Longer...

Gouache on watercolor paper

We celebrated 28 years on September 4th. Since I had the big Summer wedding prep behind me, I was able to sneak in some time between other projects to paint a piece for my Sweetie, which was very long overdue. He's a big astronomy buff and he sang this song to me at our wedding. When I was thinking about quotes I might use I thought of this and thought no more. It seemed like the perfect thing to give him.

I love you Sweetie. Here's to at least another 28 years.

Oh Poop!

This morning I got pooped on. Really. Pearl got all nervous on the way to the groomer and it was flying poop in the car. So I set her down on the grass (freshly MOWED grass) next to the groomer's to see if she was done, and she started to run away! I ran after her, picked her up and my favorite light tan shorts got smeared in grass clippings and stains. I had other plans but had to come home to get cleaned up. Forget the other plans. I thought about going back to bed. But, I pushed past the humiliation and despair and sat down at my computer. That's a good thing. It would've been real easy to forget it all after what happened. So, instead I cranked out a few more of the bulletin board pieces.






Ok, so they weren't ALL done today. But these are the ones I've finished up since the last post. Seeing them all together like this, I'm realizing I need to do some tweaking on the color for balance. Another good thing.
Then I played around with some gouache while listening to some good music—a little Death Cab and some Iron and Wine—some of Rachel's favorites I think.



Gouache and Micron pens on watercolor paper
I've recently seen quite a bit of this kind of pattern used a lot, especially in gouache. Thought I'd try it myself. It was fun and mindless. Not a bad thing.
Then I painted some lettering—a very favorite Torah quote—from the Torah portion that both girls chanted at their bat mitzvahs.
Gouache on watercolor paper
I did it freehand—no sketching before—just me and a paint brush, some nice chalky, matte gouache on a blank white sheet of paper. Fun. And nice to get past the fear of making mistakes without lots of planning ahead, even for something that doesn't really matter. Do you understand what I mean?
Now I'm going to check the laundry and see if the poop and grass stains came out of my shorts.

Play Day

I took some time away from the computer today to play with watercolors and colored pencils. I probably had too much work to do, but I did it anyway. I've had this blog for about 5 years now. Where has the time gone?! I don't think I've changed the banner image in all of that time. So that's what I did today—I painted a new banner. It didn't make me any money or give me billable hours, but I had a nice break in a quiet house to play. I think I need to do that more often!

New art added to my website

Becoming an artist before the advent of the great world wide web meant that I didn't have the opportunity to take classes in web development. And since I insist on learning things the hard way buy doing them myself, I haven't taken classes since then. That sometimes means that I don't get it right the first time.

I just realized that my website didn't include some of my most recent paintings. I thought they were there, but I guess I never double-checked. Today I realized I'd updated the pages but they weren't on the website. So, I've taken a couple of hours to fix things. Lo and behold, the latest paintings are now here. The two bottom rows are the newest (or not so new since I haven't painted in a while).

I've also had quite a few inquiries about using an image for a bar or bat mitzvah invitation or program. If you are interested in that, just let me know and I'll give you the pricing info and how to go about getting a high resolution image for print reproduction.

The home stretch!

It's been a busy week. I got Rachel off to Guatemala for the week with Spanish students from school, after shopping and packing and more shopping. She'll be staying tonight and the next couple of days with a host family immersed in Guatemalan culture and Spanish language. What an amazing opportunity!

Now the focus of the next two days is finishing up my preparation for the Boulder Jewish Festival. I've got three new 12 x 12 paintings just varnished and drying. After adding the hanging hardware tomorrow I'll shoot them and then it'll just be the last odds and ends. I need to do a bit of shopping to find something fun to wear to the fair, along with packing up the tubs and double-checking my lists.

I'll post better pictures of these tomorrow after they've been shot.

I'm hoping for cool, sunny weather in Colorado this weekend and lots of people interested in Jewish art!