A Joyous Pair

Two pieces.  Intended to hang together as you see them here.  These were a DELIGHT to paint.  My client loves the mountains,  she loves Pikes Peak,  she loves the truth found in  God's word, and she LOVES THE PROMISED RETURN OF THE LORD JESUS.  That's why I painted a cloudy Peak, instead of one with a clear blue sky.  Jesus will come in the clouds.  PERHAPS TODAY.

On a more prosaic note, the canvas with the words was stinking hard!!!  I paint words all the time, but they're usually on a ginormous canvas.  This one is only 11" x 14".  That's a tiny brush!  I can tell you I prayed a lot over it!!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Over the years our collection of  Christmas decorations has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller.  That's because there wasn't much quality in the collection, and things broke, or got munched, or faded... and so I threw things away.  The problem is, I didn't replace them.  So the house has looked less and less festive as the years have gone by.

Well, this year I decided I wanted to do something about it.  Among other things, I've added this group of tiny canvases.  They're 4" square, and each letter stands on it's own tiny easel.  I got out my calligraphy books and dug around for a font that I thought was fitting, and then sketched out the letters on paper to begin with (because I've LEARNED that when I don't have a PLAN, things very quickly go awry).  I think I'm going to paint over the blue diamonds in the letter "N"... either that, or add blue diamonds to the other letters. Other than that I'm pleased.

Merry Christmas everyone!!  Celebrate Christ's birth!!!

Trying To Re-Light the Flame

Time marches by.  No, it trots.  No, it gallops, full speed with energy and fervor.  And I find myself wondering where it went!  AND, I find myself wondering how to hold a pen or a paint brush.

So, here is my attempt to bring the tiny spark of creativity back to life.  Greeting cards are great for that purpose.  They're small.  They're generally quick.  And they're easy to throw away if they're a failure!!

This is the beginning of a project for a friend.  Two canvases, one with these glorious words, and one with our beloved mountain on it (that would be Pikes Peak, for you non-locals).  Canvases are a little harder to pitch if they're failures, so I am speaking to my Lord about this quite a lot!

A Labor Day Labor (not!)

Yesterday my family came up to our little mountain home and hung out.  It was delightful!  A couple of us went down to the property line and painted the back side of Pikes Peak.  Her's was lovely, mine was... not so much.  So to make myself feel better, I painted the power pole!!  Ha!  Except for the fact that the scan turned out mildly fuzzy, I quite like it!!

Making Waiting Less Painful

A while ago I FINALLY learned the beauty and value of taking a sketch book with me.  Everywhere.  And pencils. And pens. And watercolor brushes.  And paint. And paper towels.  It adds up to a significant bundle, but I have this delightful bag that I've repurposed to carry all sorts of art supplies, and today it came in handy!

I had to wait for some piano movers, and they had to drive a ways, so it took awhile... and so I painted this little drawing.  I probably did the drawing over a  year ago, but today I inked it and then painted it.

Waiting isn't so awful after all!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

When someone calls you and offers you a temporary, side job for the summer, of course you take it!  But that means there's very little sketching, or drawing, or inking, or painting going on.  I did, however, enjoy one delightful afternoon at a friend's cabin, sitting by the stream, drawing his leaning bird house.

This is in my travel sketchbook, and you can even see the seam in the page.  It was a bit of a rush job, because those clouds were growing dark.  But it was a FABULOUS way to spend an afternoon!

The Camp That I Love!

Oh, how I love Camp Elim!!  It's a fabulous place, where kids go for a week at a time to run around and play and be crazy and hear the glorious truth of Jesus their Savior.  I went there as a kid, and then I volunteered there on staff as a young adult.  What great memories!  And what great things God did in my heart because of my time there.

Every so often they have a need that I can fill with my paintbrush.  Aren't these fun?!  That top one has the Camp Director doing his version of a photo bomb (um.... you're supposed to be peeking in over someone's shoulder, Dan!!).

Loved, loved, loved doing these.  You should go see them in person!! Better yet, you should send your kids!!!  Or go yourself!  A week on staff at Camp Elim is the best vacation ever, just sayin'!

Check 'em out:  http://www.campelim.com/

My Latest Project

I'll start off by repeating what I've said before:  although house paint is easy and quick and goes on the wall oh-so smoothly.... the colors don't mix very well!  So you have to have your head screwed on straight, lest you make the mistake of mixing red and blue to get purple!  IT WON'T WORK!

Even so, with some careful thinking, and careful painting, the results can be quite pleasing!  Thank you, Adam and Angel, for letting me PLAY on your wall!!

