paragraphs from a friend of hers, Robert Glenn, regarding painting or any artistic endeavor. It was well written and sure described what I've been mentioning in this blog for days. The inertia on my part, the lack of things to paint, the feeling that it's a must rather than a "wanna". Read his comments and ponder on them yourselves.

Recent studies of teenagers' use of cellphones and other electronic devices have revealed some interesting results. Apparently, if you deprive kids of social networking for a week or so, a high percentage become significantly depressed. They also lose efficiency, will, enthusiasm and sleep. Their marks go down and their lassitude goes up.

For many artists, something similar happens when "the work quotient" is taken from their lives. A couple of unproductive days can send some creative folks into the dumps. They may not even be aware of what's happening to them. "Fear of restart" and permanent creative catatonia can set in after long-term abstinence.

Fact is, good easel time is a noble dependency that makes you a happier, more generous person--better able to enjoy an enriched family and social life.

Day 146: You can tell I've not been painting!

2011-10-30T17:26:00.000-07:00

Don't know if you've seen this

fun video?

Here's the humor I try to provide in each post.

and then the real world:

This weekend was the Art Expo here in Pasadena, California. I went early Friday morning and took a plein air class from Frank Eber. He had some gorgeous landscapes/cityscapes on view around the classroom.

Look at this beauty and look at the atmosphere!!

I have a feeling it might be Frank's favorite as well

as it wasn't for sale.

Some of my friends from Peggy Reid's painting class were also there. Peggy kept saying "tonal paintings, tonal paintings - it all depends on the value of the paint". I didn't understand and was really in a not too nice mood. I've been thinking about his process though for the last 48 hours and am feeling much nicer about maybe?? having learned something. I need some time to paint and just try it out without the stress of having to "produce" in 3 hours!

Bought some Richeson 300# paper just to have some much less expensive paper than Arches to work on. I know that I paint way too wet for the 140# paper I've been using and it just makes painting so frustrating when the paper buckles and warps.

Day 146: Far flung friends, Carol Marine's challenge, Annelein Beukenkamp's portraits

2011-10-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

In my plea in a former posting, I wanted farflung friends to send handdrawn postcards to.........like those lucky people in the Postcard From My Walk blog. I've heard from 3 people who expressed an interest. I'll contact you and let's see if we can get something up and running!! Looking forward to our discussion via the internet.

On another note: Always looking for something to paint and once again, Carol Marine is leading the charge on the website Daily Paintworks. There is a Challenge mounted every week or so. This week's challenge as posted by Carol is an easy one. Take a look and give it a try!!

And then I got today's posting from Annelein Beukenkamp, a fabulous watercolorist who lives in Vermont. I've followed her blog for several years and so enjoyed her peonies, iceland poppies, flowers in general. And then she became obsessed with portrait work. She hired Ted Nuttall to come to Vermont and present one of his fabulous workshops (I've hired him to come once again to Pasadena on May 14-18, 2012 if you have any interest) and since then has been posting some really fabulous works of hers on her blog. Look at her latest:

And I've asked her to come to Pasadena for a workshop in October of 2012! How can we even know if we'll still be painting by then!!

Day 145: Challenges

2011-10-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.rookiepainter.blogspot.com/
A fun challenge is posted every 2 weeks with results posted. Recommended by Karin Jurick.
http://followingthemasters.blogspot.com/
This group is reading a book: The Art Spirit by Robert Henrimonth. The painting challenge is devoted to him and his later influence on The Ashcan School. The book discussion will go through Challenge 10. They're on Challenge 2 at this point. Lots of interesting paintings.
http://www.illustrationfriday.com/?medium=8
An interesting challenge spot. A "word" is posted every Friday. You paint what that word means to you and post it. A link is included to your site or your blog (if you have one). This week's word is "propagate". Interesting paintings of clouds, a bed pollinating gorgeous flowers - the artists' interpretation of that word.
http://www.sketchcrawl.com/
An website that schedules sketching one day a year and invites the world to sketch and submit their sketches of the cities they live in. A site with links to flickr, picasa and other photo websites where everyone's sketches are uploaded.
http://virtualpaintout.blogspot.com/
Intriguing website using "Google Street View" as its source material. Wonderful paintings of various sites around the world. Each project begins on the first of the month and ends on the last day of the month.

Day 144: I want some farflung friends.....

2011-10-19T21:36:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking on this and thinking on this

I want some farflung art friends...

or maybe some nearby friends?.................

Every time I look at the website "A Postcard From My Walk" I am filled with envy. A group of 12 people from around the world (I would accept from around the United States) send a postcard once a month to someone on the list - in the course of the year covering all members once.

Look at their last posting and tell me you're not drooling!!

A Postcard From My Walk

Every month we each create a postcard from a walk
....and send it around the world
....to another member of the group

""I want to be in this Potager.""

says the woman who owns the blog......

(potager meaning kitchen garden in French)

and the postcard then says:

Marília Africantapestry and Myfrenchkitchen has now left Coin Perdu for the winter but took one last chance to sketch the potager in all its glorious chaotic state.

Her description of "all over the place tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, herbs, marigolds, celery and physalis hiding their golden fruits in gentle yet firm lanterns, soon to explode with seductive sweetness" paints such a wonderful word picture. But you can see that from this lovely sketch which captures the scene in the potager at this time of year. I love the way Marilia uses pen and watercolour so spontaneously and lyrically to tell the story of the place.

Then there's the envelope showing the

" white pumpkins stretching their arms in every direction and ruling the garden with dominant huge canopies " beautifully done in mixed media.

I want to be there too - I can almost see the insects scurrying around exploring the new wildness as the garden returns to its untamed state ."""

Does anyone want to be a part of my group? We'll see how we do - you only need to draw one postcard a month to send to one of the 11 other members.....your job is to draw a postcard, your job is to send it randomly to the people on the list....your job is to be one of my farflung friends.

Contact me if you think this might be fun? polsby at yahoo.com

I am personally in charge of the selections. Auditions now being held!!

Day 143: Getting Too Far Away From Painting

2011-10-19T14:15:00.001-07:00

Too many things in life are interesting and I find myself reading all kinds of weird and unusual things - all in the interest of not secluding myself in a room and painting....which I did this morning for an hour or so and then I got sidetracked because there's a photo I want a copy of that ran in the Los Angeles Times about a week ago. Tracked down the right department at the Times, talked to an "intern" who dictated to me the LATimes policy. Do I believe her? Have to as she said she was "the final answer". She said that the Times does not own the photographs that are in the newspaper and that we, as the public, have to track the person down somewhere in this huge universe and ask them to send us a copy of the photo. Be damned is what I say. Use the photo from the LATimes, paint the portrait and the heck with it. I asked the photographer for permission to use her photo and she gladly and proudly said "Great". So that's it.

And then of fascinating interest was another story sent to my by my son.
Here's the link. Have a wonderful time reading the article and don't, whatever you do, consider your day a waste!

http://www.slate.com/id/2301449/entry/2301450/

And no, I'm not even going to give you a hint as to what the content of the above story might be!

Day 142: Feeling a bit sentimental

2011-10-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

Sentimental day. Took the Tiger/Siamese cat back to the Humane Society where I had adopted her 3 years ago. Her behavior in the house had become extreme and I could just no longer tolerate it but I'm really feeling sad that that was my only way of dealing with it. After "making" my husband take me out to lunch so that I, at 2:30 p.m. could have a cocktail to drown my sorrows (see recipe for "Penicillin" ....he had a glass of Aglianico, a yummy Italian wine).......

So still feeling so sorry for myself, I decided to spend time perusing other people's blogs, looking at some gorgeous watercolors/watercolours (yes I got as far as Great Britain......I'll list some names here so that you too can enjoy them in all your spare time. But while wandering I came across this on http://kayeparmenter.blogspot.com/ and thought I'd like to share it with my readers as well.

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.

To weep is to risk being called sentimental.

To reach out to another is to risk involvement.

To expose feelings is to risk showing your true self.

To place your ideas and your dreams before the crowd

is to risk being called naive.

To love is to risk not being loved in return

To live is to risk dying.

Our teacher Peggy Reid put me on to Jean Haines blog this morning because of the woman's way with watercolors. She lives in England.

She mounts a monthly painting challenge which looks really interesting. Here's October's challenge.

And then I got sidetracked again. People's paintings and blogs are being copied all over the place by people too lazy to use their own sluggard brains! Jean Haines realized someone was copying her paintings. If you read her blog as marked above you'll see what she has to say.

And then yesterday I came across this blog: http://www.finearttips.com/2010/07/how-i-stopped-a-copycat-artist-on-facebook/ where she was talking about being copied and sold.

The first time I saw/read about a blog being stolen is because of a crazy, crazy blog I follow that I just love. I know everyone does not have my same "bent" mind but if you look at www.flourishinprogress.com you might get a chuckle like I do. Turned out that someone had stolen her whole blog down to the old fashioned advertising that she starts each blog with. Elizabeth was googling her name and some of her words for the heck of it and was astounded when her blog kept popping up but under a man's name. Google shut the bad guy's website down but how frustrating to work hard and have other people profit by it.

So there's my rant for this day. All over the woodlot as my mom would say.

Day 141: Army of Women - and breast cancer research

2011-10-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog Readers:

The Army of Women is conducting studies all over the United States on what causes breast cancer, what cures breast cancer and they need women both negatively and positively diagnosed as to breast cancer to help them with the studies. I personally am signed up with a study in Milwaukee (I live in California) because they needed healthy volunteers to give a blood sample through a local lab the study is using. My sample will then be mailed by the lab to Milwaukee. How easy is that!

I know I've mentioned this before, but I'm mentioning it again because I think this is one of the most important causes that we can be a part of. Nothing's involved except you signing up to be a volunteer via the internet and sometimes via in person.

October 2011
Happy 3rd Anniversary!

Dear Jill,

Who would have thought that on October 1, 2008, we would launch a breast cancer revolution?

But that's exactly what happened when I went on the TODAY Show that morning and, surrounded by women of all ages and ethnicity, with and without breast cancer, who joined me at Rockefeller Plaza, announced that we were going to change the face of breast cancer research forever!

We knew that there were women and men throughout the U.S. who wanted to step up to the plate and be part of the research that would help us find the cause of breast cancer and stop it once and for all.

Read the Full Story from Dr. Susan Love.

And then here is this month's study announcement:

STUDY OF THE MONTH:
Discovery of Early Markers of Breast Cancer

We need women in the US who had a normal breast biopsy and went on to develop breast cancer. The research team is analyzing normal breast tissue from benign biopsies for evidence of DNA damage in breast cells and then investigating whether the presence of this DNA damage can predict who will develop breast cancer later in life. This study will happen in two phases. Currently, the researchers are looking for women who had a normal breast biopsy and went on to develop breast cancer. In a few months, they will be enrolling women who had a normal breast biopsy but did NOT go on to develop breast cancer. By recruiting both women who did develop breast cancer and women who did not, the research team will be able to look for markers in the breast cells that might be an indicator of breast cancer risk. This Call to Action is for women who had a benign breast biopsy and then developed breast cancer.

The Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation will be hosting coffee and conversation events at local Panera stores in Southern California throughout October. Come in, eat a bagel, drink coffee, learn more about what the Foundation has in store, and sign up for the Army of Women! Already an AOW member? We look forward to meeting you in person! Learn when we'll be at a store near you.

Army of Women

Love/Avon Army of Women | 2811 Wilshire Blvd. | Suite 500 | Santa Monica | CA | 90403
(866) 569-0388 | info@mailing.armyofwomen.org

Day 140 - Wednesday, October 12 - Just Painting!

2011-10-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

Figures-Landscapes-Still lifes. What's the difference? Not much!

So you wonder why a landscape painter spends so much time painting the figure? Well, from my experience this past year, (this is being said by an unknown author - couldn't find the source) painting from a live model 3x per week, there's not a whole lot of difference painting the landscape. I know this sounds a bit simplistic but for me, the subject is sometimes irrelevant. What's important is what you do with the subject. So, in a sense, painting anything and everything is the same. The process is pretty much identical. There's planning - drawing, composition, value, color, type of light, etc. Then there's the execution - brushwork, edges, major color relationships and subtle color distinctions. Basically the thought process and approach for painting the figure is the same for painting still life or landscape.

