Amana, Iowa...Day Two

After being on the road for a week, it was time this morning to do some housecleaning around the motorhome. This was after a monumental breakfast at one of the Amana Colony restaurants, unbelievable! We went to another restaurant for dinner tonight and decided we just cannot do that again....we will spend tomorrow and probably the next few days "drying out", with no carbs.

We went to Cedar Rapids this afternoon and saw Collins Radio as it is now....Tom worked here forty years ago for a few months before being sent to Viet Nam for Collins. Some things were the same, many had changed. We made a Wal mart run and then drove around taking photos. The Cedar River runs through the city and we found a few places to take photos, that is the big river in the photo. The other photo is of the creek that runs alongside one side of our RV park here. One additional Cedar Rapids note...Quaker Oats is here and when you are walking alongside the river you can smell the oats cooking. Really was interesting. General Mills is big here, too.

We will do some more sightseeing tomorrow and then it is on to Albert Lea, MN to check out my Norwegian side of the family's old homestead farm. I want to take photos and possibly paint it. I have certainly collected enough photos of barns and farms to be able to do a 100-painting series! The barns, especially, are so interesting...no two seem alike in any area but all are beautiful buildings.

Amana Colonies, Iowa

We are at the Amana Colonies in Iowa for the next three nights. We had our first really scrumptious dinner tonight. We will have to limit ourselves to trips to the restaurants since we could over-do without much provocation. But, we plan on a few more good meals while here! We drove without sunshine all day today but didn't get any rain until the last 15 minutes we were on the road, as we arrived here at the Amana Colonies RV Park. It is a huge and nice facility, as we remembered it.

Tom has worked with our satellite receiver and gotten it all to work except for last night, when it was so stormy and windy the dish wouldn't stay stable on the roof of the motorhome. Otherwise, it is great to have satellite reception when we are in the boonies! There are no trees blocking the direction of the dish here (as shown in the photo), so it should all work well. The sun has finally come out, it is about 7:00 here. Nice, mild temps. We read that the Phoenix area is having record heat right now, I am so glad we planned this trip! After spending half of July and most of August there, it is good to be away for awhile. Hopefully, when we return it will be to cooler temps there.

Kansas to Nebraska

We left Dodge City, Kansas this morning and stopped this afternoon near Grand Island, Nebraska. We finally got to an Interstate heading in the direction we want to go. We have decided that after traveling for three days on farm highways that Interstates are the way to go. There still is traffic on the smaller highways, lots of local haul trucks going very fast, and too many small towns where you have to slow to 20 mph, which really slows progress. However, I took 132 farm and barn photos today, and enjoyed seeing those small towns. The main street photo with this submission is one of the many small towns we went through today, I couldn't tell you which one. But, this is memorable for the brick street we traveled over, it shook everything loose in the motorhome (including the passengers!) and was quite an experience.

It has remained windy here on the Plains and tonight we had a thunderstorm. Thankfully, nothing monumental but when it thunders on the Plains, you know it!

Tomorrow we plan to head east and go to the Amana Colonies for a few days. We have been on the road for three days now and want to stay in one place for a few days. I can't think of a better place to do that with all the wonderful restaurants there....two days of gluttony!

New Mexico to Oklahoma to Kansas

We left Tucumcari, NM this morning and traveled through the extreme northwest corner of Texas, through about 50 miles of the Oklahoma panhandle and into Kansas. We are in Dodge City tonight. We will head for Interstate 80 and go east toward the Amana Colonies in Iowa tomorrow. We might go all the way to Amana, but might also stop before then along I-80. The weather is very windy and fairly warm here, but at night it does cool off along our trip so that is okay. At least it hasn't been above 100 on our trip, right at 99 is close enough, though!

More tomorrow....

