Happy New Year!

Here's wishing all of you a very happy and fulfilling new year. Hope all of you are able to be creative in some way in 2009. It's not here yet but I'm ready for it.
Yesterday it was 75° so I christened the new garden shed studio. I tackled the bottle painting again, this time doing a detail rather than the whole set up. Let me know what you think. It's another beautiful day here today but colder. I may go sit in the sun and read. I could really get used to this time off.

Bottles

Bottles

8.5"x11"

Watercolor on Arches 300# paper

in the collection of DFD

Longer days!

Hello and happy day after the Winter Solstice! I don't know about you, but even though winter has officially just begun, I'm already looking forward to longer days ahead. Something odd happened this year on the solstice...I woke up from the longest night of the year at 5:30 a.m.!!! This is very unusual for me and even more unusual, I got up and was productive for the 2 1/2 hours before I had to be at work. Usually, it's a mad 1/2 hour dash to get dressed and out the door. Don't know if it had anything to do with the solstice but when I mentioned it at work, several other people had similar experiences.
I'm happy to report that I spent last weekend painting. I did a small landscape for my mother for Christmas and started work on a still life of bottles for a friend. I did 3 versions of the bottles and ended up ready to give up painting all together. Glass is one of my most challenging subjects and I never seem happy with the results. I'll share these pictures with you after the holidays. I'm off next week so I plan to spend it painting. Wish me luck.
Meanwhile, I hope all of you who are celebrating this month have a wonderful time!

my new garden shed studio

When I first moved into my house a few years ago, there was the beginning of a gazebo in the back corner of the garden. It had a wooden floor and four corner posts connected at the top on all four sides by 2x6 boards. Being the scrounge that I am, I had collected a few unusual windows over the years for just the right project. Then I found a French door and realized that I had what I needed to turn the gazebo into a shed. I hired a friend to help me and between us, we constructed a very usable structure. Of course, as soon as it was up and filled with garden gear, I began thinking it would be fun to make it into a studio. This fall I finally decided to make that happen. I got rid of any extraneous garden equipment, hung a lot of things on the wall and moved it all to one side which gave me room for a small table and a comfortable chair facing the large window. I have plans now to add electricity since, without heat it won't be very user friendly until spring. But at least it's a space. See the images below.

The real shed

My garden shed studio