I often hear my students say " I just want to be a landscape painter." Well, I hate to say this, but, there's no such thing! Painting is painting... no shortcuts. Study it all. In traditional art schools drawing the figure is essential and part of the curriculum. I did that for several years, but for the past 20+ years I've focused primarily on how color and light create form, atmosphere and distance in still life and landscapes. Last year we began to offer portrait and figure painting at the school so I thought, there's no better opportunity for me to study the figure again. What I didn't realize was how much it would help my still life and landscapes.

In the figure painting you can see that most of the plane changes are color and /or value changes - just enough to turn the form. This is one way to convey volume with an emphasis on color and light. Now look at the still life painting. Even though the subject is completely different the process is identical. Look at the subtle color changes in the egg shells and their cast shadows. They were painted just like I painted the figure - every plane change is a color change. Now the landscape is an overcast California winter scene so the colors are subtler than a bright sunny summer day. But, you can see the color shift in temperature, value, and chroma as the planes recede into the distance. These are the same color shifts that you see when painting the figure. Also take a look at the edges. There are lost edges, soft edges, and hard edges - no difference between the figure, the still life, and the landscape.

So, when studying art you need to study it all.

One subject helps the other...

Painting is painting.

Day 139: Tuesday, October 11 - David Lobenberg's Portraits in Payne's Grey

2011-10-11T16:54:00.000-07:00

I've followed David Lobenberg's work for ages. He's an adjunct art professor, (whatever that means), workshop instructor, gallery and commission artist. He has an MA degree from UCLA and he mainly paints in watercolor.

I started watching him because he was "into" portrait work and he mounted a couple of painting challenges. One of the most fun challenges was a self portrait of yourself in a hat. I tried and tried to get a photo of myself and finally gave up and submitted..................

Go to the link above and see some of the wonderful submissions.

His blog entry today was that he was going to be demo-ing at the Sacramento Fine Art Center and thought, because he's been messing around with the idea lately, that he'd paint four portraits in his allotted hour using only Payne's Grey. He got his paper ready with his drawings:

and is thinking that while one wash is drying, he can work on one of the other drawings. I've always wanted to take a workshop from him and he and I have talked but could never come up with anything conclusive as to dates, times, formats, where to do it.........okay Valley Watercolor Society: go for it, get David to be one of your workshops!!

Here's some of the other black and white work he's been doing lately. Gorgeous as is most of his work. He comments in today's post about not doing any color portrait work until you've mastered mono paintings. Interesting thought and obviously he's been working on it!!

david's portrait of himself

Day 138: Sunday, October 9 - The Best Deal in Town!!

2011-10-09T17:54:00.000-07:00

The very best deal in Los Angeles, unknown to most, enjoyed by the few.

The Philharmonic Orchestra, live in HD, with Dudamel!!

Today Dudamel performed in theaters across the United States as part of the Philharmonic Live in HD Performances. It was a full Mendelssohn program with a violinist, Janine Jansen, a gorgeous woman from Holland. It is broadcast from the Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles via cameras mounted throughout the orchestra. You are upclose and personal, looking at Dudamel's face, looking at the individual concert members.

The best part though is when the actual concergoers have an intermission, we, the theater audience go backstage with Dudamel, Janine, we watch rehearsals of the music, we interview everyone.............it's a fantastic deal!!

The next program is February 2, 2012, broadcast from Caracas, Venezuela - Dudamel's hometown. He'll be conducting Mahler's 8th with the L.A. Phil, the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, combined with multiple choirs and soloists in Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand”. It should be a fantastic broadcast and a fantastic experience. Because of the 1000 singers and musicians on the stage at the same time, I think it would be an incredible experience for slightly older children. Experience music with the ability to fidget a bit?

You can go online to Fathom Events, type in your zip code, choose your event, print out a ticket and go to the theater. In my local area, Pasadena, CA there are two HD theaters that broadcast these events. The Alhambra Renaissance Theater on the corner of Garfield and Main in Alhambra and the AMC at the Santa Anita Mall in Arcadia. There are 29 theaters in Southern California that participate.

In a separate blog entry I'm going to talk about the incredible deal that's available for opera lovers throughout the world. Me? Any kind of music except for extreme jazz and I'm a happy camper, tapping my feet, sometimes singing along to the annoyance of my seat mates, just plain happy when there's music around.

Day 137: Friday, October 7

2011-10-07T17:49:00.000-07:00

Came across some wonderful watercolor work. It was being shown at the Segil Gallery, a fabulous gallery in Monrovia, California. The artist is Julie Hill and she had a one-woman show last summer of her railroad cars. Fabulous. She has an interesting demo of painting the interior of a church.


A Boy's Special Moment 30x22 watercolor (framed) $1,650	Back In the Day, Charter Oak Stop 9x12 watercolor (framed) $500

Disembarking Uppsala, Sweden 12x12 watercolor (easel)	Engine 486, study 6x6 watercolor (easel)

How it Works 7x5 watercolor (easel) -	Engine 486 19x14 watercolor (framed)

Memories of Riding Through Highland Park 9x12 watercolor (framed)	Morning Commute, Birmingham Station 18x24 watercolor (framed)

Nostalgia Train, 1930's 9x12 watercolor (framed)	Number One Train 6x12 watercolor (easel)

Passing Through Bartonsville 11x15 watercolor (framed)	Oh How I Missed You 12x15 watercolor (framed)

Pacific Electric #2 9x12 watercolor (framed)	Place Your Bets 12x16 watercolor (framed)

Riding the Polar Express, Moosonee 5x23 watercolor (framed)	Snakey Train, Tehachapee Pass 18x24 watercolor (framed)

Soo Cool, EMD SD60 5x28.5 watercolor (framed) $600	The Big Zephyr 12x14 watercolor (framed) $750

The Evening Ride 12x16 watercolor (framed) $750	Three Retired Leads 12x16 watercolor (framed) $750

Train is Coming 30x22 watercolor (framed) $1,650	Union Pacific Around the Bend 14x20 watercolor (framed) $900

Waiting 11x14 watercolor (framed) $750	Where It All Happens 5x7 watercolor (easel) $150

All In A Day's Work 10x8 watercolor (easel) - SOLD

Day 136: Thursday, October 6

2011-10-07T17:21:00.000-07:00

"Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Everything else is secondary"

- Steve Jobs

Day 135: Friday, September 30 - Leaf Hoppers

2011-09-30T16:51:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the hiatus. My husband and I took a leaf hopping trip to Vermont, Montreal, Quebec and Maine to visit with old friends and just got back.

Our timing was impeccable:

trees just starting to turn,

absolutely glorious weather,

heavy rain and lightning as we left Boston last night.

Couldn't have been better.

Fall always makes such sense on the East Coast.

Pumpkins in the front yard make sense.

Chrysanthemums make even more sense.

Scarecrows, stalks of corn tied to the mail boxes make sense.

There were apples everywhere,

on the trees,

on the ground,

for sale in front of the houses........

everywhere!

Color on the drive from Quebec to Maine. Leaves just starting to turn. Gorgeous.

Nice to be back though. Fall classes have started, it's getting dark earlier, time for chili and beef stew and thick soups. Love the fall.

If you need a fabulous chili recipe? Try this Williams-Sonoma version. Yum

Day 134: Thursday, September 15 - Portrait class resumes

2011-09-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

Today was my first day back at April Foster's portrait drawing class in Eagle Rock. It's held at the senior center so it's a tight fit for the 20+ people who squeeze in, using card table chairs and tv trays as painting stations. We have wonderful models, regular people, who can amazingly sit still for the session. I haven't been to class in a long time and it was fun to pick up the charcoal and try, once again, for an image.

We had a great model named Robin, a friend of one of the women in class. The model assumes 4 or 5 quick 5-7 minute poses at the beginning of class and then assumes a pose for the rest of the time. They do get breaks every 15 minutes and then resume the pose. My first drawing is usually the best. I'm not thinking about anything. Just putting down what I think is there. Then I start studying the model and things start going a bit crazy here, a bit crazy there..............but I always have a good time.

5 minute drawing

maybe 45 minutes?

maybe another 30-40 minutes

Day 133: Wednesday, September 14 - Pasadena Festival of Women Authors

2011-09-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

Worked most of the day on the Pasadena Festival of Women Authors which is going to occur, for the fourth time, on March 3, 2012 with a fantastic lineup of female, local authors. Michelle Huneven "Blame" - Susan Straight "Take One Candle Light A Room" - Heidi Durrow "The Girl Who Fell From The Sky" - and a wonderful mystery guest whose name we're announcing later - just to build suspense. And again, Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey will be the moderator. The event has been sold out the last two years and we're hoping the community of readers supports us as enthusiastically this coming year!

Finally got the framing accomplished for the baby portrait I want to enter in the Valley Watercolor Society's "small" show. I thought I was all done, liked the frame I'd finally found, liked the "look" of the finished product and then realized that just because a frame has a huge "11 x 14" printed on it doesn't mean that it's 11 x 14. Turned out the frame would "hold" an 11 x 14 photo but the frame itself was 13 x 16. There is no such thing as a ready-made 11x14 frame. So took myself off to Anthony's Framing in San Marino, a wonderful shop owned by its namesake Anthony with two wonderful sidekicks David and Carlos. "No problem. Calm down. We'll get it done by Friday. How does this look?"...........all in their calming voices. So I'm done and will hand deliver it to the judges on next Sunday, with my fingers crossed behind my back that they accept it.

Day 131: Monday, September 12

2011-09-12T17:52:00.000-07:00

As I said, I have been painting, just not posting. I'm trying to get a painting finished in time to enter it in the Valley Watercolor Society's show. Painting can be no bigger than 11x14 framed which in itself presents a challenge. I know how I want the picture to look but on my trip to Aaron Brothers, they didn't have any frame like I had in mind. Now I'm stuck. I want a blonde-ish maple frame, edges for the frame to be about 1/2" thick, no flourishes, just a plain maple frame. No such item at Aaron Brothers. I'll find it but I need to have everything framed and ready for drop off next Sunday the 18th. And then a friend, AnnMarie just called and mentioned Michael's (maybe they have plain frames) and a place called Gonzales. We'll see what they have.

I've been redoing the picture of Dylan, that gorgeous baby. And I actually like my last attempt the best so I think that's what will be entered.

See what you think:

This first one I absolutely adored, didn't want to finish it for fear I'd wreck it so I've left it pretty much alone. I added a bit more suggestion of hair and some additional cheek color.

Then came number two. Lots of red splotches on the baby's face.

Then number 3 which I like and which I think I'll use if I can find a frame.

Interesting lesson was learned on this photo source. My daughter had sent me this picture of her favorite friend's baby, Dylan. I loved it, knew I wanted to try my hand at it, and never thinking, cropped the photo into the version I've been painting. I lost the original photo as a result because the only saved version was the cropped one. I now make 2 or 3 copies of photos in my photo folders just so this won't happen again!

An extra post on a Saturday re Carol Marine and her family

2011-09-10T14:31:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about Carol Marine and her husband and son who lost absolutely everything in the fire in Bastrop, Texas, outside Austin. A good friend of Carol's who runs the blog noone'sthebitch and who asked for donations from the art community because these wonderful folk had nothing, updated her blog to reflect the overwhelmingly wonderful response from the art community.......just as all of us who sent money were hoping.

This is the comment on the blog:

[As of mid-day on Friday, Sept. 9th, only five days after the fire, over 300 kind and generous people have donated almost $18,000 to help Carol and David. That's right: almost EIGHTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!!! You have no idea what this means to them, folks. No idea. They have been moved beyond words and have cried about this more than once -- in a good way.
Carol and David say thank you, thank you, thank you a million times over for this wonderful expression of love and support from fellow artists and fans of our book.
To see all these incoming links from art blogs far and wide, to see the names of so many studios and even other daily painting sites online, honestly, it's blown their minds. It's really something to be proud of. Y'all are part of something really special....
You've all helped turn a gut-wrenching experience for Carol and David into something affirming, amazing and beautiful.... They can never thank you enough and they will never forget this!]

Day 130: Sunday, September 11 memorial

2011-09-10T08:02:00.000-07:00

Click the link

A beautiful remembrance of an horrific day.

Day 129: Friday, September 9 - I promise I haven't been a slacker!

2011-09-09T16:03:00.000-07:00

Just because I haven't posted this week doesn't mean I haven't been working, plying my craft, trying to accomplish those 10,000 hours that are called for in the "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell.

