Photography Safari

We spent yesterday morning at Rockhound State Park and kept looking at the ground for rocks that were interesting. This is a park where you area allowed to collect rocks and keep them. We found some jasper and rhyolite, and others that are just interesting, I have no idea what they are. We will fire up the tumbler when we return home. Here is my weapon of choice when on photo safari, with my new longer lens attached. So far, I am liking it really well.

The other photo is of a dumb photographer we saw who should have known better than to climb up on those rocks! Oh well, at least I had my walking stick for balance.

I'll do another entry for today's adventure....

Deming, NM

We are in Deming, NM for a few days. We plan on using this as our home base and scooting around nearby places and exploring more. Our first day we spent the morning exploring City of Rocks, a bizarre area of rocks resembling Bedrock of the Flintstones' fame. It is a state park and is halfway between Deming and Silver City.

These four photos are of that area. I was experimenting with my new 70-300 mm lens for my Olympus (early happy birthday from Tom!) and it was great to have. I was much farther away from these rocks than it appears in the photos.

When you see the bird in the yucca photo, I had seen this mama bird on the nest on our way past on this loop of the park and on our way out found it again and zoomed in close. I am not a birdwatcher so cannot identify her species but you can kind of see her chick to her lower right. Judging by her size and her beak, I am reminded of a small falcon I saw at Sonoran Desert Museum and it was identified as a falcon, so maybe it is one?

Windows to the Past

I promised myself I would finish this by the end of the week and I hope it is finished. I will have it critiqued by the WcW group and see what they think. I enjoyed doing this one, as I have all the paintings I have done from Roch's photos.

Window to the Past - WIP 2

I forgot to stop and take a photo a few stages ago, I just started painting and kept on going. I have the shadows mostly established now on the wall stucco and adobe bricks and will start texturing the areas more next. I still need to paint what wood is left on this wall, also. At this point, I am trying to decide whether to deepen the values of that sky or not, I know I need to add some ground shadows under some of the closest foliage. Still plenty to do, but I'm still lovin' this one.

Window to the Past - WIP 1

This painting WIP is from another wonderful photo courtesy of Roch at NM Jeep Tours. It is of a crumbling ruin of an old adobe building. I have most of the center section done but will tweak the values once I get the adobe walls finished so I can see how much darker the values have to be.

As always, I appreciate Roch's continued willingness to have me paint from his excellent photographs.

I look forward to working more on this one!

Bracelets for Aubrey

I made two stretchy little bracelets for my granddaughter, Aubrey, and sent them to her in a package with some goodies we found for her on our recent trip. She models one of these bracelets here. I guess she was pretty excited to get them and even recognized it was her package since it had her personalized pink address label with the bear on it, so it was from Grandma. Cool.

Even more cool is the fact that after opening the package and rifling through the contents, she asked if when Daddy gets home they could Skype Grandma and talk to her. A true child of the millennium! This is so cool being a grandparent in this age of easy communication with those who don't live close to you, they are but a mouse click away!

I found a package of these butterfly glasses for children and knew they would be perfect for her so included those, too. She looks mahvalous!

Easter Aubrey - 2009

I have been working on this painting of Aubrey now for over a month, off and on. Well, more off than on, but I am at the point where I dare not scrub out that basket handle one more time or there will be a hole in the paper! I concentrated on getting Aubrey done as well as I could and ended up messing up the basket handle. Duh. Anyway, I accomplished her dress and the mood of this scene and am fairly happy with it.

Aubrey is now a three-year-old, hard to believe she is that age already.

Best Laundry Day Ever

Today I needed to wash a few loads of laundry. Outside the laundry building was a nice porch with chairs to pass the time while the machines do their thing. Across the way was a pile of fallen wood. In this pile, a mama fox had a litter of three pups. I sat on the porch for an hour and a half watching these pups cavort on these logs. I didn't have my multiplier lens with me when they were the most active, so this photo is the best I can show after Tom brought the lens to me. They were playing closer to where I was at first and so cute. I think you can click on this photo and make it larger and, hopefully, see these babies better.

Georgia O'Keefe Country

Wednesday we drove toward Abiquiu, NM. This is the land where Georgia O'Keefe lived and painted in her later years. I can see why. As is very typical of this area, the clouds build up just about every afternoon and bring very dark skies. These dark skies, though, have cloud holes which light up the wonderful buttes and cliffs like a spotlight, making for much fun photography.

