That kind of day

I like November sorry it is gone, I love summer but I don't like to paint summer, For all the green I use in paintings you would think I would like to paint summer. I like to paint dreary landscapes, I like a lonesome feeling or message that comes from dreary days. I think they are quite beautiful and it is a challenge to hunt for color.

In mixed media I like brighter more surprises of spots that might not be considered a coordination of colors.

This painting is today, I drive by this house frequently and it has a regular road signs that say Rustic Road. this is how I see this location and look at it carefully each time I approach.

It is watercolor and salt us used in wet paint to absorb the color and leave those tiny spots.

Not very wet paint, the water and color have to loose their shine then sprinkle the salt.

No time to quilt today, I do have it ready to sew, My favorite day to Christmas shop is the Monday after Thanksgiving, no one is out and about.

Yesterdays post continued

I left out some details and may again, The original face was on fabric, then scanned into the computer, the next tep was to arrange the face with additions explained in previous post on fabric transfer paper. This fabric peels off and is real fabric not the rubbery type used on Tshirts sometimes. The sheets remove easily and I press them with a cloth over the top to

heat set the images. I will use the original and my transfer paper in the quilt. These items will be sewn onto a piece of store bought quilted fabric, I sew this on the WRONG side so my back of quilt is fabric and not that gauze type side. (purchased at Walmart by the yard this quilted cream colored fabric.)

Today the photo shows other additions that I may use especially the large green floral and leaves and I have to work maroon, and aqua into this even if it is just bits. That could be other fabric, it could be stencil. There may be a bit of the knotty yard shown. It also needs a bit of white.

My face was painted with a tool taught by Sharon, it is a sponge brush with the sponge taken off so it becomes more like a palette knife. Today you see the original painting, yesterday I showed the scanned and altered images from that painting.

I hope to show more of this as it progresses, I am having a bit of trouble adjusting to my

camera, not the camera so much as the uploading. I hope to have that resolved today also.

Today you have to click twice on image to see larger.

Quilt Beginnings

This is going to be the focal point of a quilt. Thre are times one may not be able to find a focal point in my work, but I usually start out with one.

The woman was painted on fabric, re positioned with photoshop and some degitally added tranparencies. She also has some stenciling around her face. In photo shop I also changed the

intensity of her color. When overlapping the original with smaller sized cut and pastes the effects change, also the edges were blurred, that also gives transparency.

I will show you progress or final result when done.

Collage Of Bits

This is a collage of houses , houses from past watercolors and a house, the green one in acrylic.

The paintings had gotten ho hum, once what I thought was good now isn't good enough. I am thankful the acceptance of my work that has been growing and still not always satisfied.

Since a child doing art work was the most exciting thing. I was provided with these things as a child, but always the insturction, take care of those things now. Taking care of meant they shouldn't look used to me. Silly.

Anyway, on with this, I cut out the houses, I wrapped a piece of cardboard with newspaper, painted and stenciled it. Arranged the paintings, and did some stamping. My favorite part is

how the birch trees in one of the paintings has the same feel as the stencil. They seem to compliment one another to me. The flowers were also a watercolor painted on very rough

waffle textured paper.

Thanksgiving Eve

No matter how many tools one has it doesn't always improve ones skills that has to come after the tools. I learn in life that even having skills they are not fine tuned enough. I lived in an era where a knob fine tuned things, now you have to answer to a window. The window is always vague in my process of the fine tuning. But what would life be if we didn't have to work on the various parts of it all the time. I say this because some of my paintings are made for cards, and I don't like how they look posted other places, even if they look fine on the card.

However I am going to post this painting anyway as back in Sept. I had a thanksgiving feeling.

The crows were eating some seeds from disgarded spoiled squash. Inspiration from a rotted squash is digging deep.

Sharon Tomlinson taught me that painting people doesn't mean it really has to be a realistic

looking person to get a message into a piece of art. You would think I knew that, I did but she made it more real for me as an artist.

Happy Thanksgiving to all,

Garden Thoughts

Doing tomorrows post tonight, too much going on tomorrow, I don't even have all the things to cook for Thanksgiving.

Great friends are coming tomorrow to finish up a final thing so we have DSL and not dial up.

Also help me get started with digital camera. I drag my feet as learning how to use things takes me some time. Once I get it I don't forget, but I said this before I make things harder than they are. Once in a while things are more complicated , and I seem to remember those times best.

So this fixit and make it better week continues.

I was thinking about gardening and how it helps stress. It is physical, sometimes mindless, and one feels sort of free in body and spirit after some rigerous gardening. I did go and garden even in late Nov. I pulled grasses out of the daylilys this afternoon. A good time, then I won't disturb new growth in the spring.

This is my garden, this summer past, and last fall, not this fall. It has been a warm Nov.

Pretty much the same view.

Making Something Out of Nothing

I say this something out of nothing because it was, first it was a heap of old fabric on the floor I saw at an upholstery shop and I asked if they needed it and of course they didn't and were glad to get rid of it. It had good parts that hadn't been in the sun or had wear. It looked like two different pieces of fabric. It did lay around my home for a while also and then I saved the goodparts and started to construct a small quilt 18X18 I even used some of the things I had saved that seemed like my best things. It didn't appeal to me even after hand stitching, and having really good saved items added, it got put in the bottom of a basket so I didn't have to see it.