I was going to post the paintings I've been working on but then got all involved in the 10,000 hour thought......so I'm going to post a long discussion/quote from the book because the idea is so truthful and it was interesting to me how various professors and professionals have set about proving the old adage that "practice makes perfect".

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of "The Tipping Point", "Blink", and "Outliers: The Story of Success". “Outliers” are the high achievers, the best, the brightest, and the most successful people. Gladwell has some interesting theories on what it takes to become an outlier.

In “Outliers” Gladwell explains that in the early 1990’s psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and two colleagues conducted an experiment at Berlin’s “Academy of Music”. Basically, the school’s violinists were divided into three groups: the stars, the “good” performers, and those who were unlikely to ever play professionally and would probably become music teachers. They were all asked the same question: “Over the course of the years, ever since you picked up a violin, how many hours have you practiced?”

All of the violinists had started playing at around age five, and they all played about two or three hours a week during the first few years. However, around the age of eight, an important difference began to emerge in the amount of hours they each practiced. By age 20, the stars in the group had all totaled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives; the “good” students had totaled 8,000 hours; and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours.
What the research suggested was that once you have enough talent to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. In addition, other studies have also shown that excellence at a complex task requires a minimum level of practice, and experts have settled on 10,000 hours as the magic number for true expertise. This is true even of people we think of as prodigies, such as Mozart.
Gladwell quotes neurologist Daniel Levitin as follows:

“In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years… No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.“

Bill Gates

Bill Gates is certainly brilliant, Malcolm adds in “Outliers”, but most people don’t know that he spent most of his early years in his school’s computer lab. He had extensive access to a state-of-the-art computer lab, the likes of which very few in his generation would know until years later. By the time he dropped out of Harvard after his sophomore year to try his hand at his own software company, Gates had already been programming nonstop for seven consecutive years. He was way past 10,000 hours.

The Beatles

The Beatles, Gladwell continues, were invited to play in Hamburg, Germany in 1960 when they were still a struggling band. What was unusual about Hamburg is that they had to play all night, eight hours straight, seven days a week, for weeks on end. John Lennon, in an interview after the Beatles disbanded, talking about the band’s performances at Hamburg, said: “We got better and got more confidence. We couldn’t help it with all the experience playing all night long. . . In Liverpool, we’d only ever done one-hour sessions, and we just used to do our best numbers, the same ones, at every one. In Hamburg we had to play for eight hours, so we really had to find a new way of playing.”

Just Do It: Quantity Leads to Quality

“A ceramics professor comes in on the first day of class and divides the students into two sections. He tells one half of the class that their final grade will be based exclusively on the volume of their production; the more they make, the better their grade. The professor tells the other half of the class that they will be graded more traditionally, based solely on the quality of their best piece.
At the end of the semester, the professor discovered that the students who were focused on making as many pots as possible also ended up creating the best pots, much better than the pots made by the students who spent all semester trying to create that one perfect pot.”

The quote demonstrates that by producing as much as you can, the quality of what you produce increases. With each pot created the students in the “quantity” group learned something new and perfected their skill. In addition, their creativity was not restrained by the thought of creating “the one perfect pot”. By being told that they were going to be graded on quantity they had more leeway to experiment and try new things. .

To Have a Great Idea, Have Lots of Them

Bloggers have written about Thomas Edison’s idea quota: basically, he had a set number of ideas he had to come up with each week. Even though lots of the ideas he came up with were pretty lousy, he also came up with a lot of very successful ideas.

“Idea a Day” is a website founded in London in August 2000 by music executive David Owen and others, in which one idea is published a day. As well as perusing the ideas, you are encouraged to submit your own and share them. If you subscribe to their feed you’ll have one idea delivered to you every day. You can then use that idea as a jumping-off point for your own daily idea. Here are two interesting from the “Idea a Day” site:

“Add a tax to all unhealthy foods so that they cost more than healthy alternatives. A healthy diet would be relatively cheaper than an unhealthy diet. Then use the tax revenues to pay for more and better health education and sporting facilities.” – Day 3013 by Bounce

“Create a carbon offset tax. People would be taxed a certain percentage a month based on their carbon footprint. By doing things to lower their carbon footprint, the percentage would be lowered. For example driving a car that gets more than a 30 mpg, buying locally grown organic produce, or not spraying the lawn would cut back the tax. The revenue raised could in turn be used to develop green technologies, plant trees and protect rain forests.” – Day 2092 by Max

In conclusion, the more you practice your craft–whatever it may be–, the more you create, and the more ideas you come up with, the more likely you are to be successful. As we’ve been told over and over again, it’s a numbers game.

This information came from the following people to give credit where credit is due: Marelisa Fabrega, Bill Buxton and Mike Arauz

Day 128: Tuesday, September 6 - Call for help for Carol Marine

2011-09-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

Carol Marine, whose face I painted months ago,

is in trouble! The Texas wildfires that blew through the prairies yesterday took everything, house, clothes, her studio.....she did get out with her computer, all of her small paintings, her new iphone, and most importantly? Her husband and son Jacob.

This was her self- portrait for the challenge in April, the "All About Me" Challenge. Sense of humor, sense of commitment to other artists.

Here's Carol Marine's day before "take" on the fire:
http://carolmarine.blogspot.com/2011/09/before-fire.html

She and her husband have been so wonderful, stating a weekly painting challenge and then taking the time and energy to post everyone's works. A lot of time, a lot of hard work.

A news announcement is flying around among her friends and all of those who painted for her challenges. They are asking for donations to get Karen and her husband and son back up and running...........money through paypal. Everything they owned burned and yes, they have insurance, but in the meantime, we could help a bit.

A good friend of Carol's who was actually at the house when everyone was ordered to evacuate, has organized her blog so that donations through PayPal can be easily accomplished.

http://www.noonesthebitch.com/

This is what Karin Jurick had to say:
A shout-out to the artists community - Carol and David Marine and their son lost their home in the Bastrop, Texas wildfires on Sunday. Their entire subdivision was wiped out, up to 300 homes. I hear they are all safe, that's great news.

Karin Jurick, also a good friend of Carol's has stated all the "how's" of helping on her blog. If you feel like making a contribution to Carol and David Marine, I'm sure it would be greatly appreciated.

http://karinjurick.blogspot.com/

I'm hoping we'll all donate a little something as a huge thank you for all of Carol and David's work these many months.

Day 127: Friday, Sept. 2

2011-09-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

Drawing Magazine, Artists Magazine.....they all run together in my mind but today's email from Artist Daily featured some of the most gorgeous drawings I've seen in a long time. They were spotlighting Eileen Healy.

This is titled "Frank". Have you ever seen anything more gorgeous?

And then there's "Erin" in pastels, above. Can you believe those highlights on the matching paper..........so thought out ahead of time, such fabulous "lighting"......

In an interview Eileen said:

I never plan a pose before a session. Though this can add a sense of spontaneity, it can be a hindrance when working against the clock when you have to pay a model. As a result I make decisions quickly. A strong sense of composition seems to come naturally to me. I think this has helped drawings I've done in my sketchbooks. These are not plans for paintings as much as small-scale graphite works in their own right. When I get 'blocked' I look at these and they help me through and possibly influence a bigger work. Space plays a very important part in my compositions. I dislike cluttered or busy work and my portraits are very direct with very little or no background. I maximize the format often with the figure, focusing on interesting angles and foreshortening.

My work with color in pastel is something I've developed after struggling with the medium. When I first started, I only used two colors on tinted paper, gradually introducing more colors and trying out different colored paper. I mostly work on colored paper, as it's very effective when accentuating highlights. I have also done pastel on white, which I enjoy, but it is more difficult. Light influences color, which determines my color range. Also a model's own skin color, especially in the shadows, affects the work. Using a spotlight will create very rich colors in the shadowed areas, often with deep blues and purples. I use small square Conté crayons, not thick rounded ones as I find these hard to control and messy.

I try to never lean too hard on my pencil or chalk unless I know what I’m doing. I'm a line person so I rely heavily on this, varying the quality/thickness of line as I work. This is dictated by the light source and its influence on edges. I don't have a set process. Sometimes I work from the darkest parts to the lightest, leaving the highlights 'til last. There's always a good buzz from that. I encourage my students to do the same and to make compositional decisions before putting pencil to paper. Work lightly at first. Measure up. Use construction lines.

Here are two more of her lush drawings. Enjoy.

Day 126: Thursday, Sept. 1 - My Birthday day

2011-09-02T18:22:00.000-07:00

Time out from painting. Time for fun. Time for friends. Time for lunch with my birthday "twin" - Taka. We were obviously separated at birth is why we don't look very much alike. We met when our girls were just two years old and they were becoming fast friends but we've only just recently, maybe 15 years or so? celebrated our birthdays together.

And then serendipitously, I found our missing triplet sister (actually a blogger whose blog I follow - seriously not a sister, but born on Sept. 1). Funny lady, Liz, writes a blog called "Flourish in Progress". I've been reading her blog for a couple of months now, just enjoying the raucousness of it. She had a really interesting experience with her blog. She was googling certain words and photos that she uses in her blog, whiling away the time, and suddenly found another blogger who had totally stolen her blog, pictures and all. Whatever Liz posted, this male was copying, posting, receiving comments.....and he never once mentioned Liz or her funny, funny blog. Turned out this guy had been stealing from other people's blogs for quite some time. Her column on this is a special one, funny, angry, informative. I wished her a happy birthday as well.

Day 125: Wednesday, August 31 - Painting at last

2011-09-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

Finally locked myself in a room on Sunday and painted away the day. Had fun making small paintings. The Valley Watercolor Society is mounting a show of small works, not to exceed 11 x 15 framed......which means you need to paint smaller than usual, which I tried to do.

Worked on a painting of my son............not too bad, not too good.
Original:

Painting: It's not until you actually see it mounted together on the computer that you realize how "off" the painting actually is. When you're just looking at it on the painting board, it seems kinda ok.

And then I worked on a painting of my grand-nephew James....he's planning some kind of mischief here......

And then a very bad painting which I thought was wonderful until I saw it here.....Then you see the mistakes in the drawing.

And obviously this cute face needs a bit more hair

now that I see it in its finality.

Day 124: Tuesday, August 30 - the 2nd "Conversation"

2011-08-30T11:18:00.000-07:00

And then I shut the door on the painting room and stayed there until I had figured out what to add to the second "Conversation" that Nancie Johnson and I are working on.

We had had the conversation about the "Angry Bird" and the Cat. I had the cat kill the bird, leaving a feather in the panel I painted.

Nancie showed the bird house now for rent in her panel.

I imagined that there were some furnishings left in the bird's house, such as fish in a fish bowl which would now be looking to be adopted?

And together the story is:

Day 123: Monday, August 29: The Conversation with Nancie Johnson continues.....finally

2011-08-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

I have been having way too much fun in too little time! Have been feeling very guilty about having both ends of "The Conversation" that Nancie Johnson and I are doing for the Sketchbook Project. This morning, having had two weeks to contemplate this particular conversation (The Helix), I locked myself into the painting room and painted away. Got my next addition to The Conversation completed and off it will go in today's mail.

This is what Nancie sent me several weeks ago. I have to paint off of the right hand edge:

And this is what I painted, off of her right hand edge. Since the final "conversation" needs to wrap itself back around to the front page (or at least we think that's how it should end) I decided to put some dark blue back into the painting to get that color flowing again. Ergo? dark blue wine bottle which doesn't exist in nature!

And when hooked together? Here's the continuation of the story.

Day 122: Friday, August 26 - Air Swimmers

2011-08-26T10:31:00.000-07:00

I have an aquarium in our dining room. A 100-gallon tank. With 4 Koi fish. Who are 7 years old at my house (who knows how old they were when I bought them), who outgrew their 27 gallon tank so for Christmas I gave them a new, huge tank...............and they have expanded to fit their space.

They're huge! And they know me and come frantically to the corner of the tank every morning to be fed. And they're carnivores. If you put any other kind of fish but a koi in their tank, they eat it.......lost a really fluffy gold fish this way in the beginning. They love to have a sliced orange tossed in the tank so I do this right before I clean the tank - which is often because they're really dirty fish. And then for my birthday and theirs (the fish have my birthday assigned to them as does the cat - that way I know how old they all are. Dogs always have my older sister's birthday since Australian shepherds tend to be born in May.)...and then for my birthday and theirs, I bought myself and them a new little brother, Nemo. It took Nemo a day or two to figure out how to grab some food from the big guys, but he's well on his way to becoming a big monster too.

