Ginko follow-up

As I left home this morning for work, I noticed that the big Ginko tree I mention earlier was raining yellow leaves. I fully expect it to be bare by the time I get home this evening. Love that tree. Wish I had room for one in my yard.

Almost heaven...

Just got back from spending 3 glorious days in wild and wonderful West Virginia. Ate, drank, talked, laughed, hiked, painted, wrote in my journal, laughed some more. Even though it's a long drive, it's always one of the most relaxing vacations I can take. Thought I'd share the two little watercolors I made. The one of the shagbark hickory leaves was a first for me. I drew it in my journal in pen from life, then later used the drawing to create the painting. I usually paint directly from the subject. I was rather pleased with the outcome. Think I'll hang on to this one.

Shagbark Hickory Leaves

watercolor

5x7 on Arches 300# paper

NFS

Maple Leaf

Acer rubrum

5x7

Arches 300# paper

SOLD

Leaves, squirrels and words, oh my!

Today the rain has brought down most of the leaves in my yard. The crepe myrtles are the last to go and they are almost bare. I'm keeping an eye on the ginko at the end of the block. Its leaves are all still attached but mostly yellow now. I'm anticipating the day that I look up and every single leaf is in a neat pile at the base of the tree. Ginkos are the most polite trees around.

The squirrels are busier than I've ever seen them. Or maybe I'm just more tuned in to them this year. There are several who call my garden home that I have named because of an identifying anomaly. There's Carmen who has a crooked tail. She started out being "Crooked Tail", then "CT" which made me think of an old friend named Carmen Teresa so the squirrel became "Carmen." There's another with a white tip on his tail so he's "Tipper," and a juvenile with a bald tail that looks like a rat, hence "Pettigrew" for the character in Harry Potter who's animal form was a rat. Sounds like I need to get a life. I recently named my "estate" (a small city lot) Squirrels' Leap. I read that James Madison said his home at Montpelier was a "squirrel's jump from heaven" and it's how I feel about my home, too.

I've been thinking that almost-a-painting-a-day is a misnomer for this blog. Then I thought I could try to "paint" with words even when I can't get the watercolors out. We'll see...

Happy November!

It really looks like autumn around town now. The crepe myrtles and dogwoods in my garden have turned a lovely red and the river birches are almost naked already. Didn't have as many trick or treaters Friday night as last year but still ran out of candy by about 7:30. Friday night football at the field near my house was in full swing so maybe that kept the teenage crowd busy. As promised, below are images of the cover and some of the pages from the nature journal I created at Flower Camp last weekend. I'm still working on a couple more. Enjoy!

Nature Journal 2008

October's almost over...

Hi. I would love to think that someday I might be able to do more blogging about my painting but at the moment, I'm too busy living. Maybe when the weather changes and daylight savings time is a thing of the past for another year, I'll spend more time in front of my computer. I wish we could just stay on daylight savings time year 'round. Actually, I think it would be really great if we could have standard time in the morning, add an hour around lunch time that is "free", then have daylight savings time into the evening. More daylight all around and an "extra" hour in the middle of the day. Of course I guess that would mean we have to lose that hour while we were sleeping each night and I just read where there are more heart attacks after we switch in the spring than when we switch back in the fall. Okay, so there are still some bugs to work out but it's an interesting thought.

I just had 2 whole weeks off from work. My friend Jeanne B. visited from California for a week and it was wonderful to see her. We totally relaxed and just enjoyed each other's company. Did a little painting, took at trip to D.C. to see the George O'Keeffe show, and generally just goofed off. I hated to see her go.

Last weekend I spent 3 days at Flower Camp. If you don't know about it, Nancy Hugo (an amazing woman and a born naturalist) owns 50 acres in Buckingham Co. south of Richmond VA where she has turned a collection of delightful buildings into a retreat space where she offers workshops in flower arranging and nature journaling. I took the latter with instructor Rhonda Roebuck and had a ball! There were 12 of us in the class plus Rhonda and our wonderful chef for the weekend, Rosanne Shalf, and everyone of them was an exceptional person. I'm going to upload some pages from the journal I created as soon as I finish it so come back to check that out.

