Thursday's Child Has Far to Go...

Yes, I do, but I'm getting there!

Here are my reference photos for the watercolors I'm working on...

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Aren't these gorgeous?...(and they smelled divine!)...Oriental Lilies, "After Eight" ~

I love painting pink flowers, mainly so I can use the color called "Opera" by Holbein; so vivid and crisp on the bright white paper... and the shadow shapes on the petals are fun to do, too!...I'm painting this one on a full sheet of watercolor paper, 22"x30".

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I think I'm going to call this one "The Queen and Her Court" ~ the Queen being the gorgeous magnolia blossom, with a pretty "court" of pink and mauve hydrangeas. I love the slightly lemony, heady magnolia fragrance...they're blooming so early this year! This is going to be another large painting on a full sheet of WC paper.

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More hydrangeas, this time in shades of blue, some with just a hint of lilac. One of the most challenging parts of this painting and the magnolia one above will be the crystal bowl!

This will be a smaller painting, done on a half sheet of WC paper.

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I photographed this one of Leo looking at the cup (there's really Earl Grey in there) back when I was setting up teacup-and -bird's egg photos...it will also be a half-sheet painting.

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This one of Leo in the sun was taken this afternoon...he looks a little dejected, doesn't he? (Maybe he thinks I'm not paying enough attention to him...) He's definitely soaking up all the sun he can, though! I'm not painting this one, (too contrast-y to translate into watercolor well), but I had to add it...:^)

If I miss a few days posting, you will know what I'm up to! I'm a "realist" painter, and I try to compose with the camera as much as possible, so my paintings will look pretty much like the photos (hopefully!) ~





Which one is your favorite? ...I love to hear what you think!

Again, another week has flown by like the wind!!

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Anne



P.S. ~ When I went to publish this post, I saw that it was my 100th! I'm really glad I started blogging again ~ I should have started back sooner. It has been the little nudge ~ the encouragement ~ that I've needed to start joyfully "playing" again...and I've met so many wonderful people!

Thank you. ♥

(Linking to Beverly's Pink Saturday)

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"But is is Art?"...;^)

Yesterday I sketched all day; I'd finally decided I had to get serious about the upcoming art exhibit!...This afternoon the weather was so nice, though, I decided that I'd take one of the smaller paintings (this sketch was based on one of my tuberose photos) outside to work on....bad idea (after the first few little gusts of wind and curious bugs I began to recall why I had never done much plein air painting)!

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See the splotches of unforgiving (on watercolor paper, anyway) green on the far right blossom? (I will blame it on the wind!) ~ At that point I decided I would just "play" with this piece (after that post about being less critical of my artwork, more accepting of boo-boos, I couldn't in good conscience just throw it in the trash...) ~

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I decided that this would be a good painting to use some of my new Swiss Caran D'Ache crayons on ~ they're very cool water-soluble crayons-for-grown-ups (Blick Art Supplies) ~ I like how they add some texture and color to the dark passages of watercolor!

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So, though this will probably not make the cut for the exhibit, I had fun with it...not sure if it's "finished" yet, I'll probably play around with it a little more... some metallics, maybe?

Tomorrow, serious painting indoors...

Happy Wednesday!

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Anne

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Carved in Stone...

My daughters and I were planning to take lots of photos Saturday ~ (we were in Bellefontaine and Calvary Cemeteries in Saint Louis), but it was just too meltingly HOT...we all felt wilted before we could even begin...

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Here are a few photos I did manage to take despite my rapidly fogging lens...

(with the exception of the photo in the bottom right and top middle left ~ she is actually my favorite; taken in Soldier's Rest Cemetery, Vicksburg, Mississippi)...

I know to some it may be strange, but I absolutely adore memorial statuary; looking at it, touching it ~ (the decades, or a century or more, of weathering, lichens and moss...human touch)...



The Victorians had death down to an art, I believe.



 On the cusp of so much happening in the world...so many new inventions, their world was changing...yet there was still so much that they had no control over.



Death still came to their families, to old folks and babies, as well. So, if they had the means, they had their loved ones immortalized by the best artists...to me, many of the memorials of that time are as intricate and well-crafted as sculptures by the Old Masters...



