End of November

Last day of November---tomorrow starts the big holiday month---birthdays galore, Christmas, the return of my daughter from college, holiday traditions, the race begins! The main thing is to not panic, to remember to sit and enjoy the season, the lights, the music, the warmth of family and friends.

Thanksgiving was the jump-off point to this upcoming month. We happily spent it on the Oregon coast, connecting with family for a couple of days---rare sunny November days to boot! Most years of coastal Thanksgivings in our past it was impossible to venture outdoors without getting drenched from the torrential rains! Not this year---an abundance of sunshine softened the jump into the holiday season, giving us all a chance to run off energy ahead of the game.






Meals were fabulous over Thanksgiving---we were on for dinner the night before so brought a Chicken Noodle soup that was actually Minestrone with chicken added. Everyone loved it---even the kids since we called it chicken noodle ;)! The following photo is a favorite from TG dinner, and the last two were from our first night. Minutes after we arrived at Brad's aunt & uncle's house Wednesday, we were hustled to the beach to catch the sunset. We did.





May this next month have some unexpected treasures of extra time and peace tucked in with the race towards the end of the year!

I love autumn

It's a good day to organize the house, declutter my office area, and reclaim the upstairs watercolor studio---but I think I'll go paint in my pastel studio instead...

The Oregon Gardens

Well, last weekend we finally visited the Oregon Gardens, a place I've always wanted to see, especially now that it's existed for a few years. We tried to go a few weeks ago, but the clouds never lifted until almost 4:00---which is when the Gardens close! We had fun that day exploring Silverton instead, choosing to go to the gardens when we'd have sunlight and more time.

It was a beautiful afternoon, sun pouring through the leaves, warm, and we had the added enjoyment of including my parents in our wanderings! Highly recommend going sometime if you're ever in Oregon. I'm sure, mid-summer is even more spectacular, but maybe in a different way---we saw so many lovely colors of leaves, and the feathery grasses were constantly catching our eyes---so many varieties! When we arrived we hopped on a slow-moving tram that drove around the gardens, with the driver talking about different bits of history, and plant info to give us a bit more insight into what we were seeing.

Here are some of my favorite photos from the day:

Illustration Friday & Studio Friday!

This was painted a few years ago when I was making my mini-tea-cup series---these little watercolors were about 2 1/2" x 3". This week the topic for Illustration Friday was Trick or Treat, and for Studio Friday, it was Orange! Hope you're enjoying some great orange autumn colors this week, or if you're in the southern hemisphere, maybe some bright orange spring flowers?

Happy Halloween!

Two new paintings

Here are my latest glassless pastel paintings---both made it into a juried show this month. They were started on site, first on campus here in town, the second a field looking south, just east of town. Both finished in the studio. Happily the field was one of the award winners at the juried show! It's so nice to work on a piece and then not have to bury it behind glass, order mats, frames, glass, deal with measuring & cutting the mats, framing....Once the boards have been prepared (or built as in the case of the larger square painting) I paint, spray intermittent coats of diluted pva size, then when finished, several coats of pva ending with a final couple of coats of UV resistant acrylic gloss spray. Wire the back and voila! Finished!! So thrilled to discover this method!

Illustration Friday on Monday---theme: Open

Thought this was a good painting to go with the theme Open and also to celebrate Autumn, my favorite season! These chestnuts are falling all over town, getting crushed underneath car tires, collecting in the grass below the trees, showing off their shiny hard shells. Painted years ago in watercolor.

Garden Tour

On Saturday, we went on a local garden tour---all about sustainability and organic methods. We toured 10 gardens, several we wondered why they were on the tour (small raised beds between the street & sidewalk...uh cool...Next!) and of course several that were absolutely amazing gardening efforts (interestingly our favorites were gardens of friends!) Saw a lot of things we'd like to try, asked questions about the best mulch between beds (straw? peppermint compost? small gravel? All have their pluses & minuses...) These are some of my favorite shots of the day:











Of course, couldn't pass this up either, tho it's not very "gardeny"...