Tucumcari, NM

We traveled from Las Cruces to Tucumcari, NM today. We avoided the busy interstates and chose to drive through the ranching highways and less traveled roads. Well, today that didn't work out as we had planned, there was a lot of traffic and more construction than we thought we would encounter. No problems though, and we arrived to our RV park for tonight, which happens to be off of Route 66. I can remember traveling through Tucumcari as a girl on our trips to Minnesota and I think that, though that was a long time ago, many of the same motels are still in business. Route 66 is still Route 66 here.

Tomorrow we will travel through the extreme northwest corner of Texas and into Kansas. The weather is cooperating so far, will hope for the best with that in the days to come.

August 25, Hatch NM

We drove to Hatch, NM today, it is time for the chile harvest there. Their annual Hatch Chile Festival is next weekend, I am glad we went when it was a bit quieter. There were quite a few vendors selling chiles and others were roasting huge bags of chile for sale. We bought two of the chile ristras, went to a chile field and took some photos, then ate lunch at a local Hatch restaurant. We both had local chile rellenos...yum! I bought a small basket of Anaheim chiles to take along and make rellenos on our trip as well as some local ground chile powder to make future enchiladas. We went right to the source! Hatch is purported to be the Chile Capital of the World...I don't know how true that is but they certainly sell a lot of chiles and chile products.

Tomorrow we plan to head toward Tucumcari and then on to the Midwest, barring floods or anything else going on where we are headed. We are watching that closely and may have to change our plans for destinations again...if it isn't fires in the West it is flooding in the Midwest. We will try to stay out of trouble.

August 24, 2007

We are in Las Cruces, NM until Sunday morning. We visited White Sands National Monument today. The "sand" is actually gypsum and in parts was a pristine white color. There are parts that have desert plants growing through the gypsum, and parts were high drifts. Then, we went to Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, a NM State Park. This has to be the highest volume of glyphs in one place of all the petroglyph sites we have visited. There were many glyphs that we had not seen before anywhere, and lots of them. The downside was that we visited between noon and 2:00 PM on a very hot and sunny day. We had to quit before the end of the trail happened because we got too hot, but not before I had just about ruined my poor feet climbing over many rocks to get good angles for the glyph photos (I took 125 photos there). At any rate, it was a wonderful petroglyph site to visit and after we downed 44-ounce icy diet drinks in Tularosa, we were revived and came back to Las Cruces. Tomorrow we will visit Hatch, NM...famous for Hatch Chiles. I want to try Chile Rellenos for lunch tomorrow at one of the local restaurants and possibly buy some chile ristras. Should be fun. No more rock climbing in the hot sun, though, for awhile!

This is my do-over, "Mulligan" painting of the Spanish Moss in the cemetery. I was trying for a different "mood" while trying to improve my rendition of the Spanish Moss. Which do you prefer?

Cemetery with Spanish Moss

This is a painting I did as a group project for one of my online art groups. We were to create a "mood" painting. This is from a photo I took in Walterboro, SC and it was sort of spooky but peaceful being in this very old cemetery with the Spanish Moss hanging from all the trees. I think I will start another painting from this photo and try another technique for the moss.

I have created a few new sets for my Travel Photos collection in Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcbysusanroper/

I will eventually get many more sets of individual trips and locations as I get to them. There are plenty more photos from where these came!

Walterboro Swamp Garden Final

After carefully considering the suggestions made by my two online critique groups, I made some changes in this, particularly in the water. It reads more realistically now, but seems to be overworked a bit. Of course, this is a very overgrown scene in real life, so part of me just considers this more realistic! Anyway, this is the final version so I will rest for awhile!

Walterboro Swamp Garden

This is a painting on Yupo I did of the Walterboro Swamp Garden in Walterboro, NC, which we walked through while on our trip there. It was early in the morning when I took the reference photo and the sun was dappling through the trees onto the dark floor of the swamp.

I am in the pondering stage of whether I am finished with this or not and awaiting any critiques from my online groups.