I don't understand why this beautiful statuary fell out of favor, really. Maybe during the Depression, most were lucky to have any sort of memorial or marker...



Then, mid-twentieth century, I think ~ death became a taboo subject.



Many of the illnesses that had befallen children earlier had become a thing of the past, with new vaccines...



People were living much longer...



Cemeteries became "gardens" of artificial flowers in handy little bronze vases that could be folded down for ease of maintence. Cemeteries were now Memorial Parks...

Death had become sanitized.



Personally, I prefer the Victorians' way.



(I'm working on a second blog that is mostly about memorial statuary, with a little genealogy thrown in for good measure...)



Another week begins, another opportunity to accomplish great things!

(As for me, I just hope to complete a couple of watercolors!)



Happy Monday!



♥ ♥ ♥

Anne





(I've linked this to Little Red House's Mosaic Mondays); check it out!

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Ta~da! Move-in Day for the Fairies...:^)

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Finally, the little Fairy House is finished...

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I thought I would never get all the pinecone scale-shingles cut and glued on...

the whimsical little "Curly-Q" of a stem was saved from one of our fall pumpkins...

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The over-the-door rose arbor was a last minute idea...

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I love the scale of this tiny "Pinky" thyme flanking the door ~ and doesn't that tiny perennial "Leptinella" look exactly like tiny fern fronds? ...A wind-y pea-gravel path to the door insures that the Fae won't get muddy feet...;^)

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Jonathan and I found this rock in a stream near Meramec Caverns when he was small...we thought it looked like a little cave; now it's the perfect Toad House...

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After I added the yellow "rose arbor" to the house, I planted a yellow Calibrachoa (that looks like tiny petunias) in the garden...the purples and yellows are the perfect color complement, I think!

Directly above the drusy-crystaled rock I've planted Orange Thyme (I have Lemon Thyme in my herb garden, but this was new to me...it really smells like orange!); to the left of that is more Leptinella, and above that is purple Calibrachoa and Pinky Thyme.

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 Isn't it amazing how repairing, instead of replacing, was once the norm...even for a huge, heavy iron kettle?

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Night-time in the Fairy-Garden...

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Let me back up and show you how I finished the Fairy House (look in my older posts for how I started it)...after getting all those little "shingles" glued on, I used Diamond Varathane to protect them...yes, it would have been much easier to use a spray sealer, but most of those don't do well with polymer clay (I've read that it can turn into a gooey mess)...I could have covered the polymer window, but just went with the Varathane to be on the safe side.

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I used the Varathane over the whole gourd base since I had used polymer clay on it, as well. When I molded the clay components right on the gourd, I didn't know if they would stick to it or not; if they hadn't, they would have been molded to the exact shape and would have been easy to glue back on ~ surprisingly, though, they stuck tight after being cured in the oven.

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After putting the "roof" on and taking it off several times, I thought it looked like these was just too much space over the door...so I decided to add yellow roses (as a nice accent for the purple) and more leaves to the "vines" over the doorway...

I had a "Teasing Georgia" rose once that was yellow with just the slightest blush of pinky-coral in the center and at the edge of the petals, so I decided to go for that look on the roses, using just the barest touch of Pink Gold and Salmon Pink Pearl Ex powders on them...

(It's easy to go overboard with Pearl Ex because it's just so darn much fun to use!)

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To make the roses, I rolled out little pea-sized balls of  polymer clay; then I pressed them flat...

paper-thin at the edges, and just let them be very irregular...you'll need several, depending on the size of the rose...

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I started the center of the rose by putting 2 of the petals together and rolling them tightly together at one end...

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Finish the blossom by layering and overlapping petals as you go...(I pinched off the excess clay on the back, leaving just a little "tail" to secure to the vine...)

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I added roses of different sizes until I thought it looked "filled in" enough...buds are just a curl of polymer clay, pinched to a bit of a point...

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Woo helped me by keeping me company, but she thought the whole process was pretty boring...

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The finished roses...

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decided not to try to glue the roof on; it's really pretty heavy, and shouldn't blow off...