I'm also doing a PowerPoint presentation for the Master Naturalist course I'm taking on nature watercolorist Cathy Johnson. If you're at all interested in nature journaling, Rhonda and Cathy are 2 of the best. Check out their websites when you get a chance.

Meanwhile above are a few photos of Flower Camp.

finally! something new...

For all of you who thought that I had taken the shuttle to Mars, I'm back! I was inspired recently to try my hand at colored pencils and with an exhibit coming up about my town, I found great subject matter to draw. I've not foresaken watercolor, but pencils have been great fun!

Let me know what you think.

update

Thanks to all my loyal friends for continuing to embarrass me into picking up a paintbrush again. I can only say that my other career has taken an incredible turn and needed all my attention. As a marketing/pr person, getting worldwide attention for a project is one of the highs of the business but it sure takes a lot of work.
That said, I actually painted this past weekend but didn't finish anything. It was pure pleasure though just to put brush to paper.
Meanwhile, I thought you might like to visit the site of my great friend, Jeanne Bauer:
http://jeannebauer.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=33
Jeanne is an incredible artist and is one of those people who makes a success of everything she does. I hate that we live on opposite coasts now but she's always in my heart.
Enjoy the summer and keep encouraging me.

Rita's Birthday Party Invitation

Not for sale.

March Madness

As you may have noticed, painting has not been high on my list lately. However, I plan to enter three of my works below in an art show in April so have put them "on hold" until May. If they don't sell at the show, I'll offer them again here.

I plan to take a vacation in May and will have my paints with me. I'll be somewhere new so I hope I'll be inspired. Watch this space...

Happy Spring!!!

February

I can't believe I've been so bad about keeping up with this blog. Sometimes other things happen. January turned out to be a very sad month--many deaths--and I just haven't been in the mood to paint or write or do anything but what I had to. The crocus are blooming (sometimes with ice on them) and the daffodils are up so I know spring is on the way. I hope you all saw the lunar eclipse last night. It was incredible from my back porch. It had been cloudy all day so I had little hope for a viewing but it was clear, and very cold and beautiful at 10 p.m. I can surely understand why the ancients would have been worried to see something like that. Even now, knowing what causes it, it's pretty eerie.
Hope you have a good rest-of-the winter and I'll do my best to post some new paintings soon.
Rowdy

Granny Smith

Watercolor on Arches 300# paper

7"x5"

$100

sold

First I'd like to thank my friends for keeping tabs on my blog and fussing at me when I don't put up new work fast enough. So, even though I have lots of excuses for not painting, I won't bore you with any of them and instead hope you like the new painting. Happy New Year!!!

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! I've been working on a large painting for a friend and haven't done any small works to put online. Please be patient. I hope to get back to posting more paintings after the holidays. I would like to thank those of you who have purchased my art. I love painting what I want to (as opposed to commissions) and then having people like it enough to buy it.
Have a wonderful holiday!

Tea bag on dish

Watercolor on Arches 300# cold press

5"x7"

$100

SOLD

November already???

How did that happen? Some of you have noticed all the inactivity on my blog recently -- and a few have complained :-( -- so I apologize to all. Truth is, I've been out of town some and working on a commission for Christmas. I'll share that with you if it works out.
I could throw in the fact that I hate standard time. By the time I get home from work, it's dark and all I want to do is curl up with a good book and a glass of wine and hibernate. I have a theory that we should have standard time in the morning so it's light when most of us wake up, then get a free hour at noon that just isn't counted, then start daylight savings time in the afternoon, switching back to standard time sometime in the middle of the night. Of course that would play havoc with air travel and that's hard enough as it is, so I guess it wouldn't work. Thank you all for you patience--I promise there's more to come.

Eggplant and Salt Shaker

Watercolor on Arches 140# cold pressed paper

7"x5"

SOLD

Eggplants, onions, and elephants, oh my!

This was a fun, and productive, weekend. Friday night I went to a benefit for the elephant sanctuary in Tennessee. If you don't know about this, and are interested, check out http://www.elephants.com
I also got two more paintings done, and as you can see, I've sold one of them. The process of painting is incredible, but having the validation of someone actually paying you for your effort is heady. Hope you enjoy seeing them.