My latest SWAP painting

I belong to an online international group of artists who, every quarter, have a painting swap, sort of like a Secret Santa format where you don't know from whom you will be receiving a painting and they don't know who is sending them theirs. It has been a lot of fun, but no more enjoyable than today when I received this beautiful magnolia from Marilyn Fuerstenberg (Wisconsin). I have always loved her style of painting and especially appreciate the beauty of this. On our recent trip through the South I was introduced to the soft beauty of magnolias and can appreciate her rendering even more now. I am a lucky person today!

By the way, my swap partner this time was an artist in Tasmania! I sent him a petroglyph painted on Unryu paper and mounted to watercolor paper as he is a mineralogist and I thought he would appreciate something more organic and "earthy".

Road Trip

I have decided to title this one "Road Trip" and consider this the final version. I am pleased in that the eyes are better than any I have done, as well as I didn't age her as is very easy to do when painting portraits of babies. There will be much learned while doing this that I will apply to future portraits, all of which should make them easier to do.

Aubrey Howdy WIP 4

Today I did the third skin wash and added some hair (though she doesn't have much in real life, I needed to show what she does have!) and worked on her eyes. I need to do the entire background and detail her hand a bit more, lift a few highlights here and there and then I might be done. I love her inquisitive brows.

I see a few things I will watch out for in my next portrait, but I also see some growth in my skills after working on this one. Live and learn, but appreciate any growth!

Aubrey Howdy sans Sticker WIP

This is a work in progress of my granddaughter, Aubrey. I will explain the title of this post....the ref photo was taken on a recent car trip when Aubrey's Mom, Christine, gave her some stickers to play with. They stuck one that said "Howdy" on her forehead and took her photo. It made for an adorable photo, but I wanted to paint her expressive little face without the sticker so I ignored it but will call the painting "Howdy".

I am following along with Taylor Bush's excellent DVDs on portrait painting in watercolor. I am also submitting these WIPs to my online critique group, Watercolor Workshop, as I go along and making changes as suggested by those more experienced in watercolor portraiture than I, most notably Doris Glovier, who does wonderful portraits using the Taylor Bush method to best advantage. She gave me a hint on this WIP stage to remove some of the shading I have over Aubrey's right eye and forehead, now that she brought that to my attention I see exactly that it is what is needed. There is much left to be done on this, but I cannot go on without correcting any flaws in the structure shadows since adding skin washes atop incorrect ones will make them impossible to correct later. So, back to the drawing board on this and I will correct that ASAP. I'll add progression photos of this as I go along. Since this is my precoius Aubrey I feel a responsibility to make her look as wonderful in the painting as she does in the photo. Right now this is mainly the underpainting so the eyes will become darker, skin tones will even things out, etc. as I progress. If you are interested in seeing the two stages before this please go to my Flickr site, http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcbysusanroper/

Test

On my computer, it won't show yesterday's newest message with the Roxy painting until I click on the 2007 Archive button. On my husband's computer it does show up so I don't know what is happening, but I will try a test submission and see what that gets me....curious.

Roxy

Roxy is the desert tortoise pet of Destiny's. Destiny and everyone thought Roxy had died under some shrubbery because she (who knew she was a she?) had not been seen for so many months. She came out of hibernation this week so seems to be okay, hungry, but okay. They sent this photo and it just begged to be painted. This will be coming to a notecard near you soon!

Kennan and Destiny's paintings

As I said last week, my step-grand-girls came over to paint with me, we had such a fun day together! These are two of their paintings. Kennan is a fan of Marilyn Monroe and chose to paint a collage of some things Marilyn, I think she did a great job of a difficult project to do...a portrait. The White Tiger is by Destiny, who sat down and competently did a line drawing and then just jumped in with a brush in one hand and a sponge in the other and did the painting. Cool work, huh?

No matter...it is now mud!

I have cut this painting into stips since Icouldn't live with the mud I created! It is in a far better place! I will stay away from florals for awhile to soothe my soul, then try again. I do have a wonderful reference photo of our granddaughter by a pool to keep me busy so will stay with that one!

