Drawing at Trail Ridge

Last night several artists met at Trail Ridge, an assisted living facility...beautiful I might add.  Four of the people living there had volunteered to be models.  It was just good fun.  The First Lady was 87, wore her WW II nurses cape and was just a delight.  The second lady was very  suave in a chocolate brown suit and white hat.  The third lady was dressed very casually and the final model was a fisherman/hunter wearing his camouflage.  

Blizzard

We had a good old-fashioned South Dakota blizzard yesterday.  We stayed in the house all day , except for a brief foray with the dog...twice.  The wind seemed a uniform 35-40 mph.  I always think of making bread during a storm.  When I was teaching, the only time I had to make bread was snow days.  So, I made a loaf of not very good bread  because I didn't want to go to the store.  It is quiet but cold today...not nearly as dramatic.

It took awhile to get home.  All flights from Chicago were cancelled due to weather...and I am back to painting.  I had an old painting that I didn't like, so the answer, of course, was to add layers.  I will see if I can't post an image of the painting as it looked yesterday...it may not stay that way you know!

Holiday Travel

Tomorrow I get to go to my son's house in Germany for Christmas.  Whoo HOO.  I am looking forward to playing with the kids, some half dry wine, good German bread, and lots of discussion time and hugs with both Jim and his family there.  I  hope to get to a German Christmas fair....I have heard that they are very cool.  I may not post very often...and probably not art stuff, which was my intent with this blog.  But who knows...I am taking a very small watercolor palette and a very small package of watercolor paper.

Yupo is a very interesting surface to work on.  A friend of mine bought many reinkers at half price, so those along with watercolors and alcohol inks have been our toys for the past two days.  I am going to try to post some small paintings that I framed yesterday.  We see how successful I am.  Whoo hoo... I think they are here!

I have been painting fairly steadily for four years.  I love to experiment with all sorts of stuff...lately it has been yupo paper which can be played with for a long time since you can take paper towel to watercolor and get back to white.  I am going to try to show my latest efforts. :)

Good fun yesterday with distress inks on yupo,  love the ability to change the format easily.

I am going to try to incorporate pics into the blog....shouldn't be too hard.

The first painting comes from an old picture of my mother's.   The second painting was  a response to a tragedy.