Saturday Morning

Well, all is well here on the home front.  With tornadoes all around the country this week, we are blessed to have stayed safe.  The lights flickered once and there was rain with lightening and thunder and high winds, but we were tucked safely here on the hill in the Valley of the Star.  At night when it's stormy I draw the curtains and we watch television and eat yummy snacks, but during the daytime when the light is better, you just might find me painting.

This week I watched several videos on Artist TV Network for inspiration, and decided to get out my very neglected watercolors and try to get a handle on this medium.  I have great control when using acrylics, and I find them easy to work with.  I do use a great deal of water with them and get the transparency that I really like, but, for some reason I have never liked the looseness of the traditional watercolor technique.  Long story shorter, I decided to go in a more dry brush direction to have a bit more control.  I practiced on several things, but they look so juvenile.  I dug my heels in and reminded myself that not all things are easy when you first start them, so I watched more videos and got some books from the library and practiced some more. My results were about the same, so I thought that maybe I was trying too hard (I tend to do that sometimes) and needed to stop over-thinking things.  So, one day this week I watched a PBS artist doing an acrylic painting of a barn and I thought maybe that would be a good subject to work on, but in watercolors.  Now I'm not one to haul my supplies anywhere to paint, I have tried that and it's just not me.  BUT, if someone else wants to do that for my benefit and have a show about it, I figured it's OK if I continually hit the pause button on the remote and use his finished painting as my inspiration.  I did just that.  The end result is still not worthy of any art gallery, but it is recognizable as a structure.

I have a photograph that I took of deer grazing in our woods that I'm working on now and hopefully, that will be "postable".  It's often said to make a picture interesting, it's a good idea to include something living, so I go from making two stroke birds to attempting a painting with five deer in it.  I know, not really logical for the Vulcan that I am, but what the hey, I'm up for a little challenge.

On a sadder note, in my opinion, the world lost two very special men this week.  By now I'm sure you have all heard of the sudden death of Davy Jones, that Monkee that so many of us grew up with. I always liked him and had all their albums.  Didn't miss any of the shows, either.  He will be missed.

In hopes of not losing too many readers, I want to address the fact that my world (the one of the horrible Conservatives) lost a great friend this week also.  Andrew Breitbart, passed away suddenly, as well, Monday from an apparent heart attack. We had heard him speak on numerous occasions and the hubby and I are happy to say we got to meet him several times at functions we attended over the last several years.  He was one of those men, who was wildly passionate about his beliefs and fearless in his pursuit of making sure other folks were made aware of the things that he sincerely felt were true.  That fearlessness and the fact that he went "full speed ahead" all the time, may have been factors in his early demise.  He will be missed, but his work will certainly go on, in the form of his websites and his colleagues who have promised take up where he left off.

Here is a picture of my sweet hubby, Tim take on two different occasions with Andrew.  I took the bottom one when we attended an AFP convention in November, and I found Andrew to be a really nice guy. (In case you didn't know Andrew, he is the taller of the two).

Well, that's all for now.  I slept in this morning (it is Saturday, after all) so I need to hit the shower and get ready for what's left of the day.  Painting those deer will certainly be a part of it and trying to remember to answer my e-mails (Karin, I'm soooo sorry) and thinking about all the things I'm going to do when I get my cataracts removed will keep my mind occupied for the next few hours.

Have a great weekend and if you suffered in any of the storms that were so treacherous this week, my prayers are with you. Stay safe and hug your Bestie. You'll be glad you did.