Midnight Gardenias WIP

This is a work-in-progress I have submitted for critique/help to the WcW. I see things in the photo that were not evident when I was working on the painting so I will make those changes and see if anyone in the group sees anything else to do with this. It sure helps to have those extra sets of eyes to see things.

Accidental Pots WIP

While enjoying a painting session with my "step-grand girls" yesterday (ages 11 and 15) we started playing with some Yupo. I was mainly just showing them how to drop the color in and let it do its thing. Instead of brushing water on the Yupo to dampen it prior to painting, I just spritzed on a fine mist to cover the paper. I found out that if you just touch the pigment to one of these drops, the paint will "travel" to the others, but leave white spaces in between, much like lacy flowers. How cool! I did this originally in portrait mode and then, just for the fun of it, turned it 45-degrees and discovered some "accidental" pots, looking like they were sitting in front of, and containing, flowers. So, this orientation it will be. I love that lacy look of the flowers, this Yupo is truly weird by wonderful! I will take it to my watercolor group this afternoon and decide if I need to refine any of this, but I sorta like the free-form look of it so may leave it alone. Any thoughts?

New painting photo storage site

Yahoo Photos has informed me they are not going to support their photo storage site after September, so I chose to have all of my painting photos uploaded to an account with Flickr. I have changed the link to direct you there in my Photo Gallery section to the right of this message. The new link is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcbysusanroper/ There are some housekeeping/organizing tasks to be done there to make my site look better, but I will get to those as I can later. For now, I saved all my archived painting photos from being deleted when Yahoo Photos closes its doors.

Blue Ridge Parkway Panorama

This is a panorama I shot of, and stitched together of about seven photos of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I am hoping it is visible at this size, but it is a huge file to make any larger. This is a beautiful drive but is even more impressive when it isn't cloudy as it was when we were there.

Magnolia Plantation on Yupo

I am saying this is the final version of this painting, but will await word from the WcW online critique group before spraying it with Krylon. I could not have gotten that bridge any more in the center of the painting if I had tried! There are lots of details to think of BEFORE committing pencil to paper for the drawing and I rarely think of EVERY one. I will just have to accept this broken composition "rule" once again and say I planned it to be in the center! Yeah, that's it.

Magnolia Plantation on Yupo WIP 2

I finished the upper right middle ground foliage and added the foreground foliage, along with a few more water reflections. After pondering this for awhile, I will add the footbridge along the back edge of the pond. I'm still liking the Yupo better than before, but it does require some different techniques. I will probably go back to the traditional Arches CP paper soon.

Magnolia Plantation on Yupo WIP

This is another attempt at painting on Yupo "paper", it is 26x22 in size and is still at the work in progress stage. I need to add the red footbridge that goes along the back side of the pond and do quite a bit more foliage detailing to get it right. So far, so good, though. One of the WcW members with an eagle eye for missed details noticed that two branches formed an X over the background vertical stump, so I will change that. It is invaluable to have critiques along the way!

Hopefully, more to follow.

Yupo Hollyhocks

I finished the Yupo Hollyhocks that I started in Taylor Ikin's Yupo workshop at the Boone in June Festival. This is truly a different approach to my painting flowers in that with Yupo the artist isn't necessarily in control of the finished painting! The smooth surface of the Yupo makes for lots of interesting accidents and results. It's fun working with it, though!

We are home!

After a month being on the road, it is good to be home...plus 100 degree temps notwithstanding! We have traveled through so many stormy, rainy areas it is actually good to see the DRY heat that is home to us. We have been in Charleston, SC during the time those brave firefighters lost their lives, we have seen the banks of the rivers in Texas exceed their capacity and make swamps of groves of trees, we have survived a night of fearsome winds in Van Horn, TX and made our way to home safely. So, the heat is just a major inconvenience compared to what others are dealing with, I know that we are the blessed ones! Our prayers to those who are enduring loss, whatever the toll.

We will unpack the motorhome and prepare to put it away until the next big adventure. It is too hot here to push ourselves and do it all at once, so we have adopted Scarlett O'Hara's motto of "tomorrow is another day".