I'd like to add a moment of thankfulness for this blog (that sounds funny for the AUTHOR of the blog to say, doesn't it?).  Not long ago the hard-drive on my computer died.  Dead.  Completely.   No reviving it.  And I hadn't backed up all my photos.  At least not recently.  So I took it to the local computer fix-it guys and asked them oh-so-nicely if they could PLEASE try to retrieve the photos off of the hard drive.  PRETTY PLEASE?!

Well, they only got some of them.  Deep breath.  The last year's worth of artwork was gone.

Until I remembered that I had posted most of it on this blog!!!  HOORAY!  I went and down-loaded the images off of here, and got them back on my computer... AND THEN BACKED UP THE WHOLE SHEBANG ON A REMOVABLE HARD-DRIVE.

And THEN, gave thanks to my God for His kindness!!!

COLOR!!!

This morning it was drippy, rainy, gray, cloudy, dismal....ech.  So I added COLOR, and it was a fabulous way to spend the morning!!

Today's Time Filler

Today I needed to get two propane tanks filled for our grill, and when I got there, there was a sign in the door indicating that the people were gone, and that they'd be back at 1:00.  Um.... it was 12:45.  So I drove over to a scenic hilltop nearby and sat and sketched.  First in pencil, then in ink.  I'll watercolor it sometime in the next week.

And where is this loveliness?  In the CEMETERY in Divide!!  It's up on the highest  point in Divide, and you can see forever in every direction.  So while the clouds built up higher and higher, I focused in on this delightful birdhouse in the middle of the aspen trees.  I call it "Summer Getaway". 

Playing

I went for a brief hike with a friend last week, and we sat down on the edge of this small... pond... lake... collection of water.  The sun couldn't figure out if it wanted to shine, and the wind couldn't figure out if it wanted to blow.  Despite the confusion in the weather, it was a delightful morning!!

This started off just pencil.  But a couple of days later I added the ink and watercolor from memory.  Which is why it says it's "my interpretation!"  Not going for accuracy here!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DELORIS!!!

I worked up this card this morning for a delightful lady in Minnesota who's TURNING 80!!  What a fabulous number!  The Lord has blessed her days.  Happy Birthday, Deloris!!

Just a Little Bit of Work

I received a small commission not long ago, and found myself surprised at how LONG it took me to complete!  What on earth?!  This is a tiny little painting, but it took FOREVER to find the right reference photo, and then I sketched... and re-sketched... and re-sketched.  Somewhere in my mind I still believe that all the other artists in the world just whip out their brushes and come up with a masterpiece without any effort at all.  IT'S NOT TRUE.  I gotta keep reminding myself of that!!

Anyhow, you see the final sketch, and now here's the finished product.  A fun little oil with fabulous colors.  I love the color choices God made when He put flowers together!

While Waiting....

It was kind of a long wait!!!  I inked this back in September... I was probably waiting then, too.  And today, I added the color.  I think it's a lovely way to spend some time.  I found a parking spot near the library in my small town, planted the car where I could face Pike's Peak, rolled down my windows, and got my watercolors out of my bag... yes, I carry my watercolors with me.

For those who  know me, I have this semi-huge tote that I carry around with me, with lots of little pockets.  One pocket has my tiny watercolor kit, along with watercolor brushes that have hollow handles for water.  They're fabulous for on-the-go painting!

Sorry about the fuzzy picture... sometimes the lighting just isn't great!

What To Do? What To Do?

What do you do with a big, old vault door that dominates a wall?  It's kinda hard to hide, isn't it?  Putting a couch in front of it won't do the trick.

So you paint around it instead!!!  And not just boring wall paint, but a mural!!  And what's best, is you actually incorporate the vault door into the  mural, by turning it into the entrance to an old mine.

Then, you go to the local lumber yard and pick out some rough timbers to wrap the door with.  This picture only shows the side pieces.  There will be a piece across the top too.

What's really spiffy, is our particular lumber yard has o-o-old  half-logs laying around, and you can get weathered looking wood with cool knots, like this one.

My dad told me that there's actually some historical precedence for putting a vault door over a mine.  Evidently the Cresson Mine in Cripple Creek was originally a poor producer, until the owner found a room size opening bursting with gold.  He immediately went and had a vault door installed at the entrance of the mine.  I went searching to see if this story was true, and found this on Wikipedia:

 On 24 Nov. 1914, Dick Roelofs was supervising the exploration of the mine to the 1300 level, when a large gold-filled vug was blasted open on the 1200 level. The next day, Roelof, a mine owner and an attorney explored the "cave of sparkling jewels". The vug measured 14 feet wide, 23 feet long, 36 feet high, which took a month to empty, and yielded 60,000 troy ounces of gold.^[10]:78-80

This particular vault door doesn't protect any gold.  It was already in the house when the current owners bought it.  In fact, I think perhaps the vault is now protecting cardboard boxes!!  Whatever's on the inside, this is the final result of what I painted on the outside!

