Illustration Friday: Atmosphere

The IF topic this week is Atmosphere. As I haven't done anything creative this week, other than survive (which has seemed to use all my resources), I am posting two little paintings that I posted before, while they were in progress. I never posted their finished versions, and I haven't posted them for IF, so they aren't total repeats. Each of them is only 5"x7". And they were both attempts to capture a wet atmosphere, something that I am not very familiar with, living here in the desert.

The one above is from Puget Sound in Washington. It's a view going over Deception Pass, onto Whidby Island. The one below is from the walk above the old city of Quebec, in the rain.


I have discovered this week that it is true that, as you get older, shingles get worse. I have had them twice before, and didn't think of them as particularly bad. They didn't even really interrupt my life in any significant way. This week, I have been truly miserable. If you have had chicken pox and haven't yet ever had shingles, and are qualified to get the vaccine (you have to be over 60), I highly recommend it! You don't want this stuff if you can avoid it. I will be getting vaccinated the minute I turn 60! I never want to have shingles again - especially if it could even be worse than this breakout was. I was reduced to 'open-the-window-and-roll-me-off-the-roof- to-put-me-out-of-my-misery' begging mode!

Nitty gritty....

Being an artist is not always the glam-job one hopes and dreams it will be. There are times when you just have to buckle down and do the boring parts. So I have been warping the loom for the next calendar tapestry. (I have also been designing more calendar tapestries. I now have October, June, July, and August designed and 'on the drawing board' to weave. But the design part is the fun stuff of being an artist.)


So another hard job has cropped up; going through what yarn I have, and choosing what I will need to order to weave these next four tapestries. Sometimes I have a hard time really seeing the colors accurately until they get here, so this is a real challenge for me.


In addition, I purchased a print rack and having been getting prints ready to take out to the gallery tomorrow. This involves matt cutting; one of those jobs I really view as an 'artistic chore.' In fact, I dislike matt cutting so much, it may be why I switched from watercolors to oils! Matt cutting involves too much math for my dominant right brain. It will be good to have prints at the gallery, though, because the summer tourist traffic seems to want prints this year. So it's time for me to jump into that market.

On a personal note, artists also just have those times when working at all is somewhat of a chore. I have had shingles for the past week, and all I really have wanted to do is to lie around with a dog at my feet and read a good book or watch a good movie. Now that sounds like a glam-job to me (though perhaps not very profitable)!

Back from the lake...

We are home from being at the cabin for the past few days. We had a wonderful, quiet time there, as always. In addition to the usual delights, we had the perfect viewing spot for the meteor shower, lying in the back of the pick-up, with no city lights to dilute the show. It was spectacular... so many stars and quite a few that looked like they fell right over us, surely landing in 'our' lake! I almost, but not quite, forgot to listen for the sound of the bear whose scat we found very close by, eating from chokecherry bushes in the driveway.


We also went fishing. We have never caught such small trout! My husband caught the first fish, but as it was 'only' about 10", he let it go. After that, we began catching the tiniest little things, each only between 4-6". Of course, we threw them all back, each with an apology and a lecture to try to learn from this experience. When we were taking the boat out of the lake to go back to the cabin, another fisherman commented that he had caught the littlest trout he'd ever seen. We told him we had caught a whole pre-school of them!

Even though we came home fish-less, I did get the great photos above of two blue herons taking off over the lake. The first one literally ran across the water to take off. The second one just leaped up and flew away from us, but I loved the pattern the rough lake makes beneath him as he got out over the water.

In addition, I took way too many pictures of hummingbirds, from which I will spare you. We had more little hummers at our feeder than we've had ever, I think. With only 6 spots to drink from, there were twice that many vying for the spots! They actually seem to cooperate better, the more there are of them. Odd, but true.


Our weekend chore was to cut wood for the winter. For $20, you can get a National Forest permit to cut 2 cords of dead or downed wood. We didn't want to cut that much on this trip, but decided to get a pick-up load. Since our boys grew up and left us on our own for these chores, we have opted to just buy the wood to heat the cabin for the past several years. But this year we chose to get the permit and go back to the way we used to do it. We had seen so much downed wood in the nearby aspen forest that we decided we could go for it. My husband cut it into usable logs, and my job was to load it into the truck.