My husband sent me this link in an email today. Absolutely love it!! For all of the above reasons.

http://www.wimp.com/airswimmers/

Maybe my husband's getting me one of these for my Virgo birthday?

Day 121: Thursday, August 25 - Why the hell not!?

2011-08-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

What a hiatus!! My mind has been racing as has my body....too many fun things happening and no time to talk about them! Today is a "for the hell of it day". The latest Artist Magazine arrived asking, no begging, for entries from "old people" - old if you're over 60 and since my children are the only people I know who are younger than 60, moi decided to enter.

"Why the hell not" was my thought.

So I found the jpeg files on the computer and sent them off via the on-line entry form. Have always loved the portrait of my cousin Swampy whose Virgo birthday and my Virgo birthday will be communally celebrated on the 8th with my Virgo sister.....

And then there's this portrait of Carol Marine, the Cheerleader for all of us, leading daily painting challenges, egging us on through her blog.....

And then the portrait of Karin Jurick, who mounted fantastic painting challenges before she became incredibly famous. She now has the most fabulous paintings and a wonderful blog. If you don't know her work, go take a look!!

Karin had the most fantastic painting challenge of anyone. She had over 180 people, all followers of her work, send her a photo of themselves. She then paired each of us up with an unknown person. We had to paint them, they had to paint us, and we all had to submit our paintings so that she could post this incredible challenge. I painted a wonderful (I thought) portrait that I've always called the "Hairdresser"

The hairdresser never returned the portrait she was supposed to paint of me. But!! I got my portrait painted by Karin which was, I thought, a really good deal!! Because of Karin's generosity of time and spirit in mounting this fun, fun challenge, I secretly mounted a Thank You Challenge to Karin. It was the subject of my very first blog, over a year ago now. I contacted everyone that I could who had painted for Karin, sent them a photo of Karin that I had found on the internet and we all painted from the exact same photo. I had a book made of the paintings at Snapfish which we mailed her. The link to all of the paintings that were done is at Picasa. I'm still blown away that all these unknown people painted for me and that I was able to get everything up and onto the internet. Karin was stunned which was what it was all about. Go to this Picasa link to see the paintings.

I'll try to catch up with what I've been doing.

Day 120: Thursday, August 4 - a mouse named Nosey

2011-08-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

Lots of explanations in order to explain today's posting.

There's a San Francisco based artist out there, Chris Beck, who has her own website "I'm Painting As Fast As I Can".

I've followed her personal work off and on for several years as she has such a sense of humor and such a definitive style of painting that I always smiled when I saw what she had done lately.

Where she got "famous" in my mind was with another blog she started called: Brush, Paper, Water. Bi-weekly she would find a fabulous watercolor artist and would then fearture this artist on this blog. We were exposed, as a result, to some really wonderful painters, each with a different style and/or subject. Flowers, realism, plein air, architectural......just wonderful painters with wonderful styles.

In 2011 she featured the following artists:
Amanda Spencer, Anders Andersson, Aud Rye, Chris Krupinski, Diane Morgan, Gary Bukovnik, Geoffrey McCormack, Ismail Kadir, John Salminen, Jonathan Frank, Phang Chew and Ron Morrison.

If you go to the bottom of this link, you can see all the other fabulous artists she featured.

Chris called a halt to this blog about 2 months ago as life with her own painting was coming to the front of the pile and she wanted more time to paint for herself.

And then today, out of the blue, comes a blog posting from Chris that just made me smile and smile.

See that little mouse on the top of the pile of books? It's named Nosey and it's a bronze mouse made by Steve Worthington. Over a year ago, Steve, who creates these fabulous bronze mice and lots of other wonderful bronze sculptures, sent 20 artists that he knew, a Nosey mouse, and asked them to create paintings featuring the mice........

and here I'm going to put Chris' words about what Steve asked of the artists:

Chris said: I'm pleased to introduce Nosey Mouse. She arrived this afternoon and has been exploring the studio. When she settles down, we're going to work on a challenge painting.
Sculptor Steve Worthington has asked approximately 20 artists to participate in a challenge using their choice of one of five bronze mice he's created. When all the paintings are finished, he's going to gather them into a book which he plans to publish this summer and he'll donate the proceeds from the book sales to animal shelters. I'll post updates here as things progress.

I can't encourage you enough to explore Steve's blog and website -- he has some fabulous sculptures of mice, frogs, and toads, to name a few of his critters. And his short videos are very quirky and fun to watch!!And then the wonderful paintings of the mice started. Take a look at the 20 paintings here: http://steveworthingtonart.blogspot.com/p/mouse-project.html

See I told you there were lots of explanations today. This whole post started because Chris Beck, in today's email said that she got the news earlier this week that Nosey Mouse will be taking a little trip this fall. Her painting of Nosey Mouse was accepted into the National Watercolor Society's Annual Exhibition in San Pedro, CA and Nosey will be visiting Los Angeles as a result. This painting also qualified as a Finalist in The Artist's Magazine Annual Art Competition for 2011. Award winners will be published in the December issue of the magazine.

Ted Nuttall, watercolor portrait artist, who comes to California every spring for a workshop in Pasadena, will be the main judge at this show.

Day 119: Monday, August 1 - The Fruit Conversation

2011-08-01T18:50:00.000-07:00

And "The Conversation" for the National Sketchbook Project (see earlier posts) continues. Nancie Johnson and I have named this one the "Fruit Conversation" because of its initial page which was an apple, some grapes and a banana. It has morphed way beyond the banana and the apple.

I had sent her the beak of a bird, attached to the banana:

Nancie took the half of the bird I had made on the right hand edge and morphed it into an "Angry Bird". That was Nancie's latest entry, complete with sleeping cat, full of z's.

With no hesitation on my part, the 5th panel became? A flurry of feathers.

So sorry, said the cat.

Here are 3 panels together. It's getting too long, now that it's five panels, to show it in full.

It's now back into the mail, off to New Jersey, to see what Nancie's going to do with the remnants of a bird.

Day 118: Sunday, July 31

2011-07-31T14:37:00.000-07:00

Wonderful day! We were invited to a private tour of the new Dinosaur Exhibit at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. We showed up at 8 a.m., 2 hours before the Museum opened, for coffee in the most air-conditioned building we've been in in ages! Lecture just for the 30 of us by Doyle Trankina who is the main sculptor of missing pieces when the dinosaurs are reconstructed. If you read his bio through the link, it's an interesting career.

He goes on the digs and was talking about one of the upper blades (?) (name) on the spine of a Stegosaurus.

He was walking the dig site and saw the the pieces of this blade and thought it might be broken pottery but it turned out to be a Steggie part that he then reconstructed and it was placed on the model. Such a signature!

Day 117: Tuesday, July 26 - The Conversation

2011-07-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

The Conversation for the Sketchbook Project that I'm working on with Nancie Johnson of New Jersey continues. I received Nan's latest addition to our project: The Angry Bird!!

Why is he so angry? He's heard that he's the star of an addictive game called Angry Birds and he just realized he's not getting any royalties!!

This is attached to my painting of last week:

Yielding:

So now I connect something to the sleeping brown cat, the blue z's from the cat's mouth and the floating orange balls. Suggestions? Ideas? Email me!!

Day 116: Friday, July 22 - The Conversation Continues

2011-07-22T15:53:00.000-07:00

And Nancie Johnson of New Jersey sent me the latest installment in this "Conversation" we're having for the Sketchbook Project. We're on our fourth panel............

Here's number one - she did - "The Helix" - which started our "conversation":

Then I added the snake by coming off the right hand side of her helix:

Which yields this:

She then took my right hand edge, extended the head and tail of the snake and created the barbecue fork with steak:

So, for my turn, I took the cherries and the croissant on that right hand edge and created this:

Which when you put those two pages next to each other, creates this:

And that's what's in the mail to Nancie, on her birthday weekend.

We're four pages into our Conversation for the Sketchbook Project and we're both anxiously awaiting the mailman and our next installment!

Happy Birthday Painting Partner: Nancie Johnson of New Jersey

"Art Is Not A Thing"

Day 115: Monday, July 18

2011-07-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

Nancie Johnson, my sketchbook partner in New Jersey, was worried about our Conversation. I had mailed her my latest drawing last Saturday, first class postage and it still hadn't reached her as of last night, Thursday.

This afternoon I received a very much relieved email that the package had arrived. We decided that we each, in order to forestall a catastrophe, needed to scan each page of the Conversation in our possession this week so that if anything goes truly wrong in the mailings back and forth for the next few months, that we would at least be able to recreate our project.

I can't wait to get started on what she sent me.

Day 114: Friday, July 15

2011-07-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

I don't know how I got there, but I've ended up reading this particular blog off and on for several days. Love the photography, love the woman's words, love her quotes as she starts each entry.........all about a way of life so foreign to me: that of being a rancher around Calgary. Horses, dogs, plowing, roping, branding cattle, mending fences..........and she still has time to celebrate the beauty of where she lives with some stunning photography.

Enjoy if you have the time.

http://prairierunner.wordpress.com/

Day 113: Thursday, July 14 - Photographs

2011-07-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

Received this interesting site from a friend. So sentimental, so creative, so thought-provoking. I sat here thinking of photos from my past and my family's past that could be used this way. We're lucky enough to have lived in one house for 40 years where we raised our children and enjoyed our neighbors and neighborhood so to place a photo in the correct position wouldn't be all that hard. It sure sends your mind on a sentimental journey though.....even though some of the captions on the photos weren't pure sentiment. Take a look.

http://dearphotograph.com/

Day 112: Wednesday, July 13

2011-07-13T15:39:00.000-07:00

Have followed, via email, a wonderful blog site called "A Postcard From My Walk". It's a group of 14 people (having "interviewed" the owner of the blog, Pat from the U.S.A.) who live around the world and who exchange monthly sketches on postcards over the course of one year. The participants are on their own schedule of sending a postcard so that the recipients never know whose postcards they'll be receiving that month - they just know that over the course of the year there will be 13 postcards per month in their mailboxes. If I had friends all over the world I would start this project immediately.....or perhaps it could be done here in the U.S. if we all lived in different cities. If you're reading this and think it sounds like fun (or that it doesn't sound like a chore), get in touch and we'll see if we can get a group together.

Here's this month's postcard TO Pat FROM Liz in Australia:

Just love these postcards and what a treasure to receive REAL mail in your mailbox, not just throwaway catalogs!

Day 111: Tuesday, July 12

2011-07-12T18:13:00.000-07:00

Painted off and on all weekend. Twas fun to have "projects" that needed doing. Needed to finish a Conversation that I'm working on with my teacher Peggy Reid, needed to finish the Conversation with Nancie Johnson for the Sketchbook Project........and then in the middle of it all, I decided I wanted to start a new portrait.

I'd had a photograph of a darling baby, Dylan, whose mother is my daughter's best friend since they were three.....darling little girls.

And then Allison, the blonde, got married and had Dylan, who's almost two:

I had cropped the original photograph to this version - wish I still had the original photo. But I started up with a painting and was so excited about how it was looking, that I put my brushes away for fear I'd "wreck it". I'll take up the brushes again tomorrow and see what I can add to it. But I sure love how I started out and that's a rare sensation!!

Day 110: Monday, July 11 - The Conversation with Nancie Johnson continues

2011-07-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

The Sketchbook Project
Nancie Johnson of New Jersey
her blog:
Our "Conversation" continues

Nancie and I have now completed our third page/conversation in this ongoing Sketchbook Project we are working on. If you remember: We both painted "something"......colors and shapes on a page. We then sent that first page to each other, me in California, she in New Jersey. We attached a second painting to that first page by continuing any lines, colors, shapes from that first painting's edge onto the second page. And this weekend we both completed our third page and put it into the mail.

Here's my first painting. Nancie ended up turning it on its side:

Here's Nancie's response which continued the line of the banana:

Here's the 3rd - my response:

And here's all three pages together - A Conversation

Tomorrow I'll post the other Conversation that's taking place, the one that starts with Nancie's first painting.

