Tag: watercolor

One book, two pillows, and 500 postcards

I’m really hooked on watercolors. Lately I’’ve filled my sketchbook with dahlias.

Life is such a funny ying and yang.. We have had crews here working on a plumbing issue discovered earlier this summer. The fix was quick but complicated, and so we are now waiting on new flooring in the guest room while that furniture is on sabbatical in the garage. It could be worse. On the plus side, a good friend from my working days will be in town this weekend, and I am really looking forward to catching-up over dinner.

When I wrote about my summer reading here, I totally blew past one of the best reads of the season: Doris Kearns Goodwin’s  An Unfinished Love Story, A Personal History of the 1960s. Goodwin is an historian whose dogged research and deft voice bring history to life for her readers. She won a Pulitzer Prize for Unfinished Love Story, as she did for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Homefront in World War II (another favorite of mine). Her other books including Team of Rivals (Abraham Lincoln) and The Bully Pulpit (Teddy Roosevelt) have been equally honored. 

But let me tell you just a little about this book. Goodwin was married to Richard “Dick” Goodwin for forty-two years. About a decade older than Doris, Dick was one of the “bright  young men” that helped get Jack Kennedy elected president in 1960. He named and helped design LBJ’s Great Society and was a speechwriter and close adviser to Robert F. Kennedy. Doris was a White Housed Fellow during the Johnson administration and worked directly for LBJ. Both Dick and Doris lived and worked behind the scenes at the seat of power during some of our country’s most turbulent times, including the Civil Rights movement and the  Vietnam War. The book is part memoir, part biography and part history based on the more than 300 boxes of papers, memos, notes, diaries, and memorabilia Dick had saved over more than five decades of his career. It lends remarkable insight into many memorable public times. This is a wonderful, “inside” look at the events that unfolded and shaped my high school, college, and early adult years. And maybe those of many of you? If you like history, especially an insider’s view, you will enjoy this read.

What was I thinking?

Here’s one of the pillows. See how greets it looks with the navy wall?

Orange is not my favorite color. Not for my house, not for my wardrobe. It feels dated to me, too reminiscent of my mother’s late sixties rust-colored sofa. So, the question is why on earth did I buy these pillows? A few weeks ago, I joined some neighbors in a shopping expedition in search of fall decorative merchandise. I’m not at all sure what I was thinking when I snatched up these very orange pillows. Yes, they are seasonal, which us what I wanted, and, yes, they have that navy print which looks fabulous against the navy accent wall in our great room. ( And truth to tell, I can spot a good navy from 50-feet.)  But they are very orange.

I imagined them on a pair of chairs in the great room, and my neighbor enthusiastically agreed.  What I was not thinking  is that the rug in that room is a very traditional red and navy Turkish design. Trust me when I say red is by far the dominant color .To be fair, there is some green and gold. No orange. 

So then I began thinking about what orange I do have in the house and guess what? There is none, unless you count this blue and white transfer ware plate with some orange flowers, a photo my daughter took in my old garden, and this rooster. That’a it. I have moved the pillows to the sunroom, which is pretty beige. The orange is a nice pop of fall color. And after Halloween I’ll put them away until next fall.  

500 Post cards

This is what 500 postcards look like.

You may recall that I wrote as few posts back about the postcard project, contacting individual registered voters with a personalized, handwritten postcard encouraging them to vote in the coming election. The project provides the  brief, non-partisan message, the postcards, and address lists. “Writers” complete and address the postcards, then mail them on a specific day in mid October. The project does not endorse specific candidates or a party, but it is sponsored by the Progressive Turnout Project whose mission is to rally Democrats to vote. Statistically, the project knows this personal contact significantly improves voter turnout. 

Like a lot of people, I felt helpless this year in the midst of a messy campaign and an election that could completely alter our lives. In fact all of this would give me a monumental headache if I did not feel as though I at least did something. So, I volunteered to write and mail 500 postcards. I finally finished writing & stamping them last week,; and they’ve been mailed on schedule. Whew!

Wishing you plenty of chocolate in this Halloween month and pumpkins in your choice of color. Thanks for stopping by. I hope to see you again soon.

Something fun for spring

Okay, you may not consider it fun, but I do. Today’s post celebrates my girlish passion for a new box of crayons, my half-hearted sidesteps into art, and my recent discovery of painting with watercolors. 

After months of cajoling, a neighbor — who also happens to be a watercolor artist and teacher — agreed to offer a class to some of us wanting to flex our artistic muscle. And now I’m hooked. Watercolors are not easy and there is a lot of technique to learn (the most basic being how do you make the water and the paint work together?), but I’ve found it to be a welcome challenge, a good test for my latent creative muscles, and, therefore, a bit addictive. 

I have always loved the idea of drawing and coloring. A new box of crayons could set this girl off on artistic adventures for days. When I was in junior high and high school, my dad was an avid photographer. He recognized my artistic bent and bought me the paints and brushes to hand color some photos. We were just getting really good when color photography crept in and stole our thunder!

In college I was able to take a few studio art classes in drawing, painting and printmaking for half credit (therefore requiring much less work) and scratch my creative itch. I loved it! Studio classes were a nice break from books and the library, and I discovered some like-minded friends in the process. We were not “arty” like the art majors (a terrible generalization I’m sure), but in retrospect I think we were engaging in a bit of art therapy at a challenging time in our lives. 

In the intervening years, my writing profession — pages and pages of ad copy, newsletter and magazine copy and the accompanying layout sometimes required made it hard to separate the art from the words. I was picky, picky, picky about color, type face, and photos, what worked and what did not, all of which probably made me a difficult co-worker from time to time. Meanwhile, away from work, my personal passion for decorating and collecting grew. You can see how I fed that artsy muscle. 

Fast-forward to the present, where watercolors have become an increasingly popular hobby. It turns out several of us were eager to try; we just needed a teacher. And now, some of us are really hooked. I’m not at all good, I paint too fast, I don’t always use the water to great effect, and I’m just beginning to appreciate the value of mixing colors from red, blue and yellow instead of being seduced by the other colors in the paint box. Right now I’m practicing small “studies” like individual flowers to learn and practice techniques and explore the use of paint and water together. The exploration is at once engaging and — as you can see — primitive. 

One of the most interesting aspects of this process is how differently we each approach the same lesson and paint the same flower. Talk about the “eye of the beholder.” I’ve also begun to mentally consider other subjects to paint. In class we have focused on simple floral forms, but what about fruit or vegetables or greenery? My imagination runs wild…

It’s fun at this stage in life to embrace a new challenge, to look forward to carving out time to paint, to make new friends who share your new interest. I’ve even carved out some “studio space” in our loft. (Which is really just my way off spreading out in safer space than the kitchen island!)

What’s on your creative challenge “wish list” ? Let’s talk about the risks and rewards of tackling something new.

Thank you so much for stopping by and reading along with me. See you again soon!