Happy Halloween ~ 2018

Happy Halloween! 

I made chicken noodle soup and bought donuts ~ a family tradition.

It's just Del and I tonight. We probably won't have a lot of trick-or-treaters so 

we're trying to figure out what movie to watch while we wait and answer the door to the few who will come. Although it has nothing to do with Halloween, we might watch "The Greatest Showman". I'm in the mood to see that again! We used to get a lot of people stopping by just because we live close to the mall, but the numbers have dwindle over the years so tonight may be a quiet night. It would be fun to spend Halloween with our grand-kids ~ wish we lived closer to each other!

A few years back I painted several styles of witch feet and turned my paintings into tags.

Jennifer made caramel popcorn balls this year for Nick to pass out at work.

This is a photo from a couple of years ago. She's done this quite a few times.
They turned out so cute. She ran out of Halloween and Fall tags this year.
Maybe I'll paint something new. I have new Thanksgiving and fall paintings,
but not new Halloween. Old or new, I'll print her up some more for next year. 

One year I made witch Oreo shoes (like below), hand-painted small cards, and 

gave them to my kids so they could pass them out to families they visit. I think 

I painted between 20 and 30 cards and made the same amount of Oreo feet!  

I learned later how to make tags from one painting! That simplified things! 

I didn't make any Oreo feet this year. That simplified things! And I used to sell 

tags on Etsy, but I don't do that anymore either. That too simplified things!! 

I still like to paint, make tags, and even sell them, but I now just sell to local people 

or those who know me. That doesn't simplify things, but it's fun, so that's okay too! 

Happy Halloween!!

It Takes Variety to Make Rich Music

Last week a friend of mine sent me a darling video that brightened my day. Using animated birds as the characters of the video, we learn about uniqueness and the beauty of diversity. Seeing and hearing the bird at the end of the video being himself, yet adding to the choir, made me laugh and smile. I just had to post it.

This is a link to the video “Songs Sung andUnsung”

The following are Jeffrey R. Holland’s words in the video.

"Among the realities we face as children of God living in a fallen world is that some days are difficult, days when our faith and our fortitude are tested. 

"So what do we do in such times?

  

"In those moments when the melody of joy falters below our power of expression, we may have to stand silent for a time and simply listen to others, drawing strength from the splendor of the music around us, to hold tenaciously to the line in this hymn that reassures, “Jesus listening can hear the songs [you] cannot sing.”

"On those days when we feel a little out of tune, a little less than what we think we see or hear in others, I would ask us, to remember it is by divine design that not all the voices in God's choir are the same. It takes variety - sopranos and altos, baritones and basses - to make rich music.  

"When we disparage our uniqueness or try to conform to fictitious stereotypes then we lose the richness of tone and timbre that God intended when He created a world of diversity.  

"Believe in yourself, and believe in Him. Don’t demean your worth or denigrate your contribution. Above all, don’t abandon your role in the chorus. Why? Because you’re unique; you’re irreplaceable. The loss of even one voice diminishes every other singer in this great mortal choir of ours, including the loss of those who feel they are on the margins, margins of society, or the margins of the Church.

"We should stand as close as humanly possible to the Savior and Redeemer of the world – where we will be able to savor forever that most precious anthem of all—'the song of redeeming love.' "

These words are also found in Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's talk given in April 

2017 General Conference, “Songs Sung and Unsung”

Dieter F. Uchtdorf shared some thoughts 

about families in April of 2016. I liked this 

quote so I painted a picture to go with it. 

Quote found in April 2016 General Conference,

 “In Praise of Those Who Save”

Journals, Autumn, Piano

Last night I thought about all my different journals. 

 Some are digital, others are hard copy. I made a list and 

I currently have 12!  Just looking at my list overwhelms me! 

So…I’ve decided to consolidate some of my journals. 

Instead of using this blog just for writing a few snippets about my life 

to match my paintings, I'm going to use it more as a daily (or weekly) journal

 with words, art and photos.  

