Watercolor update

Not very inspired this last week to paint. I started two (out of five), finished none.

St. Valentine's Day

 

Post church: spelling bee, winter hike, confirmation retreat, transport child to/from work, dinner, gas and newspaper, the list goes on........

yes, i am slow

We had an unusual week. Nature program on Monday,

regular Tuesday, History Through the Arts on Wednesday, supervising teacher home visit on Thursday, and a re-visit to the Historical Museum and a sick kid on Friday.

Everything has been 'off' with this stuff. And don't get me started on tomorrow, which is unusally busy. Not our normal week.


So i've worked only two days to get some painting done. Take a look at progress from day one and most of day two.

 

I've made some progress on this picture (Monday), and on Tuesday's picture, but the rest of the week's paintings have not been painted. I am finished with my latest prayer shawl.

my craft activity this week

it's been a slow week for crafting. on top of being the regular, crazy-schedule class day, running home school kids around town, my birthday was yesterday.

i had my hilarious nephews over for a couple hours. D's marble maze is just a tube. It was the tallest maze. The marble goes straight down. No bends, no curves, no frills. He thought it was "the best one."

Then we have B-man's marble maze. He took the slide and tried to make it more predictable by adding a length of tubing to the end. After many tests and "G" of GAIN's advice, he shortened the tube. They were really funny.

My boys made lemon bars instead of a cake for me. "A" of GAIN decided to top the bars with a "3" candle and nine individual candles -- it made for quite the blaze. So now I am publicly proclaiming my age for the first time ever: I am 39 years old. Still haven't said it out loud, but this is a first step.

As I look back on the crafting I did, I find that there was some productivity. I painted three more eggshells for eggshell dioramas. I accidentally gave away too many for Christmas, and when "I" of GAIN didn't find the one she chose (which I had forgotten), I figured that I could replace it with another one.

I also started to lengthen the prayer shawl started many moons ago. I picked up some yarn from my parish's fun knitting group. There was no ball band, but I'm assuming that this yarn is Lion Brand Homespun. I also read about using T-shirts to make tubular yarn (it's expensive. I bought some before Purl's closed.), and with all the Vacation Bible School T-shirts that leaders have to wear, I've amassed a collection to harvest. I've set aside a shirt (from the theme year of Fiesta!) to test.

I'll end this really long post with shots of this week's watercolors. "I" of GAIN and I like this calendar. I've hyperlinked because I'm getting questions. (Mine came from Barnes and Noble.)

Music, Watercolors, and Scrapbooking

Well, I've gotten used to using my husband's old laptop. I'm sort of accustomed to Google Chrome. Not the best with WordPress blogs, but I can deal. And I've had a very busy week. I always have one very busy week each month, and this week was the one. With a home school suport group meeting at my house and home school programming in Ames and West Des Moines, added to Boy Scouts and regular life, my week has been a whirlwind. The ice storm didn't really slow me down, contrary to popular thinking.

Thankfully, the HSAP in WDM has a J-term that is a manageable 3 weeks long. This was our last week of running to book making class. It was cool, but I'm glad it's over. I have a hard time thinking that once-in-a-lifetime programs can be passed up. We saw Musica Antiqua, and I keep thinking that some day, one of them will leave, as in pass away. They've been together for 30 years. My kids HAVE to see them. Such a special special group to have very close to home. And Japanese Tea? We did pass it up, but the presenter will hopefully be here another year or two. Luckily, I have a partner who can cover when I'm gone. So my week was full.

I still have a scrapbook crop (fun fun!) to prep for as soon as I'm done blogging.

I had 50-50 success with the watercolors this week. I still need major practice with cool colors -- violets, greens, blues. Browns and oranges, not a problem.

My yo-yo necklace is a keeper. I've worn it twice this week and like it bunches.

Watercolors and Paper Snowflakes

The watercolor calendar is everything I'd hoped for. I find that working on one in a few small sessions works really well. Taking breaks helps me look back with a new, usually needed, perspective on how to approach my next step. I still want to add a few things to the ones I've done, like the aspen grove above, so I'm saving all the pictures in the easel-container they came in.

