Green

Leaves are one of my favorite things to photograph, partly for their infinite variety of shape, and partly for their range of color.

Some green ones:

There are more than 2000 shades of green in nature - amazing but true!

WHOOSH!!

Something weird's happened!  I'm in Houston since the 24th of October, and I made a whole bunch of posts that I scheduled for publishing every couple of days that I was here.  That way my blog would be updated even if I didn't log on, which is exactly the case, by the way - I'm hardly ever going online.  For the first time in several years all my family is together, ecxept for DaddyBoy, unfortunately.  You can probably imagine what it's like, especially with three little kids running around all the time.

So anyway, I thought I had it all covered.  Until just now. 

I log in and find all those posts still sitting in my folder as drafts. 

Arrrghh.

I had never mentioned my Houston trip before because it was a surprise for my parents and I thought putting it on the blog was a big risk.  They were surprised all right, but so was I when I just discovered all those posts lseeping in my folder.

More arrrrggghh.

So if at all you were wondering why I suddenly disappeared, now you know!

A giant, candy fountain...

...or something like it!

Can You Tell I'm Having Fun?

My long-awaited white pens are here - the uni-ball Signo UM-153.  Oh these guys are good, but so hard to find.  I finally hit jackpot on ebay, and these are my very first drawings.

A Constant Heart

Exhiliration

We Can Be Friends

Aisha Dean, Artist. Age 28 Months.

Surprised Baby

Sleeping Baby

Ballet-Dancer Baby

Very Happy Baby

Uncle Dave

(don't ask me!!!)

Snuggly Baby

Book Illustration - A Walk Among The Flowers

I had to make a little cat enjoying the flowers - so this is what I drew.  It's a pencil drawing on photocopy paper, without any corrections.  I did have a glitch in the tendril coming out of the flower in the left corner when my own KittyKat, always curious to see what Mommy is drawing, nudged my elbow (she was on my lap, as usual).  But I was too lazy to go looking for an eraser so I let it be, hoping to fix it while coloring the picture.

Then I scanned my drawing, and then using Levels in Photoshop, darkened the lines a bit, so it looks more like I used black ink rather than pencil.  Dark lines help when you want to color your drawing with Illustrator.

After opening the file in Illustrator I converted the drawing to a Live Paint Tracing, which allows me to quickly paint individual segments using the paint bucket.

So here are two variations using essentially the same colors, although not the exact shades.  It's interesting to see how the colors interact visually when you change their proportions.

I'm not sure which one I like better, though I do prefer the red background.

The kitty looks happy either way!

Fine Art Photos

The latest listings in my shop are not paintings, but photographs that I've taken but never thought about selling.  But these are pretty nice for the shop, I thought, so I've listed the first three, and hope to put the others up soon too. 

(Listing Genie, where are you??)

Bangles from a trip to India earlier this year.

Foxgloves in our patio, long gone of course...

Geranium leaf from one of my four geranium pots.  This was right after I had watered them.  That leaf texture looks so much like suede!

Rose of Sharon, also from the patio.  They are purple actually, not this deep pink that I made them.

And dreamy white flowers from a tree by the lake.  The stamens are actually yellow, not pink, and I added those fuzzy yellow blobs as well.

Recent Work

It's definitely Fall here now - the trees are all getting decked in their flaming finery, the sun is warm and toasty, the breeze has just the slightest nip in it.  And if that wasn't enough confirmation, DaddyBoy went and got himself a can of hot chocolate, and that, my friends, seals the deal!

We haven't seen the sun in quite a few days here, or I haven't been home when it did come out, so it's been very difficult to take good pictures of what I've been doing lately.  The colors are so much deeper and brighter in the original paintings, but until I can get better pictures here they are - all three are acrylic paint on stretched canvas.

I call this one "Night Garden", with its mysteriously deep tones of smoky blues and greens and reds.

This one just vibrates with energy, which I am unable to capture in a picture.  The blue shapes simply pulsate against the red-orange background, and the grille design I painted in the corner somehow stabilizes it, or you could literally hear this piece buzzing!

Orange for joy and energy, pink for hope and innocence, a row of balloons for my little NanoBot!

I've managed to get Night Garden up in the store, but I should really work on my inventory there.

It's just that I hate the whole chore of listing something in the shop - I wish I could just paint and somehow magically have everything listed!  Wouldn't that be nice?

When the BabyBug was to be born, I seriously considered a water birth.  I can't recall now why I didn't go through with it, and just opted for a regular home delivery, but a water birth would have been cool!  Hmm...now I'm being transported back in time when as a kid I read Charles Kingsley's Water Babies again and again with undying fascination.  It wasn't even my book!  Gotta get a copy for myself now!

So, anyway, a few minutes ago DaddyBoy had the Bugsie on his lap, and he was telling her about how he would be taking her swimming soon, and I was sitting at my computer right beside them, and well, I got thinking about water.

And this happened!  I call it Water - Three Ways.   Pools, puddles, streams, raindrops and rivulets - it has them all!

Will take a test print and see if it's Etsy-worthy, but on screen it looks amazingly vibrant!

White Flowers - Two Views

I've been away for almost a week, but I do have work to show for it!  just haven't gotten around to getting it up online, which is what I should be doing instead of playing around with yet more pics from my camera!

How color changes the mood of the same image!

Stay tuned for more color!