Labor Day

It's Labor Day - a holiday weekend that began with rain and gray skies, a really typical Labor Day occurrence in the Pacific Northwest.  That's how Bumbershoot, the music festival that we can no longer afford to attend, got its name.  Today the sun returned, with cooler temps and a lovely feel to the air.  The end of summer is here.

David and I went to see the gorgeous woodworking pieces at Woodpalooza, an annual show put on by the Whidbey Island Woodworkers Guild.  Beautiful tables, chairs, armoires and so much more, lovingly crafted and all for sale.  Ahh to have pockets that could afford to support the artists and bring some of these treasures home.

After drooling, we wandered over to Useless Bay Coffee Company, me for a latte and cookie, David for a sandwich.  Although Langley was packed, we saw ONE person we know.  The tourists are still in town.

We then split up, David off to play golf, me to come home and paint a bit before heading off to teach my regular Monday afternoon private calligraphy lesson.  It may be a holiday weekend, but when you are retired, sometimes the days blend into each other.

I decided to paint one of our comfy chairs today, in honor of Labor Day.

Celebrating Life

Earlier this week I thoroughly enjoyed several hours with five dear friends.  My friend organized us to celebrate her being cancer free after a difficult road of surgery and chemo.  She invited us to go wine tasting in our own Whidbey Island backyard.  She hired a driver.  We began at Greenbank Cafe enjoying lunch in a beautiful outdoor setting.  Tummies full, we piled into the van, driven by Mike, and went to Holmes Harbor Winery.  Sipping in the sun, we chatted, enjoyed the view and toasted to health.

Then it was onward to Bloom's Tasting Room, After enjoying the delightful Bloom's wine we had an educational tour of Whidbey Distillery and some yummy samples of their liqueurs and rye whiskey.  Next onto to Spoiled Dog Winery.  As the afternoon rolled on we became progressively louder and more amused by ourselves.

Our final stop was Whidbey Island Winery for a bottle of their delightful Rosato Rose.  Sitting outside we sipped Rose and shared marionberry pie from Greenbank Cafe accompanied by peanut butter (who knew peanut butter would go with pie?)

I dropped some bucks at the wineries, returning home with 4 bottles of deliciousness, some of which I managed to share with my husband and step-daughter that same night.

I sketched one of my purchases.

Here's to good health, good friends and the good life.

A Bad Blogger am I

Ok, so 7 months have gone by since my last post.  It's not like I haven't been living an artful life.  I guess that I'd rather make the art than talk about it.  I've taken several on-line classes this year, and learned from all of them.

Mary Ann Moss's Sketchbookery class got me going with sketchbooks this year.  I just finished my second one yesterday.  MAM is of the school, sketch with pen, full speed ahead, have fun with it.  I made my second sketchbook, following her instructions and had a lot of fun with it.

Carla Sonheim's CATS! was the next short class.  Fun to fool around drawing real and imaginary cats.

Jane LaFazio's journaling class was the latest.  She's an instructor who advises to lightly sketch in pencil, go over your work in pencil, then a third time in pen, all the time looking at your subject.  Much more realistic drawings came about as a result.  I also learned more about mixing and blending colors.

I have other classes lined up and will post what I learn from them.  For now, some photos of some of what I've drawn and painted.

Spring Has Arrived

Seems like the year just started and we've leapt into Spring already.  While March truly came in like a lamb, with the wind and rain of late, it may just leave like a lion.  No matter, it's warmer, and that's a blessing.

Lately several of my good friends have been dealing with health issues, and our neighbor of 20+ years just told us he's selling his house and moving in with his girlfriend.  While he's not leaving the immediate area, we sure will miss having such a fine person up the street from us.  He took care of our cat, Nugget, when we went away and we took care of his cat, Ramona, when he went away.  Good neighbors are hard to find.

In working in The Documented Life Project, the theme for March is "Making Your Mark" (marks and doodles).  I've now down three spreads, One sort of created itself, the others took more time.

This was the first one of the month.  I used my Gelliplate for mark making then cleaned the plate with packing tape, added some more color to that, and used it on the pages.

This was my next one, and was done as a result of all the issues going on with my friends.  A reminder to myself that change is inevitable and one needs to roll with the punches and grow from the experiences.

This one practically made itself.  I've been exchanging mail art with a woman named Honi C. in Freedom, New York.  She sent me mail that included some very cool tyvek painted with acrylics and the awesome "Rorschach test".  I sprayed Dylusions coffee ink on the page, then dabbed on the gold.  After that I grabbed a Gelliprinted black piece of paper and did one of my favorite Zentangle patterns, Henna Drum, using a white Signo pen.  Cut the oval leaves out of the tyvek and then was able to create the little creature out of left over pieces of tyvek.  Thanks Honi, I like this one, a lot.

