Tag: watercolor-painting

Not the A-list, but the P-list

P is alsoc for purple; I seem to have lots of purple flowers sright now.

How are you? I know it’s been awhile. How’s your summer? Mine is going way too fast. I thought it was time I filled you in on at least some of what’s happening here. 

Years ago Steve and I had neighbors who were always in search of the “A-List.” You know, the one with people who supposedly had more money/power/status. Until they found it, however, they were content to travel along life’s path with the rest of us. I suppose we should have been insulted by this attitude, but they were so blatant they were funny. (And we weren’t the only ones thinking that.) Not surprisingly, the relationship quietly drifted apart. Maybe thy found the A-List? However, the A-List remains a running joke in our household. 

This post has nothing to do with money, power or status, but it is a dump of what I’ve been up to this season and it turns out that it all starts with the letter P. .

First there is the patio

The whole patio is not ready for prime-time, but here’s a slice.

The patio the builder attached to this house was a small cement rectangle that barely held a round dining table and four chairs along with a grill. In fact, if you chose the wrong chair you were the lucky one able to reach out from your seat and flip the burgers. So, a few weeks ago we had that slab removed and a new, much larger one poured to replace it. I am not a fan of cement slabs, but in our really little yard (we have the smallest lot in the subdivision), it seems to ground the landscape and offer some good possibilities for additional landscaping. 

Just to complicate things, our design/decision-making was somewhat delayed by the fact that the house behind us, which actually sits perpendicular to ours, is on a lot that was graded a few feet higher than ours and those of the neighbors on each side. This was probably the fault of the initial developer, but thankfully the new owner in that house — not wanting his lawn, etc., to wash into ours or the neighbors’ — put his foot down with the builder. After weeks of work and readjustments to drains and irrigation, a landscaping company has installed a low, very attractive stone retaining wall. Win, win for all concerned. It looks soooo good.

Meanwhile, Steve and I, along with some extra muscle from our son, softened the cement block look of the patio with some dwarf hydrangeas and perennials. There is more landscaping to come along “the wall” and outside the sunroom, but not until we are out of the worst of this heat. In the meantime, we’re excited to move forward with this and have been having coffee  on the patio most mornings! If there is anything we have missed from our Wheaton home, it’s the mature landscaping, but starting from scratch is an interesting challenge. 

Painting

This is pretty rough. I’d like to think my technique has improved since I painted it, but it is one of my favorite efforts, largely because it’s my own composition as opposed to a painting from a tutorial or class.

I happily admit that I am now totally obsessed with my watercolor efforts. I’m watching YouTube videos, reading, and now trying to do sone sketching or painting every day. And, of course, my class continues to meet. It’s interesting to sample the different watercolor styles of my classmates along with the artists I’ve discovered on YouTube.

I’ve acquired a very cool pocket-sized set of paints to use when painting away from home as well as a small sketch pad to carry with me. Plein air painting is a joy. There is something about being surrounded by Nature that feeds whatever artistic inspiration one has. My goal is to draw or paint a bit each day. But that’s easier said than done, and some days the results are very satisfying, some not so much. I find I look at artwork, scenery, a vase of flowers, or even a vignette of books and candles on a tabletop or shelf differently. 

Postcards

During the last election cycle in 2022 I joined my daughter and daughter-in—law in the postcard project to contact individual registered voters and encourage them to vote in the coming election. Basically we hand write a short, non-partisan “get out the voter” message provided by the project on postcards also provided by the project, address them to individuals from the registration lists provided, and mail the postcards on a specific day in late October. The project does not endorse specific candidates or a party, although 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. 

I’m not comfortable ringing doorbells or making phone calls for a specific candidate, but like many people I feel helpless in 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 am at least doing something. If you are interested in learning more about this grassroots project, visit the website, www.turnoutpac.org. 

I hope you are cool, dry, and enjoying the sweetness of summer. Thank you for stopping by. 

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!