Is this simplifying? I hope so. Time will tell.

And so I begin 😊

Today’s date: October 29, 2018

A friend’s husband passed away last week. 

I wrote her a note yesterday, taped it to my painting below,  

and mailed it this morning. 

I painted this when I was in California a couple of weeks ago
visiting my parents. And last week I taught the ladies in my
watercolor class how to paint it. It was fun!

This isn’t a typical picture for a sympathy card, but fitting for the season. 

It's also an opportunity to tell her I’m THANKFUL for her and grateful 

for our belief of life after death. Someday she'll be with him again!

Last night before the sun went down, Del and I went for a walk. 

I loved seeing the autumn leaves, even crunching them under our feet. 

I can’t seem to get enough of these gorgeous colors! 

I painted this while visiting my parents. 

I painted this Saturday night.

After our walk I sat down at the piano and played Christmas music for an hour. 

It's time to start listening to Christmas music on Pandora and watch Christmas movies!

It’s only the end of October, but I fear I didn’t start early enough!

I focus on journal-type painting pages for my art class.
This is just one of my ideas - a page to journal about the
instruments they play and/or their favorite songs.

This morning as I walked out into the garage to exercise on my treadmill 

it smelled like an apple and pear orchard from boxes and bags 

full of picked and fallen fruit. We have 3 apple trees and one pear tree, 

plus cherry, peach and plum trees and lots of raspberry bushes.  

Only the apple and pear are currently in season, 

so on Saturday I dehydrated pears and baked an apple crisp. Yum!

We're having an awesome autumn! The colors are gorgeous!

Outside our front door

The Tanner's

I mentioned this painting yesterday in my blog post. Like I said, it was pretty fun painting this picture because I didn’t need to worry about their facial features! Another plus – the kids weren’t smiling, like I would like them to if I was painting their features, so by not painting their faces I was able to still use the photo as my reference! 

My one regret about this painting is that I wrote the date of the occasion for this painting – it was the day Lyla was blessed in church. But when I read it now, I think it appears to be saying it’s the date they were married, the beginning of this family unit. So…the date seems confusing!  

This painting is of my youngest daughter and her family. What a cute family! I chose the size of watercolor paper according to the size of a scanner. That way, I was able to print a large picture at the printers, rather than paint a huge painting! I then gave them a framed picture of the large print using very nice paper and also the original small painting as an extra bonus to be used as a second picture they could stand in another spot in their home or use as a gift.  They chose to use it as a gift and they gave it to Steph’s in-laws for Christmas! Fun!

Curly Hair

I used to serve in a Young Women organization at church. Izabelle was in my class. She loves art and has the most amazing sketches of people. She’s in her teens and I’m in my 50’s, but she has inspired me to get my own sketchbook and draw people over and over. Her people are absolutely darling! I’d love to have snapshots of her sketches just so I can look at them – they make me smile. She draws her people in the cutest poses, wearing darling clothes! And so, this past week I pulled out an old sketchbook. At first I just sketched a girl with curly hair and dots for eyes. (I’m always trying to figure out if I like drawing realistic people or people with dots for eyes or a simple curved line for a mouth.) 

Later I drew a pattern from the internet of correct facial proportions and then began a sketch of me (sort of). 

Without worrying about drawing the girl to look like me, I stuck with using the proportion guidelines and just drew eyes, eyebrows, mouth, and nose, only worrying about correct proportions. To make it a little more like me, I took a selfie and while looking at my photo I added my glasses and my curly hair. I don’t love this drawing, but I’m learning!

The most fun I had was drawing the curly hair! And so before falling asleep, I just had to try it again, simplified! No facial feathers and curly hair! (I quite like the “no facial feature” look! I’ve painted several people without faces. I like the look and it’s less stressful!)

I have natural curly hair. I have straightened it all my life…that is until a few months ago. Our family was heading to a large family reunion (182 people!) in Oceanside, California. It was a beach vacation and rather than worry about how I’d keep my hair straight the whole time we’d be around water, I decided to embrace my curly hair! I haven’t gone back to my straight hair since. 