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 The finished house! I know, not all of it shows in the "garden"...

but I like the way it's tucked into the plants... it looks like it's been there for a long time...

Thank you all for being patient with this drawn-out project, and for all your sweet comments and encouragement...I truly had so much fun with it!

My plan now is to make some little "inhabitants" for the garden...(maybe not the traditional "Fae")...and to experiment with some photography for note cards...

Have a wonderful Friday!

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Anne



P.S. ~ Jeanne suggested that I add the Fairy Garden to the contest at The Magic Onions, so I did! (Thank you!)

Also linking to:

The Brambleberry Cottage's Time Travel Thursday

Sunday's Best ~ 1929 Charmer

The Tablescaper ~ Seasonal Sunday

Savvy Southern Style's "Wow-Us Wednesday"

The Dedicated House's "Make It Pretty Monday"

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Happy May Day!

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Mr. B. picked some daisies by the side of the road for me today...

they brought back still more childhood memories...

Did you sing that song, ..."Daisy, daisy, give me your answer, do..."

when you were little? I did...a lot, if memory serves...it was only one of my wide repertoire, sung loudly (and off-key, I'm sure ~ I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket) while swinging on the little wooden-seated swing that hung under my Grandma and Grandpa's carport...



I got to thinking about that little song...what was it called? ("A Bicycle Built for Two" was what I thought...) ~ Here is what I found on Wikipedia...

"Daisy Bell" was composed by Harry Dacre in 1892. As David Ewen writes in American Popular Songs^[1]

When Dacre, an English popular composer, first came to the United States, he brought with him a bicycle, for which he was charged duty. His friend (songwriter William Jerome) remarked lightly: 'It's lucky you didn't bring a bicycle built for two, otherwise you'd have to pay double duty.' Dacre was so taken with the phrase 'bicycle built for two' that he decided to use it in a song. That song, Daisy Bell, first became successful in a London music hall, in a performance by Katie Lawrence. Tony Pastor was the first one to sing it in the United States. Its success in America began when Jennie Lindsay brought down the house with it at the Atlantic Gardens on the Bowery early in 1892.

So..."Daisy Bell" it is....you learn something new every day (it doesn't have to be useful)!

Daisies grew in the alley behind my Grandma and Grandpa Collier's house, too...they didn't last long, however, as my little girlfriends and I used them as fortune-tellers practically as soon as they unfurled their little petals...

"He loves me, he loves me not"...

Except we didn't really care about the "love" fortune-telling part...

We used them to foretell more important things...

"Will I get a bicycle for my birthday?"

"Will I ever get a pony??"

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A Maypole Dance in Central Park, 1905

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A Victorian trade card for Childs' Golden Japanese May Berry

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A sweet little vintage May Day postcard...

A maypole is a tall wooden pole erected as a part of various European folk festivals, particularly on May Day, or Pentecost (Whitsun) although in some countries it is instead erected at Midsummer. In some cases the maypole is a permanent feature that is only utilised during the festival, although in other cases it is erected specifically for the purpose before being taken down again.

Primarily found within the nations of Germanic Europe and the neighbouring areas which they have influenced, its origins remain unknown, although it has been speculated that it originally had some importance in the Germanic paganism of Iron Age and early Medieval cultures, and that the tradition survived Christianisation, albeit losing any original meaning that it had. It has been a recorded practice in many parts of Europe throughout the Medieval and Early Modern periods, although became less popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, the tradition is still observed in some parts of Europe and amongst European communities in North America.

  

For the Ribbon Dance, dancers gather in a circle, each holding a colored ribbon attached to a much smaller pole. As the dance commences the ribbons are intertwined and plaited either on to the pole itself or into a web around the pole. The dancers may then retrace their steps exactly in order to unravel the ribbons. This style of maypole dancing originates in the 18th century, and is derived from traditional and 'art' dance forms popular in Italy and France. These were exported to the London stage and reached a large audience, becoming part of the popular performance repertoire. Adopted at a large teacher training institution, the ribbon maypole dance then spread across much of England, and is now regarded as the most 'traditional' of May Day's traditional characteristics.