As we left and started climbing the mountain again toward Chama, the black clouds just broke loose with a terrific downpour, so that was exciting, too!

Sky Mountain RV Resort in Chama, NM

We traveled this morning to Chama, NM. The sun was shining most of the way here from Santa Fe, but the clouds were gathering in the direction we were heading. It waited until we arrived and got our RV site hooked up before it started raining; so I was able to get a few photos before I came in and started posting on the computer.



We are staying at Sky Mountain RV Resort, which is a lovely setting beside the Chama River. We chose a site which is under the tree canopy and about 10-feet from the river. As I am typing the water is flowing right in front of our rig, with the large windshield affording us a wonderful view of the river. The temps here have been in the high thirties overnight and in the seventies during the day...makes me hate the thought of returning to the desert on this coming weekend! We'll enjoy the cool and clean green while we can and return home early next week.

I plan to sit out beside the river and do some pleine air painting while here, it just begs for that!

Unser Racing Museum

While in Albuquerque we visited the Unser Racing Museum. This is a very state-of-the-art museum with many digital visual displays as well as many of the Unser family race cars on display. We saw all of their championship rings, trophies and many photos of races we remember watching on TV.

While there, Tom climbed into the cockpit of the race car simulator and thought it was an excellent simulator. It looked like fun to me, too, but I was too much of a wimp to try after seeing Tom was able to get the car up to 180 mph without crashing it.


We always have thought about stopping by the museum while traveling through Albuquerque but had not done that, it is worth stopping for.

A few New Mexico Photos

This first photo is of Roch, our guide who owns NM Jeep Tours. He is a very experienced guide who knows a great deal about the beautiful state of New Mexico and loves to enjoy the natural settings he shows to people. If you are interested in taking a tour with Roch when in New Mexico, check out his website at www.NMjeeptours.com. He is willing and able to custom design a tour for anyone's special interests and needs. He shares his photos of these tours on his Flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/29864089@N06/...check it out if you want to see some of the true beauty that is New Mexico.


This next photo is of some of the red rocks we saw at the last part of our daylong tour. It had rained on them and the red color was especially vivid at that time. The wash was dry, but very colorful with the red soil.








This petroglyph of a mask, probably ceremonial, was found at a site in the mountains and was very isolated, which is a good thing since it was not a protected site. There was no graffiti, which was especially nice to see. Thankfully, Roch has permits which allow him access to these wonderful sites on tours and I felt as though we were being given a special gift, seeing petroglyphs which few have seen.


We also visited the Unser Raceing Museum while in Albuquerque, I have not downloaded my camera photos of that yet, so will do that later. All-in-all this has been a great half of our trip and we move on to the last week tomorrow morning, leaving Santa Fe and traveling to Chama, NM. Cool weather, here we come!

We're Still Alive

I will try to include some photos later, but I just wanted to let you all know we are still alive and well, having a good time, but unable so far to get good WiFi reception so I have not been in contact with anyone either through the blogs or e-mail.

We spent a few days in Las Cruces where I found a great bead store and we had good weather. We traveled to Albuquerque for five days and the WiFi system at our RV park was being worked on so we had nothing there. So far, so good, at this RV park near Santa Fe. The park is beautiful with mountains and trees.

We took our tour with Roch of New Mexico Jeep Tours on Wednesday and had a wonderful day. He really knows the area and is a wonderful tour guide, stopping whenever I asked so I could take as many photos as I wanted (almost 500 that day). He is a great photographer too, so was willing to stop when he knew of a good place for that best camera angle. More about this great tour company in a later post.

The dialysis in the motorhome is going well and we are encouraged that we can continue to travel this way. It is more complicated than before, but do-able at this point and we still love to travel in our motorhome.

I will organize some of my photos and post them here soon, WiFi willing!

Aubrey Easter WIP 3

I got to work on this at the art club this afternoon and found it so enjoyable! Only my BFF Barb was there but we solved the problems of the world while we worked on our paintings!

There are still many little things to be done to this but so far, so good! I need to make her look more like three-year-old I think, she has been aged a bit more than reasonable in this. We'll see how it all turns out.

