I’ve been working on my David Bellamy landscape parts, trying to paint a decent looking sky.  Very difficult, maybe I’m trying too hard, I’m saving all my attempts but won’t post them ’till I get better.  Or maybe I’ll post them anyway, I don’t know yet….

So, I’ve been wanting to ‘do’ the shelf above our stove.  Actually, I cut out some of the details, we have a string of christmas lights draped back and forth across the shelf brackets (that’s the stove top lighting), a Scandinavian waffle iron, pot holders and other stuff all hanging from hooks just under this part shown, but by the time I got the shelf items done, I was tired of fiddley bits and left them all out.

That orange round thing on the left is a dark yellow mirror, can’t you tell?  Ha ha ha.

My 2 guys tell me I should stick with landscape painting, after they saw this.  Well, I think I should paint what I want to, otherwise how will I get better?  If I try to paint it again and again, make a series, I gotta get better…or at least different?

Any rate, I’ll see it in years to come and will remember even the 2 match boxes on the left end.

What do ya think?

For the first time in days, we’ve got a sky that’s not solid gray.   So I wanted to try my hand at capturing the colors.  About 8:30 this morning, and it changed very fast.  When I started there were a few clouds and lots of blue sky, within less than an hour, it’s all gray again.  And that tree actually looks pretty close to the one standing there, I surprised myself!

This view is out my west facing window, my favorite window, in the most inconvenient location in the house, the laundry room.  I used my Prang set, which I’m liking more all the time.  Just a few colors is great, no big decisions about what color to use next.

I’m trying to paint a bit or draw a bit of something every day and this Strathmore Visual  Mixed Media paper journal is working well.   It calls to me without being pretentious!  Gotta not scare the elephant…..

Actually, I just read something that really caught my attention, from Joe Miller’s book “Old Watercolorists Never Die, They Just Wet Their Sheets”  (which is like listening to an old, trusted painting friend, a keeper book)  Joe says, on page 26  “Isn’t it funny how we listen to that little voice inside our heads.  I hear it loudest when it says,  ‘Joe, that’s that’s the worst painting Ive ever seen.’   But when it brags on me, I can hardly hear it at all.  I’d like to know what gives that little voice the right to critique my work?  When and how did he become the expert?”

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, or something.

Recently I discovered, from youtube, David Bellamy.  I got some of his books out of the library and have bought a couple for my own.

The first is his Watercolour Landscape Course, since I need all the help I can get and I also have a hard time figuring out WHAT to do when I sit down to draw or paint.  I’ve thought about going around my kitchen, but that would be so revealing, like the clutter everywhere…. so I’m starting this book, not quite at the beginning….I think I’ll go back to trying out plain flat washes, which I skipped over to this more interesting lesson.

One thing that caught me right away was his mention of being a beginner watercolor painter for 15 years….sounds like he knows how I think!  He also says to save everything so you can see how you progress….painful, but important. And he gets you going right out of the box, painting.

So, what I’m proposing, in an effort to keep my ADHD brain on track, is to post every Friday, regularly, to see how I do and trick myself into doing something every week.  I need a schedule, a deadline and a focus.   That often helps, as long as I stay on this tangent.  And remember to do it.

Anyone else have this problem?  Any tips or hints, please?  No critical comments on my skill level, please.  I’m letting myself continue to be a beginner, so there it is.

My domain name had come up for renewal, my son handles all that stuff for me, and they sent the renewal notice to an email address he hasn’t used in years…for some unfathomable reason.  So, my domain expired.   December was a weird,nasty month so I never noticed.

Enter Laure, who emailed me to ask what happened.

Derek got on it and finally got me back up and running…..Thank you Laure and Derek.

Here’s a photo I took last week of Tweetie, who is not supposed to be on the stove.   Apparently she got up there and fell asleep.  She has asthma, and I don’t think breathing in the minute amounts of gas are doing her lungs any good.  We call her Miss Withers, from the movie, Murder By Death.  If you’ve seen this silly movie, you’ll understand-breathing in all the gas.

