Signing Back In

It has been a very busy couple of weeks!  A weeklong stay in the mountains, four days at Merlefest, a house full of company, and then a sinus headache that has lasted for 13 days have kept me occupied.  

We finally got the propane gas heater installed in the basement of our mountain cabin.  Just in time for summer!  Doesn't matter, I am looking forward to being able to quilt in the colder months.  One of these days, we will also have a ceiling, sheet rock walls, and a floor!

Here is another journal page on the Amazing Race Facebook challenge...next stop Italy.  Of course I thought of the great wines of Italy, and decided to try to paint wine glasses/bottles.  For this I looked once again to the free Bob Burridge videos on You-Tube and on his website.  He gives such insight into how light is reflected and bounced around in glass and liquids.

Both of these paintings are in acrylic, and are blatant copies of Bob's paintings as I try to learn his methods.

Then...off to Germany.  I decided to try to paint like Wassily Kandinsky, who although a Russian, spent a great amount of time in Germany.  Here is my impression of his painting Houses in Munich (1908).

I love the bright colors of his palette and the freedom of his brushstrokes.  I painted this freehand with no drawing ahead of time.

I am also working on two paintings of flowers inspired by Bob's videos.  They involve painting bright splotches of color, and then forming the shapes of the flowers and vase by negative painting around the original colors.  Mine are both works in progress on top of some old unsuccessful journal pages.

You would never believe what these two pages once looked like.  I like being able to paint over some bad attempts.  These are both done in acrylic paint. It is much easier to do the negative painting with a more opaque paint than watercolor.

Next up are some more Bible art journaling pages.

In the first one, I used Bob Burridge's techniques again to apply the light pastel colors of the angel, and then use darks to negative paint the shape of the angel and wings.  This one is done in watercolor. I like that you can still see some of the original bright colors under the dark blues and purples of the background.

Judges 6:12

Here are some other recent pages.

Psalm 145

Hebrews 4:10-11

Romans 5:8

Jeremiah 31:3

On Wednesday, I babysat for my three-year-old granddaughter, Charlie.  I used to keep her two days a week until last summer, and I still enjoy having her stay with me when possible.  We did lots of painting together, and I used her paintings to make a Mothers' Day gift for her mommy.

We painted the butterfly and bubbles together, and she painted some vast expanses of paper with colorful glitter paint that were cut up and used in the flowers. 

And here is a beautiful bouquet of my own from my South Carolina family.  Inspiration for a future painting?

We are lucky enough to live close to our other son and his family.  This morning it was church and brunch.  Here is Charlie with the balloon from her Mack-Mack that did not get away or get popped all through breakfast.  I am looking forward to my luxurious pedicure with which they gifted me!

That's it for now.  I went to my quilt bee meeting last week and have a few photos from that meeting.  

Happy Mothers' Day to all of you beautiful mothers out there!