I read the cutest quote the other day from an article called, “I Think I’ll Be Myself.”  

When asked by a relative, “What do you want to be?” a six year old replied, “I think I’ll just be myself. I have tried to be like someone else. I have failed each time!” So…perhaps curly hair is a way to “be myself”…Or perhaps, I’m just being lazy. I’m not sure and it doesn’t really matter, but I sure hope I can learn how to draw and paint people!!  

The Girl at the Park

My son and daughter-in-law gave me a subscription to Watercolor Artist Magazine for Mother’s Day and they renewed it for me as their gift to me for Christmas. What a fun gift for someone who loves to paint!! Through these magazines I have become familiar with Bev Joswiak, a watercolor artist. She considers herself to be an impressionist figure painter and I LOVE her paintings! Her comments in the magazines have encouraged me to try my hand at painting people and to try and paint them with a variety of colors, lost and found edges and to paint from my own photos. This past March when I went to my daughters in Las Vegas to help when she had a new baby, I met a family from their neighborhood at a park. The daughter of this family had a white blouse on with holes in the sleeve. I was fascinated with the color contrast between her skin and the blouse and I desperately wanted to try painting her. As I’m so new to painting people, I was pretty certain it wouldn’t turn out looking like this cute girl, but with some color suggestions from Bev Joswiak for painting African-American skin tones, I definitely wanted to try. And so I asked the father and the girl if there was any chance I could take her picture so I could try painting her someday. They both kindly said yes. Her two brothers wanted in on the action too so I got snapshots of them as well. My lighting was terrible, either full sun or too much shade from a tree, but regardless of my poor photos I was still able to capture her skin tone next to the sleeves of her shirt.  I had so much fun painting this picture! Although I don’t think the family would recognize the girl in the picture, I think they might recognize the sleeve of her shirt. And although Bev Joswiak doesn’t know I exist, I thank her for her articles and her amazing paintings and for sharing them with Watercolor Artist Magazine!

Sadie & the Carousal

A little over a year ago I decided I wanted to learn how to paint people in watercolors. I’m blessed that some very good artists share their own paintings and how-to-demo’s on the internet—they give me ideas. And I’m so lucky to live in the day and age where I can easily download my own photos and retrieve some of my family member's photos with a few clicks of the mouse! So...my journey began. Using a picture I took of my grand-daughter, Sadie, at our local park/adventure land, I connected the picture to a small projector and shined it on my paper. This way I could at least get the basic outlines. I couldn’t see her facial features very well, but I was able trace enough to get proportions and objects correct. My other goal was to try and not get hung up on whether or not my painting looked like her. So my goal was to simply end up with a “cute girl on a merry-go-round” rather than “Sadie on a merry-go-round.” I also loved trying out the same picture three different ways. I was just given a water-soluble pen and wanted to sketch with it and let the water leak into the picture as I painted. That idea led to the brown horse. And although I painted “Sadie” rather lightly, she still stands out because there is color on her. After painting the horse “without” color, I wanted to add some color. I didn’t love the real carousal’s horse colors, so I had fun choosing my own. For my last experiment I wanted to see what it would look like with a colorful background. I actually don’t mind how it turned out, but I wasn’t super pleased with her facial features. She’s a cutie and I didn’t capture her smile quite right! (I painted all 3 pictures in May 2017)

Sadie on the carousal
the reference for my painting

Jackson & Sadie - airplane ride

Tautphaus Park—what a fun, quaint park—it’s almost identical to how it looked when I was a little girl! There are 5 rides: The Merry-Go-Round, Octopus, Airplanes, Train, and the Ferris Wheel. There’s also miniature golf and a food shack. The Funland is part of a large park with several picnic/shelter areas with large and small playgrounds. There are baseball fields, tennis courts, an indoor ice skating rink and a zoo.  I love the “small hometown” feel I get just being here!

Jackson, Kristi, Sadie - Ferris Wheel