And it is "that time" of year again -- paper snowflake time. The girls cut some nice shapes. "A" of GAIN Academy suggested we hang them from the windows again. When we hang them from the ceiling of the entryway, we get breezes and the heads of tall people tangling the flakes, so having them in the windows is a good idea. I would still like to have some flakes in the entryway, so I'm considering a garland of sorts around a doorway. Haven't decided yet.

Following Monet at the Train Station

I didn't take time Friday to paint my watercolor, so I spent time this morning on it. I definitely am challenged by dark colors and washes. I get wet on wet (plenty of tips from my four kids with their public school art experience), I get layering and color mixing. I think my browns are quite exceptional. Except for the dark colors.

In other crafting news, the kids have carved snow caves and turned huge snow balls into snow cubes and blocks. We've been entertained by Calvin and Hobbes-esque snow creations that the neighborhood kids created -- a snowman cut in half the tall way. We're inspired to tap our inner Calvins. If we could only get a wetter snow, rather than dry, drifted and compacted snow. Or not. The frosted trees look great right now, I just can't get a good picture of them. Too much background crap. That's what we get for living in a neighborhood.

watercolor

Here is today's painting. I should have started with a wash of yellow over everything. I think I'll need to strategize more before starting all of my future watercolors. In the end, I quit working on this piece because I didn't have the dark areas dark enough and the paper was falling apart from all the water I was using.

wordless wednesday

Unfinisher?

I am having a hard time finishing just about everything. I started a yo-yo necklace back when my mom first went into the hospital mid-Dec. My grandma introduced me to yo-yo's, not as a shared experience, but as a show and tell. She's always got some craft going. For some reason I think she had a yo-yo form. I could very well be wrong, though.

Mom and I laid my yo-yo's on the hospital bed to look like a Y-necklace (turn your head sideways), but needed some different colored fabric. And I was concerned about the weight/drape/spinning yo-yo's not staying where I wanted them. Then I saw a bib necklace, and thought I should change to a bib of yo-yo's. See second picture. I liked the stabilization that the bib offered. I already decided not to use hot glue as another blogger, but stitches with thread. But looking at it on the carpet shows me that something is not right. Gotta lose the red. I had a nice dark color from my travel purse, but it's just so stiff that it doesn't work well for yo-yo's.

And is that yo-yo's with a hyphen and an spostrophe proper English? I can't decide what's right, so I'll think some more. I may end up in a fabric shop soon (gasp).

I have a new "watercolor-a-day" calendar to say that I have finished something. I chose it because of its small (finish-able) sized works and to have something artsy and new every day. This cow painting is from today. I didn't really finish it. Yesterday's painting was really good, but I can't find it. If I did, I could scrapbook my works. Or not. That would be one big scrapbook, because I get a new work to paint each weekday.

I thought I could probably talk my youngest daughter into using her tubes of watercolors and paint with more than five colors and have less blending. The calendar comes with blue, red, yellow, green, and black cakes of paint. I haven't gotten the tubes out yet. Maybe I want to suffer like artists of old. And feel the temporal nature of the work. And I wonder how my great-grandma mixed her colors, if she did at all. One of her paintings would make a nice gift. Maybe my  daughter'll join me tomorrow, because she doesn't have classes out of the house on Wednesdays. We could paint side by side. Home schooling is cool like that.

The last item in this post is the pannetone. Yeah, I thought about making one, then ran away. I'm an unfinisher lately, remember? Special Christmas dish or not, I couldn't visualize myself making this thing happen. Then I went to Walgreens (love the coupon stacking and register rewards). 75% off pannetones, and chocolate chip pannetone to boot! Woot! $1.74 for dessert. My younger son dished it up tonight.

Sorry I don't have photo editing software on my laptop. You gotta turn your head to the side a lot today. OK, just twice, but hey, I can act like a baby sometimes.

At least I can purposely say that I have not finished my bag giveaway! Entries are being taken until Jan. 16, 2010.