Boone, NC - Day 2

We are in Boone still, will be here until Monday. We went to Cheap Joe's this morning so I could buy a few art supplies while they were handy. We also scoped out the venues for where the workshops and trade show will be for Boone in June. This is definitely a mountain town...we twisted around and around to find these places.

We will plan on going onto the Blue Ridge Parkway tomorrow to take some photos, so I will post some of those tomorrow. Weather is nice here, much cooler than in Phoenix....the low this morning was 58 and the highs in the low seventies. We even had about a 15-minute thunder shower this afternoon, which cooled the afternoon off even more.

More tomorrow....

Boone, NC

We made it to Boone, NC this afternoon. This is the campground we stayed in before, and made reservations in again. The creek in this photo runs RIGHT behind our motorhome. The campground is much more crowded this trip, we made the trip in 2005 in May, apparently June has more people in RVs out and about. We will spend tomorrow on housekeeping details (grocery store, some laundry, etc.) and then vegging out here at the motorhome. It will be SO nice to stay in one place in the motorhome for seven days....much different than being on the move every day for so long.

The weather so far in this part of the country is nice, highs in the seventies, which is so much better than at home right now. Starting Thursday will be the workshops for Boone in June and then on Saturday will be the Boone in June trade show. Supposedly this is a big event for Boone.

More tomorrow as we begin to explore....

Gem Mining in Franklin, NC

We went to a gem mine this morning and used sluice boxes to pick out gemstones. It was a lot of fun and interesting to do. I don't think we had any miraculous finds, but did well overall and we like what we are bringing home. The first photo is of some of the larger gems/some just pretty rocks we got. There are amethysts, turquoise, lapis lazuli, rose quartz, green quartz and lots I will have to research on the web to identify. The second photo is of the finer gems. The first pile on the left is made up of emeralds and topaz. The second pile is sapphires and rubies (only two dinky little rubies!). The largest pile is small garnets, got lots of those. The lower right corner is amethyst and the lower left corner are moonstones. Pretty cool, huh? I don't know if anyone will ever see me wearing any of these, but I am thinking of trying some wire wrapped jewelry since that looks really cool with gemstones.

We are leaving Franklin tomorrow morning and will head toward Boone. We will chill out for a few days before the art festival starts, which after having so many traveling days will be a good thing to just relax for awhile.

Alabama and North Carolina

The first photo of the tree flower is of a Mimosa tree...thanks Cia for identifying that for me! These trees are all over the place here, and are magnificent in large groups. We traveled today from Knoxville, AL through the width of central Alabama and on to Georgia. We made our way, carefully and frightfully, through Atlanta....not for the feint of heart! This was a frustrating and terrifying experience! We will probably never try that one again! I cannot imagine how anyone can do this trip through Atlanta on a week day...we did this on a Saturday afternoon and it was terrible. Of course, driving a 35-foot motorhome and towing a car probably was frightful on its own.

We will give the gemstone mines here in Franklin, NC a try tomorrow. I don't know how this is supposed to go, but if I end up with a bauble big enough to post, I will show you. One should always start out these ventures with high hopes! We will try to go on to Boone, NC on Monday and chill out for a few days before the art festival begins. After the last few days of pushing ourselves with travel that sounds great!

More tomorrow....Susan

Mississippi and Alabama

We left Lousianna this morning and have gone through the entire width of Mississippi and will go through the western part of Georgia tomorrow (including Birmingham, AL and Atlanta, GA) and will then head north toward Franklin, NC. We have promised ourselves a stop in gem-hunting country (as seen on the Travel Channel) and will do some hunting for valuable gems :>) for a few days. Then, it is on to Boone, NC for the art festival and workshops for three days and then....???? We will have to see how it is going at that point and decide where to go from there. We have had good traveling and good RV parks so far, we are hoping that will continue. All is well here, hope it is for you all, too.

Monroe, LA

We had a very good day on the road today, lots of wind but after we got out of Texas, it settled into a warm breeze. We stopped for the night in Monroe, LA, the first photo is of our campsite here. The second photo is of a magnolia plucked from the tree of our office person here at the campground, a friendly southern lady named Betty. This thing was the size of a dinner plate! We sure can't grow these on the desert! We will try to get across Mississippi tomorrow, and on to Alabama. Everything is going well so far.

Ranger, TX

No photos to show you today...driving a motorhome with a huge windshield through farmland in Texas, in the summertime, yields a very sticky windshield with bug splats, so no photos through there as we drove. We are staying the night in Ranger, TX where we will get a good start on Dallas/Fort Worth at a time AFTER the rush hour commuter traffic has smoothed out a bit. We are doing well, though not traveling as fast as we had hoped. We will head toward Boone, NC to get there by June 13th, that is our new goal.

Today is our wedding anniversary....37 years! Amazing, but true. We are usually on the road for our anniversary so this trip is part of our celebration. It is good to be still traveling, enjoying being on the road together, and looking forward to more trips to come together. Life is good.

I'll try for some photos tomorrow now that we are finally into some of the greener parts of Texas hill country.

New Mexico Pause

We decided to delay going through Texas by one day to allow the stormy weather ahead of us to clear, so we got a bonus, rest-awhile day. I decided to enjoy the morning by painting on our patio...had a wonderful session involving John Denver on the iPod, birds singing, a temperature of 71 degrees and painted five petroglyph small paintings. A morning doesn't get much better than that! We'll make a run at getting past a third of Texas on our eastbound trip tomorrow morning. It takes forever to go across Texas! Hopefully, the bad storms are past and we can make our way through and on to LA, ALA and GA for exploring before going to Boone. We may have to change our minds and head north before we go to those states if the weather requires more waiting. We are keeping an eye on Intellicast and proceeding with care. So far, so good. More later as we roost for the night in various places.