Back in the days when we had two strong boys to help, my job was just to move the wood back and arrange it in the truck bed, so the weight was evenly distributed. But this time I loaded it, and stacked it in the truck. I missed my boys! I think I will start now, sending each grandchild a log for Christmas, a bigger one every year, and then, after they have built up their log-carrying strength, we will plan one of the 'activities' for Grandma-Grandpa Camp to be wood gathering!


I love how light it is in an Aspen forest. The trees are thick, but they are very tall, and the canopy is not heavy. There is always beautiful light on the forest floor. And, did you know that an Aspen stand is all one organism? The fact for the day!

I hope you had as lovely a weekend as we had. If not, next weekend maybe you would like to help us cut another load of wood?

Stylin'

Yesterday was a very busy day at the gallery. I came home exhausted. I also came home determined to proceed with my plan to create prints of sold pieces to sell, as most sales yesterday were of prints.

I didn't have much time to paint, but I always try to at least set up a small painting, as customers seem to like to have someone actually painting there. So I did this little piece, which I'm not sure how to finish. I wanted to see if I could do a figure that was expressive without having a facial expression to rely on. I have seen some great 'headless' figures, so thought I'd give it a try. This is of my grand-daughter. She had this cute outfit on, and she and her brother were putting on a 'concert' for me. I think the outfit and her body language say quite a bit, but I may feel the need to 'finish' this a bit more. It is very sketchy and loosely done, and I have a hard time leaving that 'roughness' be. I'll see how it looks when dry. It is 8x8".

Finally!

All of our dogs have been retrievers. And all of them have loved to swim! But Booker has been quite resistant to the idea. He has preferred to be a wading retriever. In my husband's eyes, a wading retriever is not a real retriever at all; he was determined that Booker should discover that he has webbed feet for a reason. So he taught Booker to swim up at the lake yesterday. Of course, Booker being the silly puppy that he still is, I am sure that now swimming includes having my husband in the lake with him, as far as he is concerned. He would not swim otherwise yesterday. He is a dog who likes to feel the solid earth beneath his paws. He was OK with swimming, but it was still all about the stick for him.... and about being with his best friend.

I am off to work at the gallery today. I am having a frustrating creative time right now, so maybe being there will wake up and motivate my muses.

Spent an afternoon approaching Lavender...

A little (8x10") oil on canvas painting. I am quite in love with lavender, so felt an urge to paint it. This is quite loosely based on a lavender farm on Whidbey Island in Washington. My lavender is needing to be harvested, so it can begin it's second growth. Colorado is beginning to discover how well it grows here, and several lavender farms have 'cropped up' locally. Must make some lavender shortbread. Ummmm!

There and back again...

I spent most of the past several days on the other side of the mountains. I went to watch my grandson play a couple of soccer games, as he has been playing on a YMCA league team this summer. I tell you, if you have never watched a game of soccer played by four-year-olds, you have missed one of life's true delights! It is so much fun - no parent pressure, no real sense of competition yet, no boundaries of any kind! (Who needs field lines, anyway?) The World Cup is way too serious for my tastes now. My grandson loves it, and is actually quite good at it. Just watching these little ones run around a ball like a little tracking herd for almost an hour made me realize how much energy I have lost in my lifetime.

I also got to watch my grand-daughter's gymnastics class, and to dump some apricots, in their various forms, and some piccalilli on my son's family.



One of the other things I did with the grandchildren was to do a little 'art lesson' with them. I had done the first Mona Brookes lesson with the oldest one several years ago, when she was four. The last couple of times I was with them, they asked me to do an art lesson with them, so I went prepared to re-do that first lesson, which was to draw a bird. When my grand-daughter had done the lesson at 4, we had just used some newsprint, and I was so impressed with her bird, I regretted not having had her use better materials. So this time, I took some watercolor paper and brush markers. The painting above is my 6-year-old grand-daughter's painting, and the one below was done by her 4-year-old brother. They gave the pictures to their mom, so I asked my grandson to do me another picture. (His sister was busy doing some craft projects we worked on together.)


Below is his painting of their dog. It is in front of their house (see the three windows?) He included the flowers that grow in front, and the fact that their yard is a bit hilly. I absolutely love that the dog (who loves to run) has five legs! Other than that, it looks a lot like their dog.


If you have any young ones in your life, I highly recommend this book and the lessons from it. It is fun, and look at the incredible results! (Brookes also has a second book for older children, and even adults.)