Today I decided the sketch a photo I took out my kitchen window yesterday.  A friend gave me the bicycling frog wind gizmo a few years back.  Froggy really gets going when the wind blows, and has carried the pot off the deck twice this month.  And yes, it's almost as big as Nugget.

HAPPY SPRING!!!

Keeping Healthy

I'm a believer in colonoscopies.  I had my first at age 50.  Polyps were found and removed.  I had another colonoscopy five years later - it was clean.  I was told I needed to have my next one ten years later.

That finally happened this week.  The preparation is always worse than the procedure and this time was no exception.  I had to limit myself to a liquid diet the day before the procedure.  As the morning progressed I became quite grumpy, especially when I got out of the shower and smelled the bacon my husband had cooked for his breakfast.  I hauled out my sketchbook and sketched a cactus.

I had to drink the final 4 glasses of laxative 4 hours prior to the procedure.  That meant I had to set my alarm for 6 am. While knocking back that lovely lemon-lime concoction I decided to document the day by drawing the stuff I'd had to consume in preparation.

When my doctor came in to see me, she asked me what I planned to have for my first meal post procedure.  I didn't have an answer but told her I was definitely hungry and looking forward to whatever it might be. Everything went well, in fact better than the previous colonoscopies I've had.  I must have had less anesthesia.  I was alert, peppy, with no desire to crawl into the car and sleep all the way home.

I told my husband I wanted to go to the Totem Restaurant, a place up the road where my son and daughter-in-law took us for Mothers Day.  It's close to the clinic.  They have really good bacon and that appealed to me.  We sat down in a booth, got coffee and placed our orders.  I took out a tiny sketchbook I carry around with me and proceeded to draw the place's namesake totem pole.

All told, it was not a bad day at all for me.  If you are 50 or older, and have never had a colonoscopy, GET ONE!  The life you save may be your own.

Sketching my life away

I received a post card today from a woman named Honi C in New York.  She sent it to me as a result of seeing my name on the MMSA (Mail Me Some Art) listing.  This is an online board for exchanging mail art.  She unofficially welcomed me to the group of artists - not knowing, I guess, that I've been participating in their exchanges for well over a year.  I did, however, only sign up for the mail exchange this year.

No matter.  Her card gave me a reason to use a piece of watercolor paper I'd plopped my coffee filter on yesterday to create some stains.  I'll mail it to her tomorrow.

What a fun coffee break this was.

It lead to more sketching, in my sketchbook using walnut ink.

And, of course, I needed to use up the other piece of stained paper for another postcard.  Just getting ready for National Letter Writing Month in April.

I took the filter I'd used to make my afternoon cup of coffee and pressed it onto my sketchbook.  Once it dried, I tried my hand at just painting with no preliminary sketching.

Keeping the paper staining process going, I took a bag from a cup of green tea and placed it on a piece of watercolor paper.  The result was far lighter, not much stain at all.  

After dinner I had fun trying out some new indigo drawing ink on the green tea stain.

Ok, so I may not of sketched my life away - but I certainly did sketch most of the afternoon.

Creative Block Blahs

I'm in the midst of them.  It happens.  I have no idea how to finish this week's Documented Life challenge.  The challenge is to cover up the good stuff, the prompt is what lies beneath.  So I glued some good stuff down on the page, including a cute little valentine I got from my friend, Nancy.  Then I started covering up with paint, dyes, acrylics and white gesso.  I used molding past and created some texture.  Now everything is blue and purple, with some gold accent and I have no idea where to go from here.

I added more to the pages and then discovered I used the wrong prompt.  Should be Going Undercover.  My quote doesn't make sense in that context HOWEVER, I discovered an Irish writer I want to read more of - Robert Wilson Lynd and ms creativity returned for a bit this afternoon leaving me quite giddy.

My enlargement of the quote was sideways and I can't figure out how to turn it, so left it out.  The quote by Mr Lynd is:
"There are two sorts of curiosity - the momentary and the permanent.  The momentary is concerned with the odd appearance on the surface of things.  The permanent is attracted by the amazing and consecutive life that flows on beneath the surface of things."

I've written it down numerous times.  I left out "ary" as in momentary, on the piece and think to myself, "well then, that's part of the odd appearance on the surface of things, isn't it."  Other than thinking it needs a bit of black, I'm thinking it's done.