Visiting Garland Nursery

This past Wednesday was the first paint out day of the year with the local Vista Vineyard plein air group. We met at Garland Nursery where there were a lot of gorgeous plants, yard art, and fortunately covered areas to escape the showers that wet several first painting attempts. I had to work at OSU for part of the morning so didn't get a chance to start any paintings there. I did take a lot of photos though! Future painting references for sure!! Here are some of my favorite shots from that morning:
















Which are your favorites? Which would you like to see become paintings? Leave a comment and let me know!

Puppies!

A couple of weeks ago we stopped by my brother's on our way home from Eugene to see the new puppies his family adopted. Can you say CUTE?!!


This is Eva - she looks bigger than she actually was - the camera makes her head look huge! Below is my brother with Izzy.




This photo of Izzy looks like someone is squishing her head with one hand - that's actually 2 hands trying to show off her forehead wrinkles!


Eva & Izzy - sisters!



My turn to cuddle Izzy...


He's discovering the puppies like to chew on ears...


The puppies were bugging poor Lucy the cat - I was trying to capture them in action, and instead caught Izzy trying to crawl under Eva's back legs!


Lucy just took a punch at Izzy - Eva's out of there!


Eva taking a little break - for just a second...


Eva has a stick Izzy wants to chew on too...



All together now: Awwwwwwww!

Where did April go?

Ok, I know where April went - but that's the problem - it's gone! That's ok I guess, I'll not make any promises though about posting more often, seems when I do I jinx myself... So, instead I'll post some photos from the Art Sale we had April 24th. If you'd like to see any of these photos larger, right click on the photo and you can choose to open the image in a new tab or window.

Here we are, packing to go - moving things into bins to go on the roof of my friend's car.

This field of mustard was growing just south of Salem - my driver kindly stayed in the right lane of the freeway so I could capture some shots without traffic blocking my view! She too loves to capture fleeting moments through the window of a moving vehicle. I can see turning this into painting sometime soon!

Here is where we had the art sale - my friend's Parents generously donated the use of their house, clearing out rooms to showcase the artwork.

These next few photos show how my friend set up a bedroom to display her pieces. She's an amazing decorator - her ability to transform rooms, decor & people is magical!





My daughter set up an area to do henna for the afternoon.

Here she's applying henna to my right wrist. It was quite the challenge to take a photo with my left hand, not moving my right at all! Try it sometime - it's amazingly difficult, so I was happily surprised to see these pics came out pretty well!



This composition of fresh fruit just sparkled with intense color - truly a straight-out-of-camera image!

Along with artwork and henna, we enjoyed the lovely guitar & voice of Hans Barklis. As you can see, the fish behind him were also entranced!

If you missed this Art Sale event, we're sorry you couldn't make it, but we're really hoping to have another one. If you'd like to be put on our email list to be notified of future events, please leave a comment, and we'll make sure you're sent an invitation to our next one!

P.S. - a shot of my wrist - 2 weeks after the henna was applied - & one of the 2 puppies my brother's family recently adopted!

Painting People

I've been putting off, for too long several painting ideas floating around in my head (& in my photo collection), so this week, because of another artist's challenge I decided to just set aside my in-progress paintings and just DO IT! Here is the first painting. I'm hoping to start a 2nd later this week.


This shows the initial pastel pencil drawing on a reclaimed canvas & a couple of close-ups of the drawing. The previous plein air painting still shows through the drawing, but will be covered by pastel eventually, with maybe bits showing through for textural effects. (right clicking on the image, then clicking "open link in new window" or "open link in new tab" will make the image larger if you want to see it closer...)

After the first layer of pastel:


I then sprayed the canvas with diluted pva size to "glue" the pastel on. I like to take a photo before spraying, paranoid the spray will ruin the painting! Luckily, that didn't happen - although since the spray hadn't been used for a while, it was clogged and needed to be changed. Meanwhile I used a different spray bottle which didn't cover as well and spit large drops! I've since corrected these issues...

Here a photo showing the 2nd layer of pastel---


I'm very grateful to my friends that helped make this painting possible: letting me take the reference photo with such a lovely model in this beautiful setting! I'm hoping this will be the first of many people paintings, and more models (hint, hint) will step forward to be included in this series! Thanks m'dears!!

Off I go to paint some more - hoping to finish this one this weekend!

Spring Roll "class" 101

A week ago, we had friends over for a Thai dinner. Along with Massaman curry we also made spring rolls. Here are pics of the process!











Ok, now I'm hungry...