Easter Aubrey WIP II

I made some time this morning to add to this, I just had to make her look less like a ghost child. I strengthened the modeling shadows and glazed another layer of skin color and started on the hair. It helps that she, in real life, has hair the color of quin burnt orange, how cool is that?

There is still much to be done with her before I begin the foliage fine-tuning; if I can't finish her to my liking there is no need to go on to the foliage! So far, so good.

PS...the first WIP photo was taken early this morning inside, thus the yellowish tinge. I should have corrected the white balance for that but I didn't. This photo was taken outside and more truly reflects the true colors of the painting so far.

Easter Aubrey - WIP

After Easter, I received a photo of Aubrey at an Easter Egg Hunt that just said "paint me, Grandma!" So, I decided to do just that. I am trying a different technique with this one. We saw a demo at a recent AAG meeting where the artist used clear Contact paper for masking larger areas. I painted the modeling shadows grisaille first, then the slightest tint to her hair and skin. When that was dry I placed the Contact paper over all of her figure and then used a sharp utility knife (yikes!) to cut around Aubrey's entire figure. When I lifted the excess paper off, I found that I had not cut any of the w/c paper...hooray! I used a brayer to burnish the edges of the paper to make sure nothing seeped underneath and then did my usual wet-in-wet foliage underpainting and just sloshed away, splattering Aubrey's little figure with green paint, praying the entire time that the Contact paper would hold. When I removed the Contact paper, I found that some of the green had seeped onto her left arm. So, I put a piece of Contact paper over that arm, cut out her arm shape, then used my Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and scrubbed the offending paint off. It worked!

What do I think of this method of masking now? One disadvantage is you are still left with those pesky hard edges that will have to be softened in places, just like masking fluid. An advantage is you can splash freely without using a gallon of masking fluid beforehand. I will try this Contact paper technique more and see what I think.

I did use masking fluid in the greens to preserve the geranium shapes, which will be a bright pink/red color. Lots of negative painting later in that foliage, I dislike that part of the process, but will endure since I think this photo has such merit.

More to follow as I have time....

Madhu's Misty Morning

This is a painting I just finished from a photo supplied with permission to paint from a fellow Watercolor Workshop member, Madhu. This photo seemed so calming to me that I thought I would paint it and try for that misty background look I like.

Thanks Madhu!

Image size 25 x 17, watercolor on Arches 140-lb paper

New Blog!

I have decided to create a new blog to showcase my artisan jewelry, my newest passion. I am not forsaking my passion for watercolor, but felt that it would be more appropriate to separate these passions with their own blogs. What is one more blog for me to oversee?

I will add the link to this new blog to my links list or you can see it at: http://lovebeadsandwire.blogspot.com/. It is in its infancy at this stage, so watch for changes and additions as they happen.

I hope to see you over at Artisan Jewelry by Susan Roper!

Kinda/Sorta Poppy

I was in the mood this morning to paint something "Springy" so I chose this poppy. I love poppies and their large petals.

Here on the desert it is nearing our first 100-degree day (could happen this afternoon!) so it will soon be too late for delicate flowers to bloom so I guess I will have to settle for painting them.

My next flower painting will be a tulip....

ArtChix Sale

This photo was taken by our monitor during the Saturday morning ArtChix sale session. I was making wire wrap pendants at this time. It was so enjoyable to see people's reactions to my jewelry and art. I think being able to participate in art sales is so enjoyable for this reason, the rewards for hard work in creating what I feel I need to create.

As an interesting note, only 40% of my sales during the weekend were for paintings, 60% were from jewelry! So, while I will not forsake painting...EVER, it is good to know I can be successful in another creative venue.

Thanks for sending my photo, Ursula!

Newest Jewelry

As reported earlier, I took an all-day workshop on Artisan Jewelry yesterday. It was a great day, lots of fun and I got lots of tips and techniques. Here is one of the necklaces and earrings sets I made. It is made on memory wire. The centerpiece of the pendant is made from my husband's grandmother's concho belt, which was made of old silver. I am taking the belt apart and reusing the links individually in some of this jewelry. Since it was in the family, I won't be selling any of this, but instead enjoying wearing it myself! I also made some pendants in the class as well as a "stretch ring". More to follow.

I will have my jewelry on display at the ArtChix sale this weekend, as well as many of my paintings. This will be my last sale of the season to participate in so if you are in the area, do stop by and have a peek at what I have been creating.