The earliest use of the Maypole in America occurred in 1628 in New Plymouth, where a number of servants broke free from their indentured service to create their own colony, setting up a maypole in the center of the settlement, and behaving in such a way as to receive the scorn and disapproval of the nearby colonies.





There you have it...May Day and daisy trivia...you never know when it will come in handy! :^)



I hope everyone said "Rabbit, rabbit"!



Happy Wednesday, all.



♥ ♥ ♥

Anne

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Saturday Evening...

We really didn't get a whole lot accomplished today. Good intentions, just a little blah....

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Sweet Cyrus has napped on the couch on and off all day...

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"What?? You lookin' at me?"

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Woo still looks a little pitiful, doesn't she?

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She's been making the most of her convalescense...still in the middle of my bed for most of the day...

However, I just looked down and there is Woo at my feet, here at my computer desk...I guess she's ready to rejoin society!

Have a wonderful Sunday, everyone!

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Anne

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Rose Gardens & Tallulah...

First of all, Tallulah ~ Woo ~ and I want to thank everyone for all their well-wishes...she is feeling better today, purring in the middle of my bed with her favorite wet food just a few inches away. Major surgery just seems so much more major when the patient is only 5 pounds! When I pet her, she stretches and curls her little toes, then rolls over as if to say "See my boo-boo? I don't even remember how I got it!"...;^) ~ Woo is definitely on the mend... Leo and Cyrus (both neutered as kittens) are rejoicing at the quiet!

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An Eden Rose...also known as the Pierre de Ronsard Rose (photo from the German garden site Baumschule Horstmann)...

I want one!...Doubt if I find any in this neck of the woods, though, so I will be looking online for growers...

SO beautiful...big cabbagey blooms that start with a little green...I think they are just magnificent! makes me want to do a BIG luscious watercolor of one! (Or many!)

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My post today isn't really about roses, though.

A sweet commenter mentioned my attention to detail in the work on my little gourd "Fairy House", and it got me to thinking...

I started my blog back to inspire myself, really.

To be able to look and see things I have accomplished, when I don't feel I have accomplished much at all. That, and as a place to tell stories that I think my (grown) children might enjoy, that I've just neglected to mention ~ forgotten in the whole busy-ness of life when they were small ~ or perhaps told one, if something reminded me, and not the others. So many things come to mind, I've found, when one gets a little older...

just saying...;^)

I wanted a place that could be about art, animals, gardening, life ~ a little about family but not enough to encroach on their privacy. A "Happy Place" if you will. I choose the subject matter; drama free.



(I do check Facebook almost daily,  but I've found it is so easy to get caught up in the drama of others...though not usually in my closest circle of friends, it's still there.) So, I will usually only post about life's "ups" instead of "downs"...we all have them. This once, though, I wanted to tell about myself and maybe inspire, or encourage someone else.



I used to be SO picky ~ OCD-picky ~ about my artwork (and other things) that if it wasn't perfect...perfect...if one little thing went awry...I would either give up on it; start over (with often the same thing happening again) or just throw it away in disgust.



I never got much art done, needless to say.



Remember that song "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden"...?



In 1999, I got breast cancer. It was bad. Invasive ductal carcinoma; double mastectomies, (a reconstruction disaster), 6 months of agressive chemotherapy.



I wasn't afraid, but I was disappointed...Shoot...I'll never get to open that little shop... (the next year my oldest daughter Mandy opened her own retail shop, and I occasionally helped her ~ that got "shop owner" out of my system really fast!)



Then, to my amazement, I didn't die. God is great, and chemo ~ in this case ~ really did its job.



And you know what else?



I wasn't so picky anymore.



I could create something...paint something, and it didn't have to be perfect...

I found that things ~ anything, not just art ~ didn't
have to be perfect to be
excellent...

and that with many things (like housework), "good
enough" is plenty good enough.

I wish I had learned this lesson a long time ago
(without the cancer).

I still need motivation, though, and I'm finding that in
blogging. If I say I'm going to do something on here, I will do it. (Maybe not
the next day or three, but I
will...)

Thank you for "listening" to all that.

I'm going to go (carefully) snuggle
Woo.

Happy Friday!

♥ ♥ ♥

Anne

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