Happy 100th Birthday Grandpa!

Today is my Grandpa's 100th birthday---my Uncle invited us to their new house to celebrate, with pizza, beer & cake---all things my Grandpa never was able to eat when he lived since he was diagnosed with diabetes when he was 17. He died when I was a sophomore in high school. I remember him as being quiet, wearing plaid wool shirts over his tee shirts, kinda baggy khaki pants and paint spattered light brown leather shoes. What's really cool is that he was a sign painter, designer---just like my husband is now. Sadly they never met, but Brad's first shop was his old sign shop---which my Granny loved!

At the party today, my Uncle had a lot of little things out for us to see that used to be my Grandpa's---books, billfolds with his old drivers licenses, job related receipts, sketches, wooden bowls he made on his lathe, and a fun little diary from 1923, 1924 where he had short entries---"Went to school, came home, went out to the woods with friends to check mink or muskrat traps, bait "et" but empty. Played checkers, went to bed 15 to 12..."---totally cool! Brad really liked these stamps---one I've inverted so it's easier to read---I'm guessing Grandpa designed these and had them made.




The photo below shows my Grandpa---he's the one with the glasses---this is a close-up of a much larger photo showing 20-30 display artists in the Portland area---not sure when, but guessing the 30's or 40's. He worked for a while doing shop displays in Portland---way back when. Happy Birthday Grandpa!

Beads

Well, it all started with a desire to have a necklace like my daughters. I borrowed it for a couple of occasions recently and really liked the length---along with the colors & style.


So, a week ago I took a look at our local bead shop downtown, saw what was available, bought a few, then returned home to see if I was anywhere close to my inspiration. Not bad! I still needed a few more beads to finish it off, so went back the next day with her necklace in hand, hoping to find a few more beads similar. Back home I settled on the dining room table & proceeded to make myself a new beaded necklace! I loved it! My daughter came home, admired mine, said "Copy Cat..." then almost in the same breath said "Would you make me one?"! I said "sure!" (someday...!)


I had enough black beads leftover to make another necklace, adding some shiny black beads with streaks of colors embedded in the glass---this time a bit less bright and colorful---yep, like this one too!


Suddenly I was flashing on more---more bead shops, more designs, more bead information. I could hardly wait 'til Tuesday this week when a 2nd bead shop would be open after the holiday. I was there for over an hour playing in the beads, finding some treasures, asking questions... I had to go to Eugene to pick up my paintings Thursday so of course did an online search & found 2 shops to explore there... Yep, I was bit bad!! Hoping to play some more today with my new obsession... Wishing you all a great weekend finding something that feeds your passions! (hoping to paint some today too---that's a whole 'nother post tho...)

Latest experiments

So I was into limes this week...(see post from July 17th titled Too Many Limes & you'll see where these limes originated!) and decided to paint a few smaller (5x7) pastels, using the pva size & working on a primed board again. When I finished, I then sprayed them with a UV resistant glossy acrylic coating. Here are the finished pieces! I'm quite happy with the results (tho I need to shoot some better photos---this one has a bit of glare showing in the middle & last painting). I'm just bursting with motivation now that I've discovered a way to eliminate framing---one of my least favorite things to do!! Time to go to work on a new painting!

Red

Just uploading photos and other programs onto my new hard drive. This one stood out today! Love the different textures & values of grey plus the sparks of red... Wishing you some sparks today!

Glassless pastel attempt #2.

Well, not sure if I mentioned this, but I managed to ruin my first attempt at glassless pastel...(see previous post about success before I ruined it...http://phinearts.blogspot.com/2007/07/my-new-obsession.html). I became impatient with the slow blow drying process and while trying to hurry up it up I used the high setting on the blow dryer which I think caused the pva size to make tiny bubbles on the surface of the pastel. I initially just flattened them down with the back of my thumbnail, but then they began to pop which left open blisters on the surface. I thought I could just gently peel them off, but that just started everything to go downhill---one peel led to more, & soon the surface looked like a bad sunburn... I ended up taking out sand paper & completely sanding away the almost finished painting!! *sigh...live and learn...