Benson, AZ

We are finally back in Arizona....a month later and much soggier! The past two weeks have been spent trying to do things we wanted to do around the weather, which has been rainy to say the least. I am so happy we didn't decide to push ourselves to do more up the northern east coast, they are now getting hammered. We will come back to the Southwest and recover a bit, then probably will try our north to the Canadian Rockies trip...lots to do before then, though.

Home tomorrow...Yeah!

Van Horn, TX

We arrived in Van Horn, TX this afternoon. Finally, we are out of the rain! The creeks and rivers were going over their banks as we left the soggy eastern part of Texas this morning, I hope they will not have more problems, but it was too much rain for us desert dwellers! We were totally soggy.

This handsome Texas Longhorn greeted us as we arrived at the RV park this afternoon. I apologize for shooting his photo through the fence, but if you had seen the size of this beast, you would be as grateful as I that he was behind a fence! He was huge!

We will head farther West, towards home tomorrow. We probably won't arrive there until later in the week, but we are making progress.

MS, LA and TX

This is a river we passed over, which one it is I can't distinguish. Just know that I love all the rivers we have seen as they all have water in them, unlike the ones at home which carry sand most of the time.
We have been making our way westward for the past two days. Yesterday we started out from Edwards, Mississippi and drove through Louisiana and then through part of Texas. This involved a LONG trip around Dallas/Fort Worth, which we are glad to have in the rear view mirror. Texas can take days to get across so my next post will probably still show we are in Texas.

Last evening and night we had thunderstorms; lots of rain, thunder and lightening here. Hopefully that will clear and we won't have to drive in bad weather.

Atlantic Ocean, Magnolia Plantation and Charleston

We first took a side trip today to Edisto Island so I could see the Atlantic Ocean, I had never been near it before. We found some neat seashells and I got a few photos. We next visited the Magnolia Plantation. We barely touched the surface of this magnificent old plantation, but it was wonderful to get to see what we did. We rode a train around the perimeter, which took us past slave cabins, the main plantation house, gardens and ......best of all, the swamps! In the swamp photo, that partially submerged log in the center of the photo is actually an alligator! The gardens were so wonderful...I bet in the Spring they were really something to see with all the azaleas.

We then drove to Charleston for a little while. We walked along the oceanfront area, lovely old mansions, some newer homes done in the old style, etc. The weather was perfect, a light ocean breeze that was fairly cool.

A good day! We have decided to head back toward Phoenix tomorrow. Tom's done fairly well after his accident, but he still is nowhere near his baseline from before the fall, so just in case there is something that should be checked out, we want to have it done at home. Nothing alarming, it is just that we want to be on the safe side of this. So, we will turn our noses toward the West tomorrow.

Savannah, GA

We toured Savannah today, it was unfortunately a bad day for photography....rain and dark gray skies. But, we were there and I kept on taking photos, hoping for the best. We took a trolley tour of the historic district and the architecture there is wonderful; such old, well-maintained homes and mansions. The first photo is of Paula Deen's Lady and Sons restaurant. The people were lined up before 9:00 AM, with the line going around the block, just to talk to the hostess, who would tell people when they could come back to eat lunch. We satisfied our curiosity with taking photos of the place rather than using our time standing in line for that!

The second photo is of a Savannah River tugboat. If tugboats can be pretty, this one was....all sparkly clean and nicely painted. As we were riding the trolley out of the River Drive, a HUGE container ship from the Philippines came right up by the wharf and the tugboats were pushing it around. If we hadn't been on the trolley, that would have been an interesting process to watch the ship berth.

The third photo is of an entryway to a home in the historic district...a sample of what they look like. They are so large you can barely get the whole front in the photo and they mostly have the tall white columns. Just beautiful.

Tomorrow it is on to Charleston, hoping for better weather there.

Downtown Walterboro, NC

We toured the heritage district of downtown Walterboro, NC today. Some of the buildings were pre-Civil War vintage, some in this area go back to pre-Revolutionary War days!