Killing Time

There's a very odd truth in an artist's life that when you've got real work to do, it's like pulling teeth to get started.  I've got two small commissions waiting to be done.  I know what I'm going to paint.  I've even got the preliminary sketches done.  But can I get started?!  Can I wrangle myself into beginning?  Can I actually get the paint out of the tubes and on to the palette?  It's the strangest phenomenon.  I was just talking to an artist friend, and she's experiencing the same thing.  Bother this twaddling!!

In the in-between time, I hauled out this pencil sketch I did over a year ago and decided it needed ink and colored pencil added to it.  So why is it I can work on this little trifle, but I can't actually make progress on a bona fide job?!

It's a mystery.

Time For A Change

Nobody likes change.  I only like it when I get to gut and improve a really ugly house.  But when it comes to getting rid of the canvases at my church, nobody likes it... at least judging from the reactions I get!  The last set WAS beautiful.  And it WASN'T great fun painting over them.  But change is good.  And God keeps track, for what it's worth.

So the new set is done!  See if you're up on your geography:

I will say it again: the lighting in the worship center is not fabulous for taking color-accurate pictures, but you get the idea!  My favorite is this last one showing the whole globe.

One lovely trick that I just learned:  when you do your lettering on graph paper, then it's much easier to make sure it's level when projected!!  You just put your level against the lines of the graph paper!  No measuring over and over and over...  It's complicated to explain, so just rejoice with me, even if it makes no sense!!

So, how was your geography knowledge?  The map behind Acts 1:8 shows the streets in my small mountain town.   I wanted to show the people of my church that WE LIVE IN the remotest part of the earth, and WE ARE TO BE JESUS' WITNESSES WHERE WE LIVE!

Playing With Watercolors

Recently a friend asked me to ink these words for her as a memorial for some time she had spent with God.  I love giving ourselves reminders of God's work in our lives!

Having gotten out my watercolors, I had to do more!  So here are three greeting cards that I did today while I waited for our latest snow to melt:

I love those two.... but you take your mind off the task at hand for JUST A SECOND... and what happens?  Even with my Bible open to the appropriate passage (which is in Matthew, by the way), I wrote JOHN.  What?!  Really?!  That's just... ridiculous.

Tonight's Occupation

I've spent the last three days on a scaffold painting huge canvases.  With big sloppy brushes.  Hopping down to get a good look, climbing back up again to continue painting.  The scale of it gets almost mind-numbing after awhile...and definitely shoulder-aching.

So tonight I got out my sketch book and my colored pencils (and a blanket, and a glass of water, and an ice cream bar) and worked small.  And as I worked small, I reveled in COLOR!!  I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that I thank the Lord for color at least every other day.  It is a constant source of joy to me.

So Teach Us To Number Our Days

This started out as a request for a crow.  Actually, let me back that up:  it started out as a request for an owl.  "Why an owl?"  Because the recipient loves them because they're so smart.  They also love crows.  I'd much rather paint a crow!

But wait.... that sketch is of a raven.  Or is it?  I went hunting, and frankly, I'm still not sure.  But in the process I found an image that I like better!

Along with this, there will be a verse (done in calligraphy by my sister-in-law) from Psalm 90.  "So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."  Funny how the details of life play themselves out (ahem.... insert here a grateful bowing to the sovereignty of God!):  I've loved that verse for years!

What better way to ponder the passing of our days, than to have this so-wise bird perched on a clock face?

The finished painting, leaving space for the calligraphy on the left.  I haven't worked with watercolors in YEARS.  It was definitely a challenge!  You HAVE to wait for the previous layers to dry!  I was reminded of that the hard way.  This thing got painted twice, partially for that reason!

Sometimes It's Just Plain Work

Two sketches.  Trying to figure out the layout of a piece I was working on.  I never actually used either of these, and so they hang out in my file.

For most of my life I thought that as an artist you just picked up a pencil, or a paintbrush, and started creating.  And then after a short period of time ... "voila!"... you had a lovely finished  piece.  Boy, was I wrong!!  It never ceases to amaze me how much time I spend in prep-work.  Sketching, and re-sketching, and searching for reference materials, and changing my mind, and sketching some more.  Add to that making mistakes and having to start over!!

That bit about "changing my mind"... that's the problematic part!!  I'm guessing the Lord didn't wrangle over creating like I wrangle over a painting!  Yes, He called it work.  And yes, He rested when He was done.  But I'm guessing He didn't have any self-doubt in the mix!  And I'm very thankful for that!  There's no fussing and second-guessing in my God!