I recently submitted my pear to the website ‘Pearathon’ and they accepted my painting. If you like pears you’ll love this website.
‘Pear, August 10’ , 6”x6”, acrylic, $120
Sep 16
I’m painting again for the Sierra Art Trails Open Studio Tour after seriously hurting my neck/shoulder a week and a half ago. Hint, make sure you have good leverage when trying to open a stubborn window….and that your shoulder isn’t already messed up. Friends and family suggested I should just lay down for a few days but that position hurt more than standing up….so I puttered around and tried to find comfortable ways to sit. When I tried painting the back spasms would start so I avoided activities with those types of movements. I still hurt but the spasms are gone. Yay Advil and aspirin!….but I’d have gladly taken something stronger the first few days!!!
Downsizing made the clouds look gloppy but in reality they are smoother and detailed. This little acrylic is 6×12, on a wrap around canvas with sides painted.
This little tree was somewhere in Yosemite and has been sitting in the back of my mind for a while. Wrap around canvas with sides painted, Acrylic 8×10.
A month ago we had the bob cat that got one of my chickens. In 12 years I’d never seen a bob cat in our area. This week we had a coyote visit the neighbor’s lot a couple of mornings and twice at our fence looking at the chickens. I used to hear the coyotes at night but had never seen one. Now I’m constantly looking for the coyote and the chickens are let out later and locked down earlier. Today Dave saw a road runner down the street at our neighbor’s place. The numerous deer have disappeared and been replaced with new critters. One of the jack rabbits was on the hill behind the house yesterday.
Dave brought home ‘critters’ for the chickens this afternoon. He was splitting wood when he found some grub inside the log, which isn’t unusual. What was unusual was the SIZE of these grubs! The chickens were thrilled and treated us to a hilarious game of ‘grub-ball’. At one point Lacey had one of the grub. Weezie tried to snatch it so Lacey took off running full speed across the yard, dropping the grub in such a way that Weezie didn’t notice. Lacey stopped a yard or so past the discarded grub and Weezie looked at her like, ‘What the heck?” While Weezie searched the ground Lacey ran back to the grub, grabbed it and kept going so that Weezie didn’t see that Lacy now had possession of the grub. Two points for Lacey!! Don’t kneel to close when the chickens start bashing the grub…you get splattered with grub juice! Below, Dave’s gloved hands, my hand.
Jan 06
I like to save small useless, but interesting items. Recently we destroyed some floppy discs. I saved some of the external and internal pieces. A couple days ago I decided to experiment with saved items, crackle paste and molding paste. The blue section is crackle paste while the white section is molding paste. Crackle paste is suggested to be used on a solid surface rather than a canvas…I agree. My crackle sections began to curl and lift just like mud. I made a tint with Heavy gel medium to penetrate the cracks and hopefully glue them to the canvas to prevent them from coming off. I’ll also put another sealant layer on top of this. The corrugated looking pieces are the white stretchy protective covering off pears cut to shapes.
I embedded the recycled items into the molding paste then gessoed the upper area when the paste dried. I painted the lower crackle area with regular and Interference acrylic paint.
The upper half was painted with a rust colored acrylic and then painted on top with Iridescent Copper allowing some of the darker rust to show through in the textured valleys. I began painting the recycled items.
More paint everywhere and stamping with the top foil piece of a wine bottle and a cork.
Jan 02
January 1st, 2010 Happy New Year!
We are in the process of having our deck replaced since it rotted…everywhere important….including the house where it was attached. Therefore, we haven’t been on any ‘adventures’ since the dogs don’t have access to the doggy door which leads onto the non existing deck. Until the deck is finished being built we have to take them outside regularly to do their ‘business’. Once the deck is finished we’ll have our freedom to roam once again. ‘Take the dogs with you’, you suggest??? That would be nice if we didn’t live in the mountains. One dog gets car sick on twisty roads, kind of takes the fun out of the adventure.
I’ve worked on the ‘Trabucco Ranch’ acrylic painting below. I thought I’d start the new year right by spending time painting. Since the previous post I worked on the sky, muted the distant mountain, gave more definition to the middle and worked on the foreground. There’s still a lot to improve.
Dec 29
This is a work in progress. I’m using a few photographs I took at the Trabucco Ranch plein air painting event organized by the Sierra Foothill Conservancy. The angles in the lower half of the painting are all wrong so I’ll be fixing those today. The bright colors are the under colors. The sky will be lightened.