Day 109: Friday, July 8 - Virtual Paintout

2011-07-11T11:33:00.000-07:00

A wonderful man, Bill Guffey, runs a monthly challenge which uses the Google Maps of the world. It's called the Virtual Paintout. Each month he chooses somewhere in the world - this month, July, it's the Isle of Jersey. You go to the Virtual Paintout, you click on the Google Map, you then cruise around Jersey, using the little yellow man feature on the Google Maps (he shows what that little spot on the map where you're hovering actually looks like. You spend hours cruising around hoping to find something picturesque enough that you'd like to paint it. I've done this every month, spending hours and hours and have never found anything that I wanted to paint. Grump, grump. I look at the paintings other people have done and wonder how in the world they found that!! on the google map. I wish that Bill Guffey would post the location on the map that was used to paint from. He says that we're supposed to put the link on our blogs/websites but I haven't found anyone who's done that yet. I think it would be a fantasic learning situation: what you see and what you paint.

I finally found something I thought I could paint so I submitted it this month. It should be on the website by tomorrow or the next day.

Here's the link I used on the Google Map:

and here's what I painted from that link:

My friend Nancie Johnson also submitted a painting this month. Here's her link and then look what she did with it!!

There's another wonderful painter out there, Nancy Goldman, whose work I found because of her comment re my blog. She has already painted two versions of her search of the Isle of Jersey for Bill Guffey's challenge.

Day 108: Thursday, July 7 - Ray Turner!!

2011-07-07T18:22:00.000-07:00

Ray Turner is a local Pasadena artist who trained at Art Center. To say that he is a portrait artist diminishes his work! He paints faces on plate glass, about 1/2" thick, probably 14 inches square. The backside of the glass is painted with a very specific solid color and the frontside of the glass is heavily impastoed with oil paint..........incredible portraits. Occasionally you notice that he has scraped through the paint of the face to reveal the color on the backside of the glass. Because of the glass, the works just glow. Sometimes your face is even reflected onto the glass - you're conversing with the portrait.

He had a fabulous exhibit about a year ago at the Pasadena Museum of California Art........Pasadena was abuzz about the show and I actually went twice it was so incredible.

Today I made it to the Long Beach Museum of Art, about 45 minutes away to see Ray's latest show: Good Man Bad Man. There were probably 200 "normal" portraits mounted in order of their background colors, normal being recognizable faces. It was kind of like being in the Denver airport tunnel where the neon lights change color very slowly - so did the backpainting on the portraits.

Then the next room had the Bad Men. Made up faces, just enough features so that you knew there was a person in there.....but more gestural. You knew it was a mad person, a mean person.........by the suggestion of the features. The one below was even partly done with a paint roller from a look at the texture of the white paint.

For this exhibit, he spent the Spring of 2011 painting people from Long Beach: elected officials, docents from the museum, an electrician from the restaurant next door.......people at the show today were identifying people they knew on the large wall of portraits.

Above are two "reals" and two "bads". I think they're phenomenal!! The show runs through September 11. The Museum opens at 11 most days but do check before driving there. There's a Museum restaurant next door, open or closed air....open is on the bluffs above the harbor where the Queen Mary is "parked". A wonderful day. Go.

Day 107: Wednesday, July 6 - anamorphic typography

2011-07-07T17:57:00.000-07:00

Interesting art exhibit where it's not trompe l'oeil, it's actually a form of distorted perspective, which takes advantage of our minds and what we think should be there. Enjoy Joseph Egan's work.

http://portable.tv/art/post/the-art-of-perspective/

Day 106: Tuesday, July 5

2011-07-05T16:42:00.000-07:00

Watercolor painting class started up again in an unairconditioned building in Glendale, CA, the same unairconditioned studio that 16 people suffered through when taking the Ted Nuttall Portrait Workshop two weeks ago. Nothing's changed. The bureaucracy's still in charge of doing nothing. They did put the giant industrial fan in the room which makes so much noise that you become exhausted from fighting with the extra, extra, extra noise.

And then I found this wonderful email from my son, Dan, who lives in Berkeley. He has a varied reading list during his days and always sends me such interesting side notes to life. I loved this:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/a-musical-impromptu/?hp

and the source of the pianos: http://pianos.singforhope.org/pianos/manhattan/lincoln-center-alice-tully/

and then the follow up article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/arts/manhattans-quiet-shelters-of-solitude-amid-the-noise.html

Click on the links in the above article. Enjoy looking at the quiet shelters of solitude.............

And then I've discovered http://www.accuradio.com/
It's possible to listen to any composer, any artist, vocal or instrumental....just to have some wonderful sounds going on behind. I had just started playing around, listening to string musicians (YoYoMa, Hilary Hahn for starters) when in came the email from Dan.

Enjoy today!

Day 105: Monday, July 4

2011-07-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

My watercolor painting teacher, Peggy Reid, sent me an email with a link to a video she wanted me to watch - DeWitt Jones - who's now a motivational speaker. He was employed by National Geographic as a photographer for most of his life and was given the instruction to go out and "celebrate what is good in this life" by the them. I enjoyed the video and started clicking on other videos on YouTube by DeWitt. This one in particular is a stunning compilation of thoughts and images. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBLhTJMJ8_8&NR=1

Day 104: Friday, July 1 - The Conversation with Nancie Johnson

2011-07-02T17:12:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago Nancie Johnson of New Jersey and I started a "Conversation" for our Sketchbook entry which we are doing jointly. We each created an opening page and sent it, via the mail, to each other. I had sent her four choices to work from:

She chose the fruit with the banana and joined her drawing/painting to the edge with the banana. Here's her painting attached to mine on one edge. She's now sending this to me, here in California, and I have to think of how to extend her painting along that one edge, matching lines and colors in order to continue the "Conversation".

Nancie sent me two paintings to work from:

the helix

the kasbah

I tried and tried to build on the Kasbah but had to give it up. Took the Helix and by adding on to the right hand edge, created the 2nd page of our Conversation. This is what I put in the mail to Nan today.

Her job is now to add on to the right hand edge of my page, to continue the lines and colors and create another "story".

Day 103: Wednesday, June 29 - a bit more Ted

2011-07-02T15:18:00.000-07:00

Still cleaning up my desk/studio/computer after Ted Nuttall's class in early June. I was getting sick while the class was going on and ended up with full blown bronchitis by the time it was over and everyone had gone home. Been sitting on my keester, taking meds and feeling sorry for myself.

But back to work finally! Found a few more photos of Ted's work that I'd like to show all of you........the incredible detail that we all think is "Ted painting loosely". It's actually incredible attention to the minutest detail which makes his paintings so special. Take a look at these three closeup details from a couple of his paintings.

a nose and a bit of a mouth

look at all the colors and strokes just for the nose and moustache

so many colors, so many strokes of the brush

Day 102: Tuesday, June 28 - Ted Nuttall - a bit more

2011-07-02T15:08:00.000-07:00

Finally found this one photo that I've been looking for from Ted Nuttall's workshop last week. The first day is always busy, frantic, consuming....and Ted demos and starts a painting which he then works on all week. On Tuesday, we all ganged up on him and asked him to "please, please, please" - draw a basic face and one more time, "Start over". His initial washes of cad red light, cad yellow, cerulean...........It's all over so fast that you're left wondering how in the heck did he do that! So here, up close and personal, is the second start of a painting from last week.

I then decided to go on a hunt for the photographs of the Workshop Attendees that must have ended up in the computer's trash can....and sure enough. So here's presenting

Lee Johnson

Debbie Bakker

Parvati Grais from Massachusetts!

Ann Pfister

Day 101: Monday, June 27

2011-07-02T14:04:00.000-07:00

As I typed that "Day 101" title, I was thinking.......I've been very faithful to this blog.....100 days, 101 days........and then I counted how many days, if I had truly posted every weekday, would have been mentioned.....I should be on Day 123. That's not too bad considering "in sickness, and in health, for better, for worse". I've done my best.

Came across this wonderful drawing of a woman, probably done on an Ipad or a computer. I think it's wonderful. Someone spent a lot of time creating her.

Day 100: Friday, June 24 - Drawing class

2011-06-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

For the first time in ages I went to my portrait drawing class. It has met on Thursdays for years now under a wonderful teacher, April Foster. We always have a live model for 3 hours, solely for portrait/figure work. This week I had hired the model, Chad, a friend's brother. He did a fantastic job of sitting still with his extremely angular face. I thought I did a great job of capturing him.

And then there's my friend in the class, Isao, a fantastic drawer of portraits with his sanguine pencil and his grey paper. I persuaded Isao to give Chad this particular drawing.....an incredible treat to own one of Isao's drawings.

I don't know if you can see in the background the "conditions" of the classroom this time. Someone had borrowed all of the conference tables from the room (we're in a senior center with a pre-school class of 3-4 year olds singing and chanting on one side of us and extremely senior folk eating lunch on the other side of us) and we've gotten tv tray tables, chair seats....anything with a level surface to draw on and created our space for the day. Over the years we've hired some of the seniors with their interesting faces to model for us. Seymour, for example, was one of our finer models:

And then we ran an ad in Craig's List for portrait models and Roman showed up. Another great face.

Day 99: Thursday, June 16 - Ted Nuttall

2011-06-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry to say that somehow, all of my photos of the wonderful painters in Ted's class were deleted from my new Iphone. By my own hand. Which is worse! I transferred everything to the computer, told the computer to delete the photos from the source.............and nothing. I had such wonderful photos of the works in progress and the smiling, satisfied painters........Drat, rats and phooey as my family says.

Due to a combination of circumstances at the painting studios, problems with a/c, heat wave in Los Angeles, heater turned on in the studios instead of the a/c......I didn't pick up a paintbrush until Thursday. Painted away, happily, finally but didn't even come close to a finished product.

Was trying to paint a companion piece to the portrait I painted last year with Ted of my cousin Phillip. A piece which I adore. The companion piece was to be Phillip's partner of many years, Russ. Here's as far as I got:

You're looking at it through the plate glass window of the studio where I had set it preparatory to closing up shop on Friday afternoon. Reminded me that it needs an ultramarine glaze as one of its finishing steps.

And once again, the painting of Phillip:

Day 98: Wednesday, June 15: Ted Nuttall cont'd

2011-06-22T15:16:00.000-07:00

Some wonderful work gets done in these workshops. I continue to be amazed at how many talented painters are out there, in their homes, in their studios, painting away with such gusto! Here are some photos of the workshop attendees and their paintings:

Linda Moore with her granddaughter's portrait

Liliane Joris

Regine Legler with 2 grandbabies

Ted working with Gail Green and her photo of her father

Peggy Reid, noted watercolor instructor, talking to
another student, Marilyn Pepper

Marie Burdick

And I save my favorite for last. Rody Halili came for his
second year to paint portraits of his wife -gorgeous portraits of his wife!!
And always his happy smile, all day, every day!

We were lucky to use the Glendale Brand Library Studios for this workshop though it's likely the last time these studios will be available for several years as they're going to undergo an earthquake retrofit starting next January. I think I've lined up another wonderful possibility though nothing compares to the airiness, the light, the great working conditions for painters as the Brand Studios offer.

Day 97: Tuesday, June 14 - Ted Nuttall Workshop

2011-06-22T14:54:00.000-07:00

Off to a great start yesterday with a demo of the first
transparent watercolor washes, "a la Ted".

Ted teaches portraiture from photographs.

Marie Burdick, intently paying attention, did some wonderful work
in this her second workshop with Ted

Gail Green, as intent on taking notes as Marie was,
did some fabulous work in her third? workshop with Ted.
She used photos of grandparents and her father as a small boy as her references.

Day 96: Monday, June 13 - Ted Nuttall Workshop

2011-06-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

For the past three years I've hired Ted Nuttall to come to Pasadena, California and present a watercolor portrait workshop. This week, June 13-17, the workshop's taking place. I'm looking forward to a working group of 15 students (including myself), about half of whom are returning after last year's workshop. One woman is coming in from Massachusetts (visiting her sister as an excuse), one woman is driving in from the Los Angeles airport area.....Should be a great class!

Ted as we start the class

I'm going to be bringing Ted back again in 2012, probably May or early June so mark your calendars. Look at Ted's website for actual scheduling info.

Day 95: Sunday, June 12 - The Sketchbook

2011-06-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned the Sketchbook Project before and I think I mentioned that I've paired up with a creative painter in New Jersey whom I've only met through the internet. We both "Sketchbooked" last year and met when she commented on my blog. She's Nancie Johnson of "Art Is Not A Thing".

