Fun new sunflower painting!

Last weekend we visited my parents and sister in Huntsville to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. On Saturday we went to a really interesting hydroponics farm, and got some sunflowers along with all the terrific vegetables. That evening several of us sat around the kitchen table and drew or painted the sunflowers.

Mom gave me some Aquaboard panels, and I opened a pack of the 5"x5" ones to give it a try! Tomorrow I will spray the painting with a fixative but I wanted to go ahead and put up the image now. If it's much different after spraying it I will post again.

Art Shows

Wow, it's been far too long since I updated my blog! I'm just popping in now to give a quick update. This past year has been really busy but good. Most recently, David finished his last season with Upward Basketball last week. My folks came to visit for the weekend and were able to go to his basketball game, then go to the opening of an art show some of my work is hanging in for a few weeks, and they got to see David get baptised on Sunday.  Altogether it was a wonderful weekend!

These are the four paintings that I've got hanging in the new Catawampus Gallery in Opelika. They will be hanging for a month.

This is a close up of my favorite one. I love to paint irises!

And this is the best thing that happened last weekend. David was baptised by our youth minister, Greg. It was a terrific weekend!

New Artwork and New Chickens

Well, I have let several months go by without posting! It's been pretty busy, but I have managed to get a few small paintings finished that I'm pretty happy with.

First, here's a picture of our sweet, silly chickens chillin' on the swing about a month ago:



About a week after I took that picture something got into their pen and killed every single one of those chickens. They were due to start laying eggs sometime this month and were most certainly pets for us. We were really crushed to find them all dead that Sunday morning! Gosh, it was sad.

A few days later, our neighbor gave us some new chickens for David's birthday! They are now about six weeks old. They are Barred Rock chickens, which are one of the few varieties of chickens that you can tell what gender they are by their color when they are tiny. We have ten hens (pullets) and one rooster (cockerel).



A couple of months ago, the friend who gave us our first chickens gave me a photo of one of their roosters- the father of several of ours. I really enjoyed doing this little painting from that photo- what a beautiful rooster!



Several weeks ago, David and I went to the northern part of the state and spent some time there with my parents. Jon was sick and had to stay here! One day while we were there, we went down to the river and let David swim. The rest of us sat in chairs by the water and chatted, and I painted this little painting of a boathouse across the river. I loved doing this painting and am really happy with it!



A couple of weeks ago, I did this little painting based on a photo I took several months ago of some flowers in a flower show. I can't remember what they were, and I've changed them quite a bit. I love the colors in this!



I hope the next few weeks will be a bit more relaxed; I hope to do some more painting. I have to say, though, that I have painted quite a bit more this year than I realized! It has been a blessing.

Have a wonderful October!

Recent Artwork

I haven't posted much artwork lately, but I have been painting. Two of the most recent ones are gifts to the two people who responded to my "Pay it Forward" post, and I wanted to finish them both before I posted them. I intend to put them in the mail this week. :)



The dogwood painting is for my high school friend Mona Helen in California. She said she misses the dogwoods the most, so I'm sending her some of her own!



The pansies are for a fellow artist, Deborah, in Michigan. I have to apologize to each of these ladies for taking such a long time to get these to them. I haven't forgotten but life has gotten in the way!

I've done a couple of fun sketches completely different from my usual style, and they were fun. :)





A couple of months ago I picked the white iris and just had the urge to do something different! A few weeks later a friend and her kids came over, and we walked across the street to the lake. The children fished and Marie and I visited while I did this rough sketch of the lake. I didn't have the courage to put the children in it. Maybe next time!



I did this one last week after finishing the pansies, and I love it! It's different, too, but it was a lot of fun.

Last Friday I participated in Summer Night, an outdoor art evening in our local downtown area. Quite a few artists had their artwork on display and for sale, and many stores remained open extra hours. I saw lots of folks I haven't seen in a while, and enjoyed myself very much!

Snow!

Well, today in central Alabama we had snow! They predicted anywhere from 1 to 6 inches, but we ended up with about 1/2 inch here. However, it was a lot of fun watching David and all the neighborhood kids play. They had snowball fights and built snowmen (small ones) and got really cold. A really fun day!



One night this week I did a quick sketch from a photo in the files of Watercolorworkshop to try to keep my goal of sketching every day this year. The blue in the sky completely dropped out of this scan, but the rest is pretty close. It was fun.



I also did a sketch of some cactus flowers, using a reference photo I took in the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham last year. I'm finding I like my sketches better when drawn from life.



Have a wonderful holiday!

Fun on the water

This past weekend we had a wonderful time visiting my family several hours away. My dad took us out fishing in his boat, and began teaching David to drive the boat on the way to the fishing spot. His expressions may not show it, but he was excited!

After going on the river for a while, we went to the Botanical Gardens to see the scarecrows.

Then we went to a local nursery to enjoy their pansy festival! What a beautiful and enjoyable day. The whole weekend was wonderful!

Some new paintings

A couple of weeks ago I did some small paintings that I really enjoyed. I had so much fun I think I'll keep doing some this size. They are about 5"x7". I think I'm going to put the one with the butterfly up on my Greeting Card Universe store and Cafe Press. Neither of the originals is available for sale, but prints of the butterfly one are.