The first photo is of a swamp garden we visited this morning. There are supposed to be gators in the water areas, beavers, etc...but neither of us felt like walking the entire 3-mile pathway to get to those areas, and the mosquitos had already found my skin to be inviting, so we walked as far as we could and then went back. In this photo, the sunlight was coming in dappled through the trees and lighting the water on the ground, which was a dark brown color so it looks like rusty areas, but it is the swamp water at the base of the trees. We saw what we thought were submerged alligators, or rather their air bubbles coming to the surface. I guess that is not a disappointment to miss seeing them in person 5 feet below the bridge we were standing on!

The flower photo is of gardenias, they are growing around us in the RV park where we are staying. They smell wonderful in person!

The house is one of the ones I photographed in the Heritage District. It was difficult to get good angles with all the huge trees, with hanging Spanish Moss covering the front views of the houses. Speaking of Spanish Moss, we drove through an OLD cemetery, where all the tombstones were really old and the trees had hanging moss; it looked strangely spooky as well as beautiful and peaceful there. This photo doesn't show all the moss that was there, but the tombstones and statuary were beautiful.

Tomorrow is on to Savannah, GA. Hopefully, the weather won't be stormy, we could have rain. Later.....

Beaufort SC

We made our way to Beaufort this morning. The first photo is of an old school bus that had been gutted and all the windows removed, making it a perfect vehicle for hauling watermelons! I might be odd, but I thought this was charming and just fun!

The Xterra is parked underneath one of the many Spanish Moss-covered trees here. That is some strange stuff! I walked across the street to the Federal Courthouse and found a wonderful Magnolia tree, with blossoms near enough the bottom branches that I could get some good macro shots. I love these flowers! They are enormous, and so waxy and beautiful.

We went to Hilton Head, also, but the only good thing we could find in our experience there was a wonderful bar-b-que place for lunch called Sticky Fingers. It was great! The beach area we finally found (after several trips around the loop) was so crowded that we could not have parked and walked down to the beach. I did get my first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean, though, through some of the walkways we passed. This was one crowded, hard-to-navigate, place.

We may stick closer to the Walterboro area, which we are using for our home base while in this area tomorrow. There are lots of antique stores, etc., and I need to make a Wal-Mart run, too. The weather is still very warm and HUMID, but is was a bit cooler today than yesterday. It cooled off fairly decently last night and this morning was nice. That sure changes once the sun gets going, though.

Walterboro, SC

We have made our way to Walterboro, SC today. It is so hot and humid! We had to get caught up on laundry today, and you have not lived until sitting in a laundry room with four dryers going full blast while the temps outside are 93 and with high humidity! Oh well, we got it all done and should be good for awhile.

We plan on using this as our home base while exploring Charleston, SC, ...Beaufort and Savannah while in the area. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate.

These hibiscus are the size of a salad plate and just glorious! These were on the entry path to the RV park office when we registered so I came back with my camera while awaiting the interminable washers and dryers. No wonder these tropical flowers grow so well here, there is high humidity so often!

More later as we explore the various areas....

End of Boone in June

I went to the Boone in June trade show this morning and met up with Barb. There were lots of bargains and some free stuff and lots of people! I practiced some constraint (both due to money and space to bring stuff home in the motorhome) but still got some nice art goodies. We also attended a one-hour demo by an artist with Golden paints, which was extremely interesting. Lots of new ideas to inspire us! We asked a stranger to take our photo to show our bags of purchases and she got more of the ceiling than the bags, and of course my eyes are closed, but we only had the one photo, so this is it.

Barb and Charlie left right after the demo to head back to the Chicago area, then to Wisconsin and then back to Surprise. We are heading toward Savannah, GA tomorrow to explore that area. Lots of art stuff to repack this afternoon! The weather here has been so rainy and foggy that we will not be sorry to leave, and hope for sunnier weather in the next area we visit.