Home-away-from-home

This will be our home-away-from-home for the next month as we travel eastward to explore more of our country. There are many photos waiting to be taken! This photo was taken two years ago when we were in Boone, NC and we are revisiting the area again on this trip, staying in this same RV Park. It has a lovely creek running behind the motorhome and we have asked for that site again. I love the fact that everything is so green in that part of the country and all the rivers have water in them, as opposed to our dry washes and sand rivers here in the desert southwest.

I'll post progress photos as we travel and share sights and experiences, so drop in as you can to see what we are up to!

White Heron

I cannot seem to stop painting this weekend. We are having a quiet weekend due to my husband's accident and his need to recuperate, and I can't say I have missed any of the activities we might have done, it has been so nice to stay home and paint!

I am letting this marinate on the board for awhile while I ponder where to soften more of the edges, or detail the water more, etc. I submitted it to the WcW for critique, hopefully some of the wildlife painters in the group will help me decide if I am through with this or if anything else needs to be done.

Thanks go to Fred Reed for allowing me to paint from his excellent photo.

Marsha's Peony Final

Rhonda, one of my WcW buddies is working on this same photo for a painting, and suggested that the center of this needs to be warmed up with some of the warmer colors. So, after looking at the photo again on the computer screen I found that my print of the photo had printed mainly the cooler colors so I had missed that. This version of my painting is more representative of the original photo and I think I am calling it done.

Marsha's Peony WIP 2

Here I have added deeper colors to the shadow areas and have come closer to finishing the stem and whatever those things are that open when the buds open. I guess I should research more about plant anatomy!

Next, I will step away and ponder whether to deepen the sky color and add more darks. the peony petals are so translucent I don't want to lose that look, so I may be close to finished with this.

I'll post the final version when I figure out if I am finished.

Marsha's Peony WIP 1

I am starting another floral painting based on the photographic talent of an online friend, Marsha, who submits photos of her flowers for the group to use for reference photos. I am so envious of her ability to grow flowers like this, here on the desert we would never be able to grow them! She is also a fabulous photographer!

This will be the underside of a peony blossom and I have done the first three steps so far: Painting the sky area, tinting each petal with a pale pink and then painting the shadow areas with the same pink to establish where the lightest lights will be left. As I finish those little yellow-green thingies at the base of the flower I will start going in with the darkest darks, that is the fun part since it immediately makes the lightest lights even brighter and the petals more translucent-looking. It has been an evolutionary process for me to get over being scared of committing darkest darks to a painting for fear of ruining it. Now, I usually can hardly wait to get to that point since it always seems to be a magical turning point, taking the painting farther away from the awkward teenage phase and more toward the phases of a good, grown-up painting.

More to follow as I have time to work on this one.

Iris Macro Revisited

I added a bit more modeling shading to the petals of this and some more orange in the deepest part of the throat of the iris. I am not sure if this does it for me, still, but I can't say I hate it....it just isn't what I set out to do with this great photo I used for a reference. I have new subjects waiting on the drafting table so will just move on.

Iris Macro

I just finished this iris painting, I used a photo shared by an online group friend who took the macro photo from one of her irises. The photo was stunning, my painting of it just doesn't do it justice. This was a fun painting to do, despite the struggles. I love painting using wet-in-wet techniques. Irises are among my favorites from the flower world, they are just complicated to try to paint. I think I struggle more with roses and irises than any other flowers.

Aubrey at the Beach

I finished this painting of our granddaughter early this morning after painting the bulk of it on Mother's Day (apropos, huh?). I just love the toddler postures they all have at this age. This will go into my Grandma's Gallery of paintings.

Now, on to an iris painting I have been planning.

Magnolia

This painting was done by watching an online demo and a subsequent challenge by one of my online artist buddies, Cecilia (Cia) Price and the reference photo used was from her magnolia tree. She lives in Alabama so understands magnolias much better than this southwestern desert rat.

I was more successful this time than in any others in saving the white of the paper for the sunspots on the petals and branches, so I am proud of that. I like the technique of painting wet-in-wet by dropping-in of colors and letting them blend on the paper, I thought it worked well in this case. Some of my branches are a bit funky, but as far as I know this may be normal for magnolia branches? That's my story and I'm stickin' to it anyway.

Now, on to painting my grandbaby, Aubrey, in her race-to-the-water pose in the photo below. That one is just begging to be painted, so I will give in to the urge.

Beach baby

No art news to submit today as we are in Las Vegas (what goes on in Vegas stays in Vegas!) but I received some beach baby photos of our granddaughter in some e-mail today so will share it. I didn't crop out her mama for any malicious intent, I just thought little Ms. Aubrey looked so precious striding purposely toward the water that I wanted her to be the main focus of the photo.

I am winning big at the casinos...I won $18.95 in nickels this morning! That has to be some kind of record for me to be on the plus side at all!

Madrona Tree - Final

I have deemed this one as finished as it will get. I am not as pleased as I had hoped to be with it, but it was a great learning experience and fun to do. I am trying to incorporate more negative painting of shapes into my paintings, so that will come along more easily after I do more of it.

Madrona Tree WIP 5/1/07

I think that every painting goes through an "awkward teenage phase" and here is my teen painting. At this point, I usually wonder if this will go into the round file or whether it will be saved. There is much to do to make this background acceptable, so I will press onward.