Cactus in Spring

These are some of the cactus blooming in our backyard currently. It still amazes me that a dangerously prickly plant like this can produce such beautifully delicate flowers such as these. I love how the buds start out that great peachy color and then turn to the yellow when open.


The one pot is filled with the yellow flowers right now and it is situated near the cactus with the purple pads. Mother Nature must understand the color chart by showing these complementary colors together! I am waiting for the purple cactus to start opening the buds, I can't remember quite what they look like when open. Photos to follow when that happens!

One of the things I enjoy about blogging and reading the blogs of others is I see what inspires each person and it tells us a little something about them. I am not sure what these photos say about me, but I do know they inspire me!

Easter Tulips

This is one of the tulips in the pot of tulips that my son and his family brought me on Easter. We had a great dinner with them and enjoyed our time together. I loved the purple shade of these tulips, very Easter-y!

Discovery Through Blogs

I am constantly amazed at the discovery aspects of having a blog and how many people search through the 'Net for common interests. I had a comment from Lois about my wire wrap jewelry, which led me to her blog, which led me to others she has links to on her artisan jewelry blog. This Blogdom is a wonderful world, filled with countless communities of shared interests. This is a good thing!

Artisan Jewelry...Still

Hopefully, this will be a better image to show off what I am doing. The bracelet on the left is the copper one I mentioned earlier. The multi-colored bead necklace on the right had one of the charms flipped up from the pendant when I snapped the photo and I didn't notice it. So, envision that one with the two center charms so they are all hanging down.I love making these.

The pendant in the center has a stone we "mined" in Franklin, NC two years ago and tumbled and polished ourselves. I love how the wire mimics the shape of the stone, and no....that was not by accident!

Artisan Jewelry... again

Lest anyone think I have been sitting around twiddling my thumbs (unless twiddling means wrapping wire!) I will show some of the pieces I have made this week for the ArtChix sale next weekend. I want to bring your attention to the copper bracelet near the center. I, personally, coiled all those links from hardware store copper wire, 20-gauge! I made it so sell but like it a lot so maybe it won't make it to the sale table. It is hard to tell the wire wrap detail on these so next time I will take a few close-ups of that.

Vicki's Bowl - Final

I went ahead and finished this. Sometimes things come together better than others and I am grateful that this morning's efforts turned out well and with no stupid moments during the construction. This is a perfect example of what I am trying more and more to do....paint the shapes (or in this case lift the shapes!) instead of the objects.

Vicki's Bowl WIP 4

Now I have given the bowl more shape by defining the highlights within and around it. I will next strengthen the shadows where needed. I planned on working on this all day, but I am having so much fun and it is going so fast that I guess I will just finish it this morning. I love it when things go as planned and I don't have to stop and kick myself for doing something stupid. Alright, I know there is still time left to do something stupid, but I feel so good about painting today that I won't anticipate that.

Vicki's Bowl WIP 2 and 3

Okay, don't be scared, this isn't as bad as it looks, it is all part of my plan. When this dried I went on to WIP 3, below. Hopefully, you can begin to see what I am up to...or not!



Now, I am strengthening the darkest shadows and painting negatively to show the shape of the bowl. Cool, huh? We'll see if I still feel that way after the next stage....lifting!

Vicki's Bowl - WIP 1

I have promised myself that I will commit to painting this bowl and now is the time. I decided that if I submit the WIPs to my blog as I work, I will have to keep working on it since I don't want to be embarrassed by letting this sit, undone.

The reference photo was provided by my good online friend, Vicki Green, who had this bowl on her blog, only it was filled with candy. I asked her if she would do a few quick still-life set-ups with the bowl on light and dark surfaces, and without the candy. She, being the good friend she is, accommodated my request. I was fascinated with the glints of light on the dark surface of this photo so decided this is the one.

I will be experimenting with a technique that I have decided in my own feeble mind will work, so stay tuned to see if my "spearmint" is successful or not. You just never know.....bravely she begins to paint.

Great new blog

I keep finding great new blogs and today's discovery is no less than great. The reason I like this blog so much is because I love the work of Jana Dahmen, who I have "known" through the online group Watercolor Workshop. I have always found her work to have such gaiety and color, as illustrated by this painting I borrowed from her blog.