We have painted our intial pages of the Sketchbook and swapped them via the mail. Her wonderful artwork arrived yesterday. She sent two paintings for me to peruse and figure out what the next page of the book should say. This is going to be one of those "Conversations" where Nan paints a page, sends me the page, I choose one of the edges of the painting and using all the lines and colors along that edge of the painting, make a whole new page. See some of my earlier posts as to how this looks as it progresses. Our painting class did this this Spring semester.

Here are her two paintings. And then for the heck of it I flipped the helix onto all of its sides. I have to attach my painting to the right hand edge.

This is what I sent her to start from: 4 different ideas.

Day 94: Saturday, June 11

2011-06-10T13:40:00.000-07:00

I painted a new version of the landscape for Lee Brown's Challenge "A Day Not Wasted" and asked him if he'd remove my earlier submission. I've been painting under a fluorescent bulb and I hadn't realized how off all the colors are. I liike this little one that I did much better than the one I submitted earlier and he was nice enough to say he'd accommodate me.

And now I'd better get to drawing faces on 300# watercolor paper. I've hired Ted Nuttall for a workshop which starts Monday.

Day 93: Friday, June 10 - Peonies!!

2011-06-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

We have a local store, not really a grocery store, but one that I think all of you know well? Trader Joe's. T.J.'s, as we refer to it, has incredibly low priced fabulous flowers and orchids. The other day, finally, the peonies arrived. A feeding frenzy ensued. You buy peonies as hard little balls, about the size of a golf ball, cut the ends, smash the stems so they'll be able to suck up water and put 'em in a vase. Wish I'd taken opening photos but this is unbelievable. These first photos are probably on day 6? day 7?

on the upper right, you can still see a hard ball of a blossom
that hasn't started to open up yet

the smaller one in the center?
this is the flower where i'm holding a ballpoint pen
in front of it in ensuing photos

note the flower is only as wide as the white part of the pen

and they're beginning to turn from deep red to rose pink (they fade)

gorgeous side view for you floral painters

probably day 9 - look at the color change!!

and the one that was slow in starting to open up is still dark rose in color
while the rest are pale, pale pink

look at the final color!

and the one that was slow? still darker in color and spectacular
makes me wish I could paint flowers and have them
actually look like flowers!

and here's the one with the pen.
the flower is almost as large as the total pen,
not just the white part of the pen
Absolutely amazing flowers!!!

Day 92: Thursday, June 9

2011-06-09T18:26:00.000-07:00

I just added someone to the blogs I follow list....I should mention here when I do this so that you too can enjoy some gorgeous painting!! And try as I might I can't add her to my list of blogs today, but I'll get it done in the next few days. In the meantime? Enjoy.
http://rsharts.blogspot.com/ Ruth Harris

And then, because of the gorgeous weather we're having here in Southern California, I decided to put up this photo of California Poppies which is always on the bulletin board in front of me:

Day 91: Wednesday, June 8 - Red Red Robins

2011-06-08T16:52:00.000-07:00

Years ago when I first discovered the internet and the fact that people blogged and had interesting things to say and show, I discovered Suzanne McDermott. Her initial blog, or when I first found her, featured a nest of Red Red Robins on her front porch. She took pictures, posted their progress........I just loved watching the nest progress. I asked her the other day whatever happened to the robins and she said they had gone. Then later she said it was a very bad cat "what done them in". Wah! And then out of the clear blue sky comes this video. Watch it to the very last frame and see if your reaction is the same as mine was...... A mysterious close to a paragraph if there ever was one.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9479342&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1

Day 90: Tuesday, June 7 - Lee Brown

2011-06-07T16:11:00.001-07:00

Lee Brown, having survived his son's wedding this last weekend......or so we're hoping......

Lee Brown, a fabulous photographer, posts a photo once a month and invites everyone to paint from it, email him a jpeg of the painting, and then he posts the paintings, does a random "judging" and awards a black painter's apron with his logo on it. Lot of work for such a nice guy and we really appreciate it.

This month's photo was spectacular

taken somewhere in Colorado. His photo has really subtle greens and purples and once again, I had a vision in my mind that was fantastic. How is it that I can never translate the mental to the physical. Here are my two submissions to Lee..........check out those purples!!

These photographs show up as really bad pinks/reds/purples.....some of the bad colors are due to the camera but not all. Oh well, I tried!

Day 89: Monday, June 6 - Sketchbook Project

2011-06-07T16:11:00.000-07:00

Painted all weekend on the starting page for the Sketchbook Project that I'm going to be working on with Nancie Johnson of New Jersey. (Love that the initials match her state)....and then there's Polsby of Pasadena? Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

I painted four possible starting pages for our "conversation" which is going to take place across the United States over the next several months. Nancie's going to have to choose one or two to work from and she's doing the same thing on her end (painting a couple of choices for me). We agreed to get our paperwork into the mail no later than Saturday night at midnight, picturing ourselves driving frantically to the post office in our jammies and slippers.....She got it done, I was calling post offices to see if anyone was still open (fedex? ups?) at 6:30 p.m.............Obviously I fell through on my end of the deal but the package will go out on Monday morning. Sorry Nancy.

The final project has to be postmarked January 31, 2012 so we've agreed to try to swap paintings every two weeks which should be enough time to create about a 10-page conversation two times over.

Here are my four opening choices for her:

I've persuaded my friend Elle Gould of Arizona/Colorado to enter the Sketchbook Project as well. It takes $25 and your application and by return mail you receive a special Moleskine Sketchbook to be filled using a generalized theme that you choose from the Sketchbook's long list of themes.

Nancie chose the theme "Time Traveler" since that's what our pages will be doing as they travel across the United States. I met Nancie via the original Sketchbook Project. I had commented on this blog about my project and she commented on my work. She also submitted a Sketchbook in 2010. We started internet conversing and decided to do a joint project having never met! I just think life is fantastically wonderful sometimes because of the really special things that happen.

Day 88: Friday, June 3

2011-06-03T15:54:00.000-07:00

Arches has a new product. A block of 140 watercolor paper in a 4" x 10" size. Fun to paint quick landscapes. Fun to paint tall grandfather clocks. Just a fun size. But why I'm writing about this paper here is that right now, the paper is packaged with two squirrel paintbrushes from Arches - a size 5 and a size 1. The kit looks like this in the Dick Blick store:

The brushes are so much fun to use that I actually went back to the Dick Blick store here in Pasadena and bought another kit - equally for the paper and equally for the brushes. Right now the kit is 19.99 on DickBlick.Com.

Just thought I'd tell you about a wonderful find.

Day 87: Thursday, June 2 - challenge painting

2011-06-02T22:03:00.000-07:00

I finally, after spending almost 2 hours with the Google Map of the world, found something to paint in/of/about New Zealand for the Virtual Paintout monthly challenge. Took a long time. Looked for gardens, looked for golf courses, looked for interesting tourist sites - I've never had any luck before, but today I came across a "possible" right away. I copied down the link. Good thing because I never found anything else paintable! So here's the link:

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=-40.979898,172.441406&spn=11.606664,18.676758&z=5&source=embed

and here's the painting of that link:

You submit the link and the painting to the nice man, Bill Guffey, who runs the website challenge. And as I said yesterday: If you paint for the challenge send me your link and your painting and I'll post them here as well.

And then at the Daily Paintworks Challenge they had a challenge of "paint what's outside your window". Since I paint in my son's bedroom and since the view I have is of the canyon across the street and since I'm usually painting away late afternoon/sunset............this was my submission.

It actually looks more like the San Gabriels than the canyon, but artists have "artistic license" - or that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

AND THEN:
Tonight, Thursday, I heard from Bill Guffey that the http://www.thingie/ that I copied was only for the map of New Zealand, not for the specific site that I had found. I told him "drats, rats and phooey" as we say around this household and asked him to delete my submission until next month when I would try again. And hopefully? By next month? I will have figured out how to copy the exact location of my Google Virtual Paintout Challenge Site. Drats, Rats and Phooey.

Day 86: Wednesday, June 1

2011-06-01T10:24:00.000-07:00

Looking through all the possible Challenge Painting Sites - it was interesting to see how many of them haven't yet posted for June on June First. So I'll revisit them tomorrow and the next day. For those of you who love challenge painting? Here are the sites who had posted as of today:

Possible Challenge Number One: Lee Brown of "A Day Not Wasted" has just mounted his June Challenge. It's a fantastically gorgeous photo. If you're reading this blog, and if you paint for Lee, send me a copy of your painting just like you do to Lee. I'll post them here as well. I really love seeing what other people do with the exact same source matter.

Possible Challenge Number Two: The "Virtual Paintout" has chosen New Zealand for its "somewhere in the world" monthly challenge. I've never had any luck with this challenge as I spend hours and hours cruising the country/location chosen and never finding anything that I think I can paint! And then you look at the wonderful things other people found to paint and in my case? You start whining that if you'd only had 16 more hours to waste, you too could have found something to paint. So, as with the Lee Brown challenge above - if you paint anything and if you follow my blog, let me know and I'll try to post your submissions. The one rule that the Virtual Paintout would like to have honored is that of only painting from the photos that Google itself posts on that site. The Virtual World is being inundated with photos taken by travellers and posted to the Google site and some of the painters are using these tourist photos not the Google photos to paint from. All painting was supposed to be done from the Google postings.

Other Challenges will be posted here as the challenge sites get their acts together and post their ideas.

Day 86: Monday, May 30 - Memorial Day

2011-05-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

Cleaning up my desk today and came across a gorgeous little notecard that my daughter and son had sent me for mother's day. I loved, no adored, the watercolor frog on the front. This sent me on an internet chase to see what I could find out about the artist Alison Fennell, a fabulous animal artist who lives in Wales. Through her Etsy store I finally made contact. I wanted to know if she had a blog so that I could see more of her wonderful work. Sure enough:

http://alisonfennell.blogspot.com/

and then there's these saucy birds:

I never did find even one other drawing of a frog so I'm going to photograph the frog on my notecard to show you what started my hunt.

Have a great week!

Day 87: Tuesday, May 24

2011-05-24T15:37:00.000-07:00

Sunday was the last of the 6 weeks of oil painting lessons. It's been fun to have 3 quiet hours on a Sunday morning, out of the house, where you have to concentrate on painting. Took another blank canvas (I paint too fast to work on the same canvas for consecutive weeks). Took a photo of a tumbleweed to class with me that I had taken in Park City, Utah, last year when I was there painting with my fellow painters.

Had meant to do this in watercolor as I think it would be wonderful to try to make the rocks with the sun's highlight along the top edge. But, I decided to try it in oil. So interesting that I'm trying to do oil washes (like you would do in watercolor) so that a color will bleed through the next coat of oil paint. Got some of the background in, got the large rock pieces in....have a ways to go, but here's as far as I got:

I added one more challenge painting site to the list at the side of this blog. Studio Atelier. They've had some interesting challenges that my friend Nancie Johnson's been participating in.

Day 86: Sunday, May 22 - The Last Remaining Grownups

2011-05-24T15:29:00.000-07:00

Nation Down To Last Hundred Grown-Ups

'Mature Adults Could Be Gone Within 50 Years,' Experts Say

May 19, 2011 | THE ONION

SUITLAND, MD—According to alarming new figures released Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau, the nation's population of mature adults has been pushed to the brink of extinction, with only 104 grown-ups remaining in the country today.

One of the Last Remaining Grownups
in the United States

The endangered demographic, which is projected to die out completely by 2060, is reportedly distinguished from other groups by numerous unique traits, including foresight, rationality, understanding of how to obtain and pay for a mortgage, personal responsibility, and the ability to enter a store without immediately purchasing whatever items they see and desire.

