Painting, Cookies and Special Memories

 Yesterday was the day! Our son, DIL and granddaughter, Aubrey, spent the day with us and had Aubrey's second of three Christmas celebrations. They will continue on, weather permitting, to New Mexico to be with Aubrey's other grandparents for her third Christmas of the season. It was a special time since, at the age of almost five years, Aubrey is able to fully participate in all of the activities that Grandma had planned, and carry on lively conversations all the while. Here we have Aubrey and her Daddy assembling the desk/easel that Grandpa Tom found for her artwork. It took awhile to put together, but Aubrey pronounced that she "loved it" upon completion, so that was a good thing!

 We baked chocolate chip cookies and we did a super job because they were delicious! I have to say, though, that the sugar rush that resulted (and lasted all day) just about wore poor Grandma out by the end of the day.

No photos were taken of Aubrey and I painting, but we did paint for quite awhile. Grandma's Frig Gallery now has some new pieces of artwork added to the collection. She brought her brushes I sent her with her and pulled them out immediately upon coming into our house and said "let's paint, Grandma"! Later, we did paint and she painted what she said she was going to paint for me....a car and some trees.

For my background-challenged artist buddies you will note that around the trees she actually carefully painted a light blue sky!

Today she wants to make a bracelet for herself and paint some more. What fun this is!

Happy Holidays!

I want to wish all of my blog followers and their loved ones a happy holiday season and the very best of new years. Since 2010 has been such a challenging time for so many of us, if you pray please pray for a healthier, happier and more prosperous new year.

I am thankful for all of my family's blessings, as well as my online friends (many of whom are like family to me) and send prayers for a special 2011 for them all.

May God bless us, one and all.....Susan

Well past my anniversary

I just went back to my very first post on this blog, it was  October 11, 2006. So I am past my fourth anniversary with this blog! Time certainly flies. I look back at my first timid attempts at blogging and am thankful I did not give up back then and stop trying to blog. Soon after starting this blog, we started construction of my art studio onto our house. That was fun revisiting that process, although I doubt I would want to go through that again. Needless to say, the room looked much bigger then than it does now with all of my files (better make that piles!) taking up every available space in here. Sigh. Thankfully, it has French doors leading into it so I can just close the doors and the blinds on the door and my disorganization goes away. That is better than, gasp, cleaning and organizing it or something!

Not much time left before Christmas friends! We are as close to being ready as we care to get for now and will just take things as they come. This is not the year for big celebrations for us; we are just thankful that we are all still here and reasonably healthy and able to enjoy our families and friends. God is good.

Neglected painting

Alas, an entire week has passed and I have done nothing with  this painting. I have had muscle spasms between my shoulder blades and have had a very uncomfortable week. I could not even think of lifting a paint brush so there it is...my painting is sitting with the temporary mat where I left it last Sunday. Maybe I should have tried to paint while under the influence of muscle relaxer meds...they might have loosened my painting style some? LOL

I will be keen to work with it when I can, although in this last few days before Christmas I am sure I will have other noteworthy excuses to offer of why I haven't been able to work on this. I still have plans and inspiration, though!

La mesa de mi padre WIP 3

I decided to digitally crop this to see what I thought; not sure, still. That's the beauty of digital imaging, you can completely destroy the photo but not the painting before you act! I do like the tighter focus of this, though, so the final crop (with the scissors!) will be something similar, I am sure. I have added two more glazes to the stucco here, but didn't wait for the last glaze to dry before shooting the photo, hence the wrinkles in the wet paper. I will add at least one more glaze to the stucco and then start detailing the pots and table. At that point, most of those hard edges will be softened and it will start to come together better. That is my plan, anyway...we all need to have plans!

Sunset

I am mulling it over to crop the la mesa de mi padre WIP before I continue with it so, in the meantime, thought I would share this sunset photo from two nights ago. This is looking toward the west (obviously, it is a sunset photo!) from our neighborhood. I especially love the sunrises at this time of the year here, but this sunset caught my attention as being worthy of a quick photo.

La mesa de mi padre

 This is the sketch and underpainting of my next project. I am using another of Roch's excellent photos for this painting. It is of a portion of his patio, and shows a table hand-made by his father when Roch was a young boy. His father has passed and he cherishes this table, crooked though it is. It sits among a colorful set of Mexican pots and, as his photos usually do, has great light-dark contrasts. I intend to maintain these contrasts as much as I can throughout the painting.

As I have been doing lately, I am working on starting paintings with a purple grisaille underpainting. I want to explore this technique more fully to see how it works for me. So far, so good.

This is the next WIP, which shows the first glaze of color over the masking fluid applied here and there. There will be many more glazes to show the stucco and flagstones as they need to be, as well as the very dark shadows enveloping the pots.

As very often happens I see, now that this is on the computer screen, that I have drawn and painted the table top incorrectly. So, thanks to my trusty Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (MCME) I will attempt to correct this so it reads better. What was I thinking? When it comes to drawing, who knows....it is just wrong!

For those whose Spanish is better than mine, please advise if I have incorrectly titled this...I am trying to say "The Table of my Father"