I hope that some day I would find it and feel good about it. I found it a lot of times, I never felt good about it. Then a month ago I felt I had more knowledge, researched art quilts, read magazines, saw that some tatterings, added items, getting some blue into a piece made things look better. What is there to lose, it could get better or worse and go back in the bottom of the basket.

When I started the first time I had been thinking about seasons a lot, it was fall and for two months Oct. and Nov. I love orange. I continued added blue, used chalk ink on some of the parts that glared too white, did some stamping added a narrow ribbon/yarn. Felt it was OK.

I wanted to finish it so when I speak to others such as a quilt show, I can explain about sometimes we just have to keep going and not give up. Beginnings in art work often can look

like it will never turn out, beginnings in mixed media certainly can look that way. A little gloom settles over your work space you feel an inner being withdraw and your outer being wants to run. I kept thinking, I didn't make 100 french knots for nothing I better fix this up. You can't even have mashed potatoes if you toss them out when they are only boiled.

If this appears and it does somewhat disjointed I scanned it in three parts.

A Quilt Today

Thank you for coming buy to visit, Kris, Ro, Jean and Nora. So much appreciated.

It has been a day of problem solving, satellite radio, (bad Antennea) Trying to find out why

our dial up is such a slow speed. (Phone Co person has not come out) Selecting a digital camera I can understand. I still have the soft ware to install for that. so more problems tomorrow. I hate doing things that make me feel inadaquate. When you get older you have to work harder to

speak with some knowledge and vocabulary so people don't think your failing. You can't use words like Doo Dad, Thing Ama Jig, or gizmo in electronic stores. The clerk can say thingy but I can't. I always hear Forest Gump Saying........you're not a smart woman. I know he didn't say that exactly but, I hear that

No painting today and just a tiny bit of sewing and some decisionmaking about a quilt. This is a quilt I made two weeks ago, a painted face on a gauze fabric, a lot of sheer curtain used also as I recycle fabrics. This sheerness explains the side of her face you do not see as well. I used 8 different fabrics and zig zaged them all even the binding. I cannot work on something for long as I get sick of it, and may not finish. Tomorrow I will show a quilt that sat for 3 years in an ugly state of not knowing what to do with it. It took me a day to get it in some sort of presentable shape. I played around with art quilting years ago. didn't quite understand the freedom of doing whatever you please if it pleases you.

More finding things

Because painting faces is new to me, I find doing a profile difficult, and not liking them so much,

Chins get jutted out, noses get shaped oddly. And this chin has that sort of problem, also my profiles tend to all look like they are related people. The reason I am showing this is because I like the found things later in the painting. It is watercolor , acrylic, and colored pencil.

If you do painting or are painting with children it would be fun for them to paint a piece of paper with splotchy colors and set it up for a while and look for things. Paints and paper are very thrilling for children. When I visited families in my profession I carried art supplies, doing these things around a table brought family members close for this time together and talking, sharing ideas and enjoying one another.

Can you find the woman?

Of course you can, a month ago Sharon Tomlinson gave bloggers a challenge to carelessly paint a background and find things in the painting, it was a good exercise as it made your imagination

work, and it gave one a chance to paint freely. I talked about Sharon in my profile and her influence.

Often when there is paint left on my painting plate, I just use it up doing a background. It makes me feel bad to find a dried up paint plate with wasted paint. I put the paint on the paper with a painting knife which explains the texture. Often ones finds nothing and that is because we have thee ideas of what we would like to find. I wanted to find a womans face and one that would take up a lot of the space. It sat there while I worked on something else. Then I saw this tiny head,

and a great dress. Well I didn't really see a face I saw a head. I saw something on the head.

The dress made it look windy and it seemed night on the painting. I drew in the face with ink,

and I drew the hand. The bright colors on the bottom I just drew flowers in with colored pencil.

The colors were there.

This is painted on brown paper, when I scanned the painting I used a piece of scanned fabric behind it. When I prepare it on the computer in photo program I bring the fabric scan up first

then lighten the tint and change the color, then add the painting and blur the edges. Add a border.

This is how I would use it for a card.

Grieving a pet loss

During the summer we lost a cat in a heartbreaking way, to a tumor in the brain. Lodi was a stray that wandered in and I really liked him. At the time I didn't want a cat, but he was such a personality.

Frequently I do art about what is bothering me, This is done with acrylics from the bottle, with magazine cut outs. I also use gesso mixed with the acrylics, Stamping and colored pencil was also used in this mixed media. It is titled "Our Pets Ourselves". The person was done with acrylic.

Stamps don't work well on rough watercolor paper, I stamp on tissue then adhear them to the work.

Hello and welcome to new blog

Just starting this morning and new to the practice of having a blog. Please be patient and excuse errors and there will be some things that look not right and spelling could be one. I must edit more carefully.

I hope to post photos of art and quilts, the header is just a painting I did in the paint program
last winter, the paint program that comes with windows.

As the blog states there will be quilts, paintings, garden and things of interest to people that do the same.

So leaving now as I have been doing this for too long already.