A Sentimental Journey

My sister and I have a great relationship and when we were dividing up things at my Mom's house this painting was one of the few things that we both remembered from our childhood. It was painted in 1940 by C.E. Jones, on black velvet. It's about 4 feet wide. Both of us wanted to keep it in the family, but neither of us particulary had a place to hang it in our homes - but it's now hanging in my family room, at least for the time being. As the story goes, she went to my grandparents church and my grandfather saw some of her work and asked her to paint this for him....and now 69 years later it still is hanging!. Wonder if they will say that about my work.

Happy Anniversary Karin

This is Karin Jurick's latest challenge in honor of Different Strokes from Different Folks blogspot hitting it's one year anniversary!. This was a real challenge - at least compositionally!!. By the time I got to view the challenge, several responses had already been posted, and that always makes it harder to come up with something original and not be influenced by the work of the others. Hope this holds up to comparison!

Life has gotten in the way the last few months, my mother got ill and passed away and I've had to take time off to take care of her as well as settling her estate, but hopefully I can press on full steam ahead now with painting, singing, and just getting back to my normal routine.

New Zealand Train Station

I had such fun with the relaxing man, that I pulled out some photos from my big trip down under. We had about a 45 minute wait at the train station in Greymouth so I snapped a bunch of candid pictures. I don't know this girl but I love the huge stack of luggage she was guarding and her casual stance reading her book. Don't know if this is done yet - think it needs a little reworking after letting it rest a few days.

Land of the Long White Cloud

I have finally had a little time to sort through all the photos we took on our big trip down under and did this loose watercolor landscape. The cloud formations in New Zealand are awesome. Everyday we would just be overcome by the beauty and say "WOW!!" This painting may not do it justice, but I think it conveys the feeling of enormity! I bounce back and forth with subject matters, so in between painting the small figure series mentioned in my last post, I'm also going to continue doing some landscapes based on our trip.

Revised Long Day

I was away this weekend but came back this morning and knew I had to fix this painting this morning. The seated man just needed to tell more of a story so I added his yard - just enough to put him on the front porch, cooling off in the shade. Now I'm happy with this and am inspired to do a series of figures on small canvases (8x10).

It's Been a Long Day

Here's my latest work for Karin Jurick's Different strokes from different folks challenge. It's been a very hectic summer so far and I haven't had time to paint as much as I'd like. I had been wanting to get back to doing some figurative work, so I'm happy Karin choose this photo to paint from. I like the way the figure has come out but may rework the background before I send it on to Karin.

Summer veggies

Karin Jurick's subject for the current Different strokes from different folks challenge are summer vegatables. Here's my attempt. It always amazes me at how many different paintings result from one photo. I have had a very chaotic spring and haven't gotten to paint as much as I had wanted to, but hopefully I'll get back on track this summer. The summer program involves exercising more, dieting more, reading more and painting more......now if I just didn't have to go to work I might have time to do all that!!

NY NY

This is my submission for Karin Jurick's Different Strokes from Different Folks blog. I painted it in guache, which is actually one of my favorite mediums. I like the textures that the windows creates, and I've simplified traffic....oh, if 34th street always looked this empty.

Unfortunately, before I could get it photographed and uploaded my elderly mother fell and I had to fly off to be with her in the hospital so this never made it to Karin's blog. I enjoyed painting it.

Also, I'm posting a picture of Bessie, our friends yellow lab. I usually use Yupo paper for my pup paintings, but with her slick coat, I went with transparent watercolor and and colored pencil. Bessie is getting framed this week and was a 25th wedding anniverary present to them.

And, life is settling down a little now and I'm ready to attach my travel photos to Australia and New Zealand. I haven't had time in the last month, as my husband and I co-chaired a fund raising event for the Red Cross. It was a fun wine tasting/pairing dinner that raised over $8000 - pretty successful I'd say for a first time event! Now back to a little painting time.

Bay Watch

Here's my painting for Karin Jurick's current challenge on differentstrokesfromdifferentfolks.blogspot.com. My first attempt was more literal to the reference photo. It was ok, but not too interesting. So I decided to start again with a little different perspective on the scene and zoomed in on the female figure and put her on alert at the beach. Whether she's a life guard or just a mom watching out for the kids, I don't know. Technically, I still need to do some work. Ithink it could use more contrast and depth of colors, so I might come back and make her bathing suit a deeper color and also make her head a little bigger. After putting it down for a day or two, I can see where it can be improved, but over all I really like the composition and it gives the painting a little more of a story.

Blast from the Past - more collages

After the Sushi challenge, I thought I'd show you a couple of the challenges we had in our class. The red one is composed of torn paper, candy wrappers, packing cloth and pen. The green one is wrapping paper, a watercolor scrap, wall paper and magnolia leaves. When you just have a little time and want to play see what you can come up with.