Spring Break Sketches

Today I am looking at my computer desktop which is crowded with pictures. All this means is that I am in 'doing too many things at once' mode. I drag files and pictures that I am working on to the desktop until I am finished with them (and am reminded that I am not done) and then they hit the trash. . . they disappear from view.

So, today I am looking at all the photos and notice that some of my sketches from Spring Break are still there. Oh yes, I was going to post them after I posted the ones that my granddaughters did . . .a month or so ago!

Well, here are a few - I love doing rough sketches. The quick, pen and watercolor images remind me of the fun vacation times and also reflect the easy lifestyle of laid-backness. No attempt to get it all right - just capture a memory.

This is the beach house where we stay. It really is on the beach and has this great deck overlooking the gulf.

This is another page of the sketchbook. This the front of the house  - surrounded by plantings. On the right is a sketch of one of the flowering 'things' - I confess, I do not know what it is, just that is was really colorful and had a nice shape!

And here are some of the shells that the girls found on the beach. I love the crusty, barnacle-y ones.

Ahhhh, until next year.

A Quiet Moment

Several weeks ago, my nephew's wife posted (on Facebook) a wonderful picture of her husband and little four year old Nate. Nate was happily sitting on a pier with a fishing pole in his hands. His daddy looked like he had just come home from work. Shirt sleeves rolled up, he was kneeling on the dock - probably encouraging his son to wait just a little longer.

You have to know that daddy Mark lives to fish and I have seen some amazing pictures of his catches. So here he was with the next generation, waiting for a first fish.

The moment I saw the photo I was hooked and wrote to Olivia right away to ask if I could paint it. (Painting someone else's photo is a huge no-no in my world) She quickly gave me permission and I have loved trying to capture this moment.

Being an artist  - having 'artistic license' - is such fun. I can change things around that are fixed in a photo. I moved Nate and Mark a little closer together and fiddled with the background a bit. After all, this is about relationship not about what is on the other side of the lake.

I have worked on this off and on - in between all the art league 'stuff' that has been calling me - and decided that I just needed to package it up and send it off. One big question that is always looming is "When is the painting finished?"  Yesterday I was watching a video of Albert Handell (renowned pastelist)  and his answer was, "It's finished when you get tired of working on it!" I think for me, it was finished, because I kept picking at it - time to let it go.

The Post Script on this is, that the next day, there was another photo posted of Nate with an enormous fish and equally big smile! Hooked another one . . .

Spring Break

For the past several years we have been invited to join my daughter and her family for "Spring Break." We fly to Florida to enjoy the warm sunshine and beach. The four girls are so full of energy and laughter - it is really a delightful week together.

I always take a sketchbook and some of my watercolors with me. I will sit and sketch while others are playing lacrosse, running on the beach, or balancing on the stand up paddleboard. There was a time when all the girls wanted to paint a picture and my sketchbook holds some wonderful paintings of other trips.

This year, just the 'littles' (what my daughter calls the two youngest ones) wanted to paint in my book. They take this very seriously and I always promise to post what they have done.

This is Winnie's work:

 We were sitting outside on the deck and she was drawing everything she saw. The table and chairs where we eat all our meals. (There were 8 chairs there, but we thought drawing 2 was enough), the flag on the deck railing, and a pot of flowers. She thought it would be fun to put a pair of sunglasses in the flowers - you can see them peeking through.  And then, of course, she signed her work  - as every great artist does when they are finished. I love it!

This is Hildry's creation:

I do not know where this idea came from. . ., but she painted a barn! Off to the right you can see the pig pen (lots of mud) with a fence around it and a tractor just behind it. "Tractors are always green," she told me. (Her uncle is a farmer, so she would know this.) She put flower boxes in the windows and the big X on the barn door. Then she started painting the sky and put in big thunderbolts and words like 'aabam,' 'caboosh wosh,' and 'crash boom!'

Both girls had a great time . . .and I love it that I can show them off!