"Our grown-ups are disappearing at a much faster rate than we previously believed," said Census Bureau chief Robert M. Groves, who believes the decline in responsible adults may now be irreversible. "Unfortunately, we've only recently noticed this terrible trend, perhaps because of this group's unusual capacity to endure hardships with quiet dignity instead of whining loudly to draw attention to themselves."
"If nothing is done, these wondrous individuals, with their special ability to consider the long-term consequences of their own behavior and act accordingly, will be wiped-out completely," Groves added. According to recent data, the grown-up population has plummeted dramatically since 1950, when a Census count found that more than 24 million Americans could both admit when they were wrong and respect a viewpoint other than their own. Today, only one in three million citizens can provide thoughtful advice to a fellow human being instead of immediately shifting the topic to their own personal issues or what they had for lunch.
Experts confirmed the mass extinction of grown-ups has coincided with the rapid expansion of other demographic groups, including people who seek medication for every problem they encounter, 33-year-olds who participate in organized kickball leagues, personal injury litigants, and parents who try to become friends with their own children.
"Grown-ups are as fascinating as they are rare," said anthropologist Arthur Ambler, who has lived among level-headed adult populations and documented their lifestyle. "It may seem odd to the rest of us, but for mature adults, occasionally putting the greater good ahead of their own interests or remaining calm when something doesn't go their way is commonplace."
"Imagine confronting a problem directly instead of pointing a finger, cowering in fear, or pretending it just isn't happening," Ambler added. "This is how these people actually live, if you can believe that."
Many social scientists, including Ambler, have called for a complete record to be made of the declining population's customs, worrying that knowledge of how to dress for a job interview or when to rotate one's tires could soon be lost to civilization forever. Future generations, they soberly note, will likely go their whole lives never knowing a grown-up person.
When contacted for comment, Colorado resident Ray Vogel, a grown-up, told reporters he was resigned to his group's fate.
"We recognize that our time has come and gone, and we're prepared to let nature run its course," said the 54-year-old, who has a well-funded 401(k) and has never taken out a high-interest loan to purchase a Jet Ski. "I'm just grateful my two children didn't turn out patient and considerate like me. They'd never be able to get anywhere in today's world."
According to Vogel, the nation's remaining grown-ups have drafted a letter to be read by the rest of us when they are gone that implores us to make "good decisions" in their absence and explains how to reignite the pilot light on the hot-water heater should it go out. The note is also said to include some money that we are firmly instructed to use only in case of a real emergency.

This article was sent to me by my son, who along with my daughter, are obviously two of the last remaining grownups based on the tongue in cheek criteria of this article.

Day 85: Friday, May 20 - David Hockney, IPhones, IPads, Apps

2011-05-20T11:14:00.000-07:00

At long last, thanks to my daughter's efforts, I moved from my little teeny Motorola (fit easily in my pocket) cellphone which only made phone calls, to a brand new spankin' white IPhone4. Whooey is it fun! It beeps, it quivers, it rings bells....there's always somethin' a happenin' on the IPhone! And then today as I'm perusing other peoples' blogs, a great pastime, I came across an article on David Hockney

and how he uses his IPhone to create art. Thought it interesting because just yesterday someone showed me David Hockney's art on her cell phone and was talking about styluses and apps........

There's a great you tube interview with Lawrence Weschler.

In my March 23 blog, I talked about Myrna Wacknov's "paintings on her IPad and how she downloaded the Sketch Club App from the App Store. She enthuses daily about how much fun she's having drawing with this App and has now purchased a stylus by Targus at Best Buy for $20 to make the drawing process easier.

While wandering the web, I came across another artist's blog, Mia Robinson, who talked all about how to use the Sketch Club App, how the various tools worked, etc.

Have fun on your IPhone or your IPad!

Day 84: Thursday, May 19 - Painting of Ted

2011-05-19T17:19:00.000-07:00

Ever since the first time I hired Ted Nuttall to come to California and to teach a watercolor workshop, I've had this picture of him. It must have arrived via a piece of email or some website and I've had the goal of painting it, in watercolor for these 3 or 4 years.

Instead? I just started an oil painting class on Sunday afternoons and grabbed up the photo of Ted and took it with me last Sunday. Did a fast sketch onto the canvas (and as you can see it was a truly quick sketch - no measurements, no nada) and started painting away.

In watercolor? The sketch is everything. It takes hours. You measure. You erase. You paint carefully.........one pass washes.....

With oil? Wow!!! I just layered on the colors, moving eyebrows, moving lips, changing noses.......it was so much fun!!

And it looks not one iota like Ted. Oh well. I had a good time and there's always tomorrow, tomorrow as Little Annie said!

Ted's workshop, this year, 2011, starts on June 13. Can't wait.

grainy photo of the painting - sorry

Day 83: Wednesday, May 18

2011-05-18T17:49:00.000-07:00

Came across this while "cruisin' the net". Obviously I'm not painting if I'm looking at stuff like this........the airplane/lawnmower video

http://www.hobbyzip.com/videos/1147/lawn-mower-airplane#downloadvideo

Day 82: Friday, May 13

2011-05-16T11:05:00.000-07:00

Drat! My blog post for today, Friday the 13th, was deleted by Blogger as was everyone in the world's Friday the 13th post. And I'd like to say, it was a wonderful post - all about the knitters who knit onto lamp posts, who knit covers for cracks in the pavement........a strange world out there of very interesting, creative, thinking people.

Drat. Blog entry was deleted.

Day 81: Thursday, May 12

2011-05-14T13:22:00.000-07:00

And the blogger went down and deleted blog posts. Everyone's complaining about the missing content.............Monday and Tuesday were deleted, Wednesday was kept, Thursday and Friday were deleted. So here's Thursday again but Friday will just have to continue to be missing as I can't find it in my blogger history..............drat!

And continuing the conversation that I started on Day 70 about the Knitting Brigades/Yarn Bombers..... http://blogs.forbes.com/carolinehoward/2011/04/30/names-you-need-to-know-yarn-bombing/

This is a general conversation in Forbes Magazine about the yarn underground. And then it starts talking about the wonderful Yarn Bombers in Seattle. And then to the photographs of their latest knitting adventure.

And then there's this fabulous one. This woman fills potholes and cracks in the streets of France with individually knit projects........fabulous. Makes you smile for sure!

Day 80: Wednesday, May 11

2011-05-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

Gorgeous day in Southern California.....way too nice to stay inside and paint! So I've been checking out all of the Challenge sites.

The Virtual Paintout is the one that gets me (makes me irritated) the most. I spend hours cruising around the map of whatever area they have chosen this month's challenge is the French Riviera) and I see car after car after car, street after street after street. Then I look at the paintings submitted for the challenge. Today there's one that has pots of flowers on a window ledge and the painter says she found it on the map and that it's the window of a church..........yeah? where!

A painting friend AnnMarie Thomas submitted a fun painting to this challenge. She actually found people on the docks, walking:

And I believe her when she says she found this. I was grumping around and she sent me two "shots" she'd found on her internet search so I guess it's possible but I have yet to find anything emminently paintable! It's a great way to waste wonderful time though, cruising around an area on a google map.

Here's one of AnnMarie's suggestions:

Link: <http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&source=embed&ll=43.761798,7.484538&spn=0.001294,0.00235&z=19&layer=c&cbll=43.761879,7.484594&panoid=RE58PLKTMHzj1RKrgHm4Cw&cbp=12,170.55,,2,4.84>

The challenge is for all of May so there's time for me to get myself up and painting!!

Day 79: Friday, May 6

2011-05-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

There's a new, I almost wrote, "Challenge" but that's not what it is. It's an obligation to sketch, daily, and post your sketch, which is what keeps you honest. Take a look. It's a nice group.....

http://www.wendyshortland.com/pages/EDiM.pdf

I might even try to catch up with this group. The first girl, Casey Touissant, whose blog I follow, posted 4 drawings on her first day so that she'd be in sync with the daily drawings.....

You have this whole weekend, 48 hours or more, coming up and I know on Mother's Day you're going to just get to lounge around and be pampered and spoiled, no one expecting a pot of coffee with their scrambled eggs, no one expecting that big steak dinner with potatoes.............just your time for yourself......

Go for it and let me know how it worked out. The first drawings are supposed to be:

May 1 - Draw a bar of soap
2 - Draw a power plug
3 - Draw some exercise equipment - what you use to stay fit.
4 - Draw some salt and pepper shakers
5 - Draw some scissors
6 - Draw something tart or sour
7 - Draw how you get your news - at a newsstand, vending box or on your porch
May 8 - Draw a light bulb

Day 78: Thursday, May 5

2011-05-05T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hoping to paint today. Want to paint a portrait of Suzanne McDermott based on her photo of herself with all her jewelry on. And then I'd like to ask permission of Carol Marine to post it as a "challenge self portrait". Suzanne took such a horrible fall a couple of months ago and is still not "back together". I emailed Suzanne Carol's challenge for this month on the DailyPaintworks site telling Suzanne that she should paint the wonderful hand with all the jewelry........she said she still wasn't up to it.............Or maybe? Maybe people who are reading this blog could paint it for Suzanne and we'll just inundate her with our paintings of her hand and her jewelry and give her a bit of a perking up! If you think you might be interested in doing that? Let me know and we'll band together to make her happ(ier).

Here's the photo I'm talking about. I love it. The repose, the color of the sweater, no face just that hand, languid...........Give it a try and let me know.

And a final note on the skunks: Had left the Have-A-Heart trap out behind the garage thinking I'd deal with it tomorrow, kinda like Scarlett O'Hara........ so Monday morning I take a look and lo and begorrah! There's a giant skunk in the cage. Go inside. Call the Humane Society. Tell them I have the momma skunk for those 5 live babies they have, Humane Society lady tells me that it isn't the momma because momma skunks do not leave their babies and go to Vegas like humans.......She says it's a totally different skunk but that she'll be out to deal with it momentarily. Fifteen minutes later, she arrives, creeps up on the cage, drops a bedsheet over it without startling the skunk, picks up the cage, walks across the street in front of our house, to the edge of the canyon, opens up the trap, skunk walks out, skunk crosses the street, skunk goes right back up the next door neighbor's driveway to the rear of the house and is back in position within 15 minutes.

For what did I call the Humane Society I'd like to know!! I thought they'd at least take him a block or two away!!

So skunk saga is over. Yesterday I hired a repairman who put wire with small holes over the existing hole-y fence behind the garage. The skunks are gonna have to learn how to climb to get into our yard again!

Day 77: Wednesday, May 4

2011-05-05T00:23:00.000-07:00

I keep talking about Suzanne McDermott and her fabulous self-named blog. Carol Marine has mounted a self portrait challenge on the Daily Paintworks site...........Suzanne has a fabulous picture of herself, posing gracefully with some of the jewelry she has taken to making as she recovers from her horrible fall and horrible fractured leg, ankle, knee, shin...........I'm not sure what all she broke but it's a long, long recovery. I saw this gorgeous photo of her

on her website and thought wouldn't it be fun if many people painted Suzanne this way and submitted their version of her to the Daily Paintworks Challenge. She is feeling mentally and physically challenged at this moment and this could be just what she needs to perk right up. I wrote her about using this as her self portrait and her answer was so depressed that I think we should do it many tmes over.......remember Karin Jurick's self portrait that all of us painted? I'd love it if Nancie Johnson? AnnMarie Thomas, April Foster, Michelene.....would take this photo, draw it up, paint it up and submit it to the Challenge. Suzanne would be thrilled. And then in your spare time you can all paint a portrait of yourself and submit that as well. Paint, Paint, Paint................it's almost June and what do you have to show for yourself so far!!!!!!!!!!! Get to painting.

Day 76: Tuesday, May 3

2011-05-03T16:56:00.000-07:00

I've talked about the topic/project of "The Conversation" before in the month of March posts. Our watercolor class taught by Peggy Reid had a "conversation". The idea is based on the book "The Conversation" by Milton Glaser and Jean-Michel Folon.

Now that that introductory statement is out of the way......

A woman we paint with, Gail Green, also paints with a wonderfully talented group of women in Santa Barbara. The group is called Women with Paint and its ten members are Heidi Bratt, Claudia Cook, Marcia Engelmann, Chris Flannery, Gail Green, Anna Lohse, Dorothy Nalls, Gail McBride-Kenny, Cathy Quiel, Martha Shilliday. They all met in Cathy Quiel's art classes in Santa Barbara some years ago.

Over a year ago, completely unrelated to anything our Glendale class is doing, they (the Santa Barbara group) decided to "Converse" via a painting dialogue. Each woman of the 10 painted a 4x4 square with colors? abstract? realism? whatever she wanted to paint in whichever colors she wanted to use. That was square number 1. Square number 1 was then handed to another painter in the group and, following the same rules as Peggy's class did, the second painter created a painting on a 4x4 square that picked up the colors and lines coming off of square number 1.

This is Gail's 4x4 square. In Gail's group, the next woman chose to paint off of the bottom as we're looking at it and she saw a woman in Gail's painting. She picked up shapes and colors off of the bottom edge and painted this:

Joined together?

I think the 4x4 size is interesting because you have 4 sides to choose to paint from. If woman number 2 had painted off of another side of the painting?