If you want to see what else she has done, the url is http://watercolorbyjana.blogspot.com/

Caricature by Madeline

At the ArtChix sale this weekend one of our members, Madeline Ledzinski, dropped by to practice her caricature skills. If you want to see her recent body of work, please go to the ArtChix blog http://scgartchix.blogspot.com/ - she did a great job and it was fun to "sit" for a portrait. She did comment, though, that I should quit talking long enough for her to get my facial features "correctly". Please note that she drew the artisan jewelry I was "modeling" for the show.

ArtChix Sale - Artisan Jewelry

This is a close-up photo of my artisan jewelry display. I received many encouraging comments about my designs and had two sales from this display, so will continue on since I enjoy doing it.

ArtChix Sale/Show

The ArtChix are holding a show/sale this weekend, with my corner of the world consisting of the space at the back of Studio I. For this sale, I am launching my new line of artisan jewelry, pictured here. I received many positive and encouraging comments on this jewelry so will continue to design and construct more. Stop in for a visit if you are in the area!

This photo was taken by Jim Greenwald, the Sun City Grand Art Club's Historian. Thanks Jim!

At the Sun City Grand Spring Art Faire last Saturday I did a demonstration of watercolor on clayboard. This is one of the photos taken during the demo. Please note the necklace and earrings I am "modeling". They are part of my inventory of artisan jewelry I have been working on for this coming weekend's ArtChix art sale, at which I will have a display of all the jewelry I have been working on. Nothing like a little self-promotion!

Gina's Teapots

In the interest of maintaining some artistic integrity on this blog, I don't think it is fair to my readers to only submit to the blog paintings of which I can be proud. We all paint stinkers occasionally and this happens to be one of mine. I got lost in the cloth patterns, I blopped some dark paint where it needed to be the lightest, I gave up on the background, etc., etc., etc. I like the arrangement and colors of this still life set-up provided by Gina of the Watercolor Workshop and will eventually try a re-do with what I have learned doing this one. We were all to paint from her photo of this and it was a great photo! I'm not making excuses, just saying ya can't win 'em all. The other project for March is to paint anything shiny, so I will try a crystal bowl next. I'll never "get it" unless I keep on trying. I love the process, it is just the end result I sometimes have doubts about.

New Art Blog!

As Secretary of the Vanguard Artists, I have committed to setting up and maintaining the Vanguard Artists Blog. I have been working on this endeavor over the past few weeks, assisted by my Co-Blog-Mistress, Ann (the President). I feel it is getting closer to being ready for Prime Time viewing now, so if you would like to see what we are about and getting up to, please go to: http://vanguardartists.blogspot.com/

We are a group of artists in the West Valley and disprove the fact that good art begins and ends at Central Avenue and is to be found only in the East Valley (Scottsdale) area. There are many lifelong artists in this group and their rich and varied art experience shows in their magnificent work.

There are slideshows of some of the individual artists' work, and this sidebar feature is being developed more as we speak. Do stop by and have a look, we'd love to hear from you!

Pelican

After letting this fellow sit in my studio for a few weeks while I made artisan jewelry, I finally got him done. I haven't painted many birds but he was in such a fine pose that I had to paint him.

Being an artist who is drawn to warmer colors I couldn't quite settle on the cool blue tones this painting was taking on so I glazed some of the warmer sunset hues over and it looked more like I thought the Brown Pelican should look.

Thanks again goes to Diana for allowing me to paint this guy from her photo.

Gila Bend Trip - PS

I will also add this photo of what I believe is a Thunderbird. This was taken at a BLM sponsored park which has preserved this rocky pile that holds hundreds of good petroglyphs. I have added many of them to my ever-growing collection of petroglyph photos.

Gila Bend Trip

Last week we took a short motorhome trip to nearby Gila Bend for a Get-A-Way trip. This sunrise below was seen the first morning we were there. It was just a fabulous photo session and the colors were glorious.












This heron was perched atop the rock of the canyon and I had to use my longest lens and a multiplier to get this photo.













This is Gillespie Dam, which harnesses the Gila River for irrigation of crops. There was quite a bit of water there this time so it becomes a bird sanctuary at times. We saw herons, egrets, ducks, and many other birds there. I hope you can see the five egrets that were standing atop the dam.