This tree has been here since before we moved in 28 years ago.  It was just a young-un and it’s on the border of our back yard and the neighbor’s to the north.  We had been here just a short while and the old guy, Charlie, who owned the property next door was out back with a younger friend, getting ready to cut it down.  I just happened to be in the ‘back 40′ as we call the back-back yard (our lot is double deep) at the time they were revving up.

I begged Charlie to leave it, he wanted to take it down as it would shade his garden when it got bigger.  Surprisingly, he changed his mind.  He lived only another few years and was unable to garden anymore anyway.  So the tree still stands, it’s lived and grown up through several other owners, no one wants to put a garden in these days, so I think it will be safe.  Actually, our garden is just off to the left of this photo, out of view.

I see this tree every day out my laundry room window, I check it every morning to see what the weather is like.  In the spring it will have blue jays and crows and cardinals and tufted titmice and many other birds teaching their kids to fly from it’s branches.  The squirrel family plays in it and it’s Caleb’s favorite spot for pooping under.  (I clean up often).

We’re nearing winter, Dec 21st,  and my oak will hang on to many of it’s leaves through most of the winter, dropping them when the buds come for spring.   It drops a few acorns, not many, and the squirrels plant them around.  A baby from this big mommy is growing in our garden now and there’s one waaay out in our front yard coming up, too.

I sketched this first with a unipin pen, .03 black and painted it with my Peerless palette  (see earlier post), using a waterbrush (a match made for each other) then went in when it was dry and added some darker darks and lighter bits with Aquastic watercolor oil crayons.   Took about 40 minutes all told.  That includes the writing bit.

This class is really teaching me to pay attention!  I never would have noticed how important this tree is to me if I hadn’t done this assignment.  And I’m learning to stop talking to myself in such a negative way about my skills.  Serves no purpose except to make me want to quit……which I’m not doing.  Have I said this before?  lol,

Our first lesson, we all have to paint an eggplant.  We are NOT allowed to say anything negative so if I can’t say something nice, I won’t say anything.

Well, I gotta say it, this is Baaaad.  I’m going to try it again and see if it gets better.  But the first shot out of the box, well, is rather sad and awful.  Still, the colors are nice and I can see where I need to improve.

Back in 1988 I was possessed to buy a 15 color set of Peerless watercolors, then just $6.  (What made me want them was the company that made them was just a few blocks from where I grew up.  And they were watercolors.  I wasn’t painting or drawing at the time.)   I had tried them a little bit, using them as the instructions suggested.  Cutting off a piece of the color-filed paper and putting it in water.   I remember doing it with 3 colors, it wasn’t fun, so I put them away….for 23 years.

Now when I found them, I looked on the internet to see if they were still being made and Wowza!  I came across  on youtube, this:

Jane Davenport, I never heard of her but look what she does!   Funny, the first pictures she shows are of Paris, which coincidentally is the class I just took with Laure Ferlita, Imaginary trips.  Which got me painting again after 40 years.  Funny old world…..

So anyway, that’s what I did with my set, see here:

Then I tried them out.  And I love them.  Just using this and a water brush and tissue, I’m ready most anytime the mood hits me.

See my first attempts,  it’s OK to play.  Yes it is.  (I’m telling my gremlin “yes it is”).

I did this for a card for my 93 year old Mom.   She got it today and loves it, even if it’s a fake/copy-sort-of of an Erik Blegvad illustration in a cookbook.  Which I got, not for the recipes, but for his art.

Don’t they look like fun?  Have you ever tried these?

Can you guess who this other man is?  Hint: Mr. President, Independence Day

Just a regular, very polite, very normal kind of guy….Derek and  “…”  And he’s rather large, over 6 feet.  Which we didn’t know.   Derek is also a very polite, normal kind of guy, not 6 feet, lol.

The group of people Derek works with all lagged behind, following Bill outside.  He, Bill, was very gracious, letting everyone (5) get their pictures taken with him.   We just thought is was pretty cool….

Derek and Bill Pullman Hornell Sept 28 2011

I want to do the 3 classes I missed, just to say I did it all.  And I learned so much, it would be a shame not to finish.

These guys or gals look cold and unhappy. I hope not.

Next up is Laure’s Autumn class.

I found Laure from Cathy Johnson’s Journaling book,  which made me so itchy to get started, that I did!