If she had connected to this colorful chrysanthemum-y thing......

Here she would have connected to the green with perhaps a bit of pink showing

Here a lot of pink, some green, no eye, no nose.............

The two paintings are joined together with bookbinding tape and handed to painter number 3. Here is the progression of paintings that formed Gail's Conversation. Each of the women ended up with her own totally finished 10-panel Conversation.

Think this horn player is fantastic

Followed by a piano keyboard
taking you off of the page

I just think the connections are fabulous between the paintings
From a keyboard to an actual piano

Day 75: Monday, May 2

2011-05-02T20:23:00.000-07:00

Carol Marine has a website the "Daily Paintworks" where monthly challenges are mounted by her and a group of people. This month's challenge, mounted by Carol is to submit a self portrait of yourself. The link is below:

http://www.dailypaintworks.com/Challenge/85C8095F-A49E-41B2-823B-E26B94D87276

and I think you can also click on the link above that they provide to the site.

Because of David Lobenberg's challenge about a year ago, I was ready with a self portrait, which is cheating. I was supposed to take photos of myself and paint and paint........maybe this week now that "life" is resuming I will paint a new self portrait. Here's my painting of Carol Marine that I did a while ago:

and here's Carol's self portrait entry. She's changed? No, she just still has a great sense of quirky humor.

and here's my self portrait:

Day 74: Sunday, May 1 - Skunks

2011-05-01T21:29:00.000-07:00

And with everything else going on this last few days, we had skunks.

We have two dogs, Australian Shepherds and we live in a canyon with coyotes, hawks, obviously skunks.......

Thursday: I got home from the Arlington Gardens to be greeted at our driveway gate with a long remembered smell: "eau de skunk". We hadn't had any skunk problems since our old dogs departed this world about 8 years ago but boy, is it a recognizable smell. Drat, rats and phooey were of course the first words out of my mouth as I got back in the car and drove to the pet store to get the skunk removal juice. Home again. Poured it over both dogs' heads, rubbed it in.......and then the dogs went out in the back yard and pointed to a dead (almost dead it turned out) baby skunk. They had been playing with the poor little thing whose tail was still twitching just in case the dogs came back. So, baby skunk bites the dust.

Friday: Over at the Gardens, again, setting up the racks for the painting sales. Husband takes the dogs to the groomers to get them washed to get rid of skunk. Come home. Eau de skunk once again on the dogs' muzzles only this time they're pointing me to a truly dead baby skunk right by the back door. Skunk is removed to the trash, dogs' muzzles are once again washed down with skunk removal stuff and I think we should be done.

Meanwhile husband has gone on the internet reading up on skunks and their habits. He comes back into the room and announces "Skunks mate in March. Skunks have litters of 4-5 kits. Skunks this, Skunks that."

So now we're thinking "Great!" There are more babies where the first two came from. But a grown skunk has yet to appear.

Saturday: Home absolutely exhausted from the Garden Party. Eau de skunk again but no dead skunk can I find. I frantically call the Humane Society to rent a "have a heart" trap...the kind that when the animal goes in, the door slams shut. The Humane Society assumes it's kinda like trapping a feral cat: Put a can of stinky mackerel cat food in the cage and "they will come". Using dog fencing, I put the trap behind the garage where the dogs hopefully can't get at it or any skunk who might become trapped.

Sunday: I race out behind the garage and lo and behold, there's a baby in the cage. This makes 3 that we know about. I get the barbecue tongs and lift him out of the cage and drop him, very much alive and very stinky into a garbage can so he can't run away. Are there any more?

I go out behind the garage about 20 minutes later and !!! There are 4 more of the little devils rummaging around the cage. It becomes a scene out of Groundhog Day and "Bop-A-Mole", the game at the carnivals. I am frantically grabbing at these little suckers who are moving fast through the holes in the fence. I have the bbq tongs, they have squirting tails.......I get those tongs on 3 more of the little suckers, dropping them into the trash can, going back to try to grab another.........I end up with 4 in the trash can very much alive.

I drive off to my oil painting class, worried as heck. It's hot, those babies are kinda in the sun, they have no mom evidently.........my husband calls the Humane Society and explains that there's been no mom in evidence and we're worried about the babies. We're especially worried because we know there's one more out there! Humane Society comes within 20 minutes and picks up the babies and tells my husband that there are people who will bottle feed them until they're big enough to be released in the canyon. That makes us feel not quite so barbaric.

Now, Sunday night, we're looking for number 7. We can't let the dogs loose in the yard. I go check behind the garage twice for that last baby. No luck. We relax and put the dogs out and within 32 seconds, or so it seems, they're screaming back to the house with the last baby in one of the dog's mouths.

Done. Poured some more "eau de skunk" removal liquid on their snouts.

Poor baby skunks. No mom. Lost 3 siblings.

It's 9:30. Off to bed and a good book. If you haven't read "Tinkers", last year's Pulitzer Prize winner, do. If you haven't read "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson, do. If you haven't read Ellen Gilchrist's collection of essays that she read on NPR, do.

See you next week.

Day 73: Saturday, April 30 - Arlington Garden Party

2011-05-01T21:08:00.000-07:00

I wish I had pictures. The Arlington Garden was filled with people, filled with wildflowers, filled with birds, filled with over 100 paintings from wonderful local artists who had come and painted in the Garden. We had a party! We sold many wonderful paintings, we sold marmalade made from the orange groves on the property, we sold lavender sachets that I had made from the lavender fields........

Speaking of which. I had painted my first oil painting, very impressionistically, of the lavender in the Garden and I'll be darned...... someone actually paid good money for it and took it, in its gold oil painting required frame, home with them. Wish I knew who's going to hang it on their wall. Wish I had taken a picture of it in its gold frame. I actually was quite proud of myself.

The sales were busy......I even sold my watercolor that I had done and had talked about in an earlier post.

I had framed it wonderfully, I thought but again, I have no idea whose home this ended up in. Too many wonderful people buying, too many wonderful people admiring........Just a wonderful day.

I crawled home to a scotch and water, ibuprofen and bed. But it was worth it!

Day 72: Friday, April 29

2011-05-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

Oh my........long day getting ready for the Arlington Garden Party tomorrow. Set up all the grids to hang the paintings after having driven all around town picking them up yesterday.

But had a wonderful highlight: Crazy women friends years ago used to give an annual party with a theme. In 1982, 'cuz everyone remembered, they gave a royal wedding party in honor of Lady Di's wedding. We were required to wear hats, wear gloves, have handbags......lots of diamonds (rhinestones anyone?)...twas fun. Then the parties dwindled away until this year. This afternoon, I got out my same hat that I'd worn to Lady Di's wedding and wore it to Katy and William's wedding........that luscious event. Such fun to watch all that pageantry. The hats were awesome.

Moi in my designer hat from Chaz of Beverly Hills.
Purchased at the Salvation Army for 2.50 in 1982

She wanted photos to prove to her grandchildren
that she's crazy!

Day 71: Thursday, April 28 - Eagles!! and one more person viewed my Sketchbook.

2011-04-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

Got up early, drove around town with the nicest man, Mike Gillissie, a Los Angeles Fire Paramedic. He's the son-in-law of Betty and Charlie McKenney who had the vision 6-7 years ago for Arlington Garden. Little did he know when he married their daughter 3 years ago that he would one day be driving a truck, with Jill in it, going from place to place, house to house, picking up the 6' tall, 2'wide grids that are used to hang paintings in art shows. It's d**n hot today in Pasadena so we started early. Took our truckload back to the Garden about noon.

So there, that's the painting aspect of today.

Except for one wonderful email:

Hello!
We just wanted to let you know that Anna B. just viewed your sketchbook (#35593) at Mercer Gallery at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY!
Your book has been viewed 3 times so far.
Sincerely,
The Brooklyn Art Library Librarian

eat your heart out Nancie Johnson.

and then? Eagles!!!!!

I don't know how I forgot about "my" eagles! Every year I find a live cam (live camera) that's been positioned on an eagle's nest somewhere in the United States and have watched with incredible joy as these majestic birds build nests, mate, hatch, tend, care, feed the eaglets.

This particular camera in Iowa is live 24 hours a day because of infrared technology.

The actual website is http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles

This pair of birds have produced 3 eaglets, a record for me. Usually I've seen two and have also seen horrible "accidents" as the larger eaglet pushes the smaller eaglet out of the nest, an eaglet simply disappears. In this nest three healthy eaglets hatch and there's an accident that resolves itself nicely. The father bird (I'm assuming here) is trying to straighten out the nest and inadvertently catches one of the eaglets in his beak and throws it to the side of the nest..........It takes almost two days for the little guy to be drawn back into the nest and to be warm and toasty again under the breast of the babysitter.

Get ready to waste (except I don't and never have considered it a waste) time with fascination.

I usually have the website up and running in the background of whatever else I'm doing.......you hear the wind blowing, you hear one eagle calling to the other when he/she is approaching the nest, you hear the babies chirping.....and you click over occasionally an spend another 5-55 minutes with a loopy smile on your face.

Day 70: Wednesday, April 27: Crochet Like Your Grandma

2011-04-27T12:24:00.000-07:00

My son, as I've mentioned before, knows all about my slightly warped sense of humor. So........he sent this clip.

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/25/135705721/crochet-vandals-do-graffiti-like-your-grandma

I'm not going to tell you anything about it other than it should make you have a huge smile on your face, especially when one of the visitors to this site says "You can hang your freak flag out in Los Angeles". I thought that aptly described this woman's wonderful sense of humor.

Enjoy as always.

Day 69: Tuesday, April 26

2011-04-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

Took my sadly in need of work paintings that were on yesterday's blog to my watercolor painting class this morning. Our teacher, Peggy Reid, is trying to get us to understand color theory, triads, tertiary colors, complementary......I listen, I think I understand....but.

So the blue urn that I liked, out of all the paintings I did in Arlington Garden, with a lot of triad/tertiary color discussion using the color wheel, using the acetate overlay to show what happens when you put that third color into/onto a painting. Voila!!

Here's the finished painting with a lotta advice from Peggy.

before peggy

after peggy....
badly taken photo, sorry!

Day 68: Monday, April 25

2011-04-25T18:30:00.000-07:00

I've actually been painting and drawing.......I've been going to that glorious Arlington Garden every afternoon and drawing.....birds are singing their hearts out, gorgeous weather, maybe 65 degrees and sunny. Here are all my attempts........only one do I like at all, the big blue vase. The rest I had a great vision in my head but my hand didn't execute. Drat!

More work to be done, but I love what's starting
to happen on the pot.

This is done on a clayboard left over from another painting.
Lots of underpainting showing through. Kinda fun.

Like this one, the colors in the agave especially.

Another version of the giant agave which
glows cerulean blue with orange edges in the afternoon sun.

Supposed to be a fantastic wash of
California poppies, greenery...........yuk.

Sunday, Easter, 2011

2011-04-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

I started out about 6 or 7 years ago, I think about that long, wanting to paint portraits in watercolor and that's pretty much what I've done until very recently. It's always a challenge to capture the expression that gives a face life. In prior posts I've shown the portrait of my cousin Philip and the portrait of Carol Marine both of which are two of my favorite paintings.

Today, my sister sent me an email about a woman, Kaziah Hancock, who lives in Utah, who is painting portraits of the fallen, the soldiers killed mainly in Iraq. She does this as her gift to the soldiers' parents. It's moving to watch her paint, moving to think about our freedom and why we have it on this Easter Sunday, moving to think about the parents who have lost their sons and daughters.

Watch this.

Day 67: Saturday, April 23

2011-04-23T15:16:00.000-07:00

For those of you who loved the "Music Man" as much as I did........

Received this fabulous video and just had to share the joy of the whole thing with any one of you who's reading this blog. I know it's supposed to be all about painting, painters, technique...............

Oh, I know. Today actually qualifies as I went to the California Art Club's Gold Medal Exhibit at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. It lived up to the rave reviews that it's been receiving from everyone. Some phenomenal paintings and sculpture.

So now that I've admitted to my "art for today", here's the "76 Trombones" as performed by the Ambassadors of Harmony from St. Charles (Metropolitan, St. Louis) Missouri. They received a score of 100 out of 100 and probably should have received more points if they had been available! Enjoy with the same smile on your face as I had.......feet tapping, trying to sing along as I remembered the words from Meredith Wilson's Music Man.