So, this past week I thought I'd try again on another prepared board and created my 2nd pastel using diluted pva size as a sealer between layers, drying slooowwwly on low with the blow dryer, holding it about 2 feet away, being overly cautious of course---but I managed to not ruin this one! Yay! So it now hangs at the gallery in the "Dog Days" show, and I'm excited to start another---first a smaller one that I can try finishing off with an acrylic UV resistant spray. I wanted to on this one but was smartly told to experiment with something smaller & less precious. After that I want to go BIG! Can't wait!!

Here's the finished painting---"Black and White":

Studio Friday

It's been a while since I've participated, but thought this weeks theme was right down my alley!

"Let us have a look at one page from your sketchbook or notebook...just curious. It's up to you which one you would like to reveal. Should you want to you can show us more than just one, too. "

Well of course I can't just pick one page---or even two! So here are several pages from 3 different sketchbooks. It was fun to go through them and find my favorites---especially fun to see the drawings of my kids when they were younger! Click on the photo to enlarge it if you'd like to see the little notes that went with each drawing.

Frustration!!

My Mac Mini died on Friday----*poof*----just like that! I popped in my daughter's camera card into the printer to then pull off the photos she had on it from a great camping trip we took to Waldo Lake---for some reason it didn't show up on my computer desktop, so I thought---ok, I'll reboot. That was it! I tried to reboot & my Mac Mini just got stuck and soon was making this odd clicking/ticking/grinding noise. Dang! I rebooted over & over, turning it on & off, trying all the tricks the manual suggested, finally calling the local Apple store. They gave me one more thing to try---no luck, so I packed it up & popped down to see what their tech person had to say. She plugged it in & immediately said "oh, your hard drive is broken!" No Way?! The little arm that looks like a turntable arm supposedly had broken (so she assumed since she didn't pop open the hard drive to look). Ugh...that means if I want anything on it I need to pay oodles of $$ to retrieve it at some speciality recovery biz... I also need to buy a new hard drive and start all over! My Mac Mini is only 1 1/2 years old! I'm so frustrated!! Of course I didn't buy the Apple extended warranty... My oldest daughter bought an ipod (spendy one) and just after she'd had it for a year, it totally died too... What is with these Apple products? I thought the company was so reliable---it's why we decided to give their computers a try for a change---as the tech lady said tho---the hard drive isn't an apple product... ARGH! I'm now on my youngest daughter's Apple Macbook... brand new... I'm guessing she better invest in their Apple Care program (scam, scam, scam...) so she's not left high and dry in a year... Think I need to send this note to Apple... So, to wrap up----BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER TODAY!!! *sigh...

Beachy Keen!

Two weekends ago, we popped over to Florence---a little town on the Oregon coast. Time for us to get away and pick up some out of town inspiration along with a much needed beach fix! Here is what we saw that day--this first photo shows the bridge heading south of Florence taken from "old town".


The flowers at the coast always amaze me---I think it's the cooler temps, and abundance of water that makes for some pretty spectacular flower boxes!


We then drove up hwy. 101 and stopped to wander the beach at Bob Creek---a new discovery for us. There was the creek, and then further down the beach were some great tidal rocks that had more sea stars planted upon them than I'd ever seen before so close to the shore!



The colors of the day were orange and purple...and this tiny little shell was just shouting for attention amongst all the other tidal treats...


As we walked along we discovered another cool find at Bob Creek---a lovely green slime rock wall and cave that tucked under the highway we'd just been driving on!


Then to end our day, we found a couple of "wild" animals marching on the road as we headed home...Yep, it is a fine life...