Autumn Paintings

We continue to have sunny and beautiful autumn weather here in the North Carolina mountains.  I have been doing some quick little fall scenes in watercolor.

The first three are 5" x 7" watercolors.

This one is 10" x 10".

This next one just sold at the art and craft fair at the Jefferson United Methodist Church.

And here is a seasonal journal entry.  I just felt like painting some pumpkins!

A Few New Things

It has been a little crazy for the last month.  Many doctor appointments and trips to the hospital.  Charlie's blood counts got so low that he had a blood transfusion a couple of weeks ago.  That is probably due to all the radiation and the drug Xofigo which is radioactive.  After getting two units of packed red cells, he was a new man.  Amazing how bad you can feel when you are anemic.

                                                    

We are continuing to enjoy our new life in the mountains, and trying to get our house organized.  It has taken awhile because of all the furnishings we brought from Raleigh, and because the new basement was just a big room that I am trying to make into a usable studio/laundry room/office.

I managed to make an Auburn Angel for my daughter-in-law Melissa's birthday.

My brother Jeff and his family from Florida came up for a week in August.  We had multiple family gatherings.  They are the ones we stayed with in Ft. Myers for three months when Charlie first had radiation at the Dattoli Cancer Center.  We love them bunches!

We celebrated Jeff's birthday while they were here.  I gave him a little remembrance of the North Carolina mountains to take back to Florida with him.

My sewing stuff was fairly organized in bins even when we lived in Wake Forest, two houses ago.  It has been easy to find stash fabrics.  Everything else, not so much.  I recently tried actually sewing an eight-inch Sister's Choice block for a quilt for a friend, and it took me eight hours by the time I found the power cord to the sewing machine, some rulers, cutting mats, etc.

Here is a little watercolor sketch I did in my art journal.  It is the Sarasota skyline as seen from across the bay at Longboat Key in the last afternoon sunlight.  The city looked golden in the last rays of the sun.

My littlest granddaughter, Layla Grace, turned one on Saturday.  She had a rubber ducky birthday party.  I made painted a yellow duckling for her birthday card, and a little one with blue and green highlights framed in a floating frame.  Both paintings were inspired by photos on Pinterest.

And here is my little Ducky!

Sewing and Painting Fun

Happy New Year from snowy North Carolina!  It snowed once over the holidays while we were at the mountain cabin, and again today here in Raleigh.  


On Thursday, my Wake Forest quilt bee met for our annual charity quilt sew-in day at Whatever's Quilted, Donna Sontag's shop.  It was so good to be with these good friends again and get caught up.  We all brought our machines and some fat quarters to make some baby quilts for Capital Quilters Guild's Quilts for Kids projects.

Here is what I finished today, using the Yellow Brick Road pattern from Atkinson Designs.

I used a fun flamingo print with coordinating fabrics.  I think it is large enough for a baby quilt without any borders.

I will get it quilted some day, but my long arm machine is up in the mountains.  We worked hard on the basement over Christmas.  It is now painted a neutral  beige.  Next:  putting in the suspended ceiling.

We had our older son's family with us the week between Christmas and New Year's.  Once again, we donned our Clemson orange in honor of our daughter-in-law's favorite team being in the playoffs for the collegiate national football championship.  They won!

They are from South Carolina where it hardly ever snows, so they had a great time playing in it and going for Gator rides over the mountain.

I have been trying to learn how to do negative paintings like artist Linda Kemp.  I started with one in just one shade of green, then one in greens and blues.

For the last one, I started with bright yellows, then switched to more golden tones with each layer.

There are some good You-Tube videos on this technique, which I used for these practice projects.  Here is a good one to start with.  

And here is a journal page in watercolors.  I used liquid mask to draw the snowflakes, painted over them with washes of blue and violet, then removed the mask.

If you are experiencing winter weather where you live, stay safe out there!

Last Stop on the Amazing Race Art Journal Challenge...India!

I finally finished my journal page for the last country to "visit" on the Amazing Race art journal challenge on Facebook.  Last stop was India.

I had several ideas, but as I was browsing the Internet for ideas, I fell in love with elephant eyes.

I used painted and spattered with watercolor paint, then used Inktense pencils to work on some of the facial crevices and the eyes.  This was so much fun.  I love adding unexpected color to add an element of surprise to familiar objects.

Here is one more Bible page, this one from the very end in Revelations 22:2.

I embellished the tree of life a bit by having all of the twelve fruits (or thereabouts) ripening at the same time.  Watercolor background and Inktense pencils for the tree and fruit.

Bible Art Journal page

Not feeling very productive...I have had a sinus headache for about a month.  Today I started my second round of antibiotics, and the doctor also suggested Claritin to see if allergies were part of the problem.  I took one of the "non-drowsy" formula and felt drowsy all afternoon!  I may be going to see the ear, nose, and throat doctor soon.

Meantime, here is one more page that was fun to do and did not require much concentration.

The Bible pages are thin, so I prepped both front and back of the page with clear gesso.  The background is watercolor.  I find that it just splashes around on the coating of the clear gesso, but I like the haphazard mixing of colors.  The birds and branches are drawn with an Inktense pencil in Deep Indigo, and the text is Winsor and Newton watercolor marker.

Painted Paper Journals

Last week I was busy with some secret projects.  I decided to make some journals for birthday presents. I had a lot of paper that I painted some time ago when experimenting with printing and my Gelli plate.

Here are the two journals that I made.

The first two pictures are Maribeth's journal, front and back.

The next two are front and back of Emily's journal.

The covers are paper, not fabric, but I have added some texture with circles of silk and wool roving stitched on to the paper with my sewing machine.

I did not make a separate lining, but painted both sides of the cover paper.  Where the stitching showed on the inside cover, I used decorative tape to cover it.  I added lots of pockets, bookmarks, tags, and painted papers of all sizes.

 Emily's inside pocket contained a gift card.  We are so excited that she will be having another little girl in September!

That abstract paper with glitter paint is some of granddaughter Charlotte's artwork!

We celebrated both of their birthdays, along with son Bryson and his son Avery's birthdays at the beach last weekend.  Emily's mother Maribeth and her fiance John invited us all to their house at Carolina Beach, North Carolina, right on the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway.

We went to the beach on Saturday, and were blessed with a beautiful afternoon.  The water was a little cold, but we all had a great time.

On to France

Lavender Field, Provence, by Jeanne Turner McBrayer, 2016

Next stop on The Amazing Race journaling challenge:  France.  My husband Charlie has promised to take me there when he has fully recovered from his cancer treatment.  He still cannot drink wine or any alcohol for that matter, so it is worth postponing the trip!  I want to go to the Louvre, visit Giverny, and see those fields of lavender!

This painting is in my watercolor journal and is based on a photo I googled.

Trying out Gelatos

Happy Easter!  We are spending Easter weekend at our mountain cabin.  We plan to stay awhile and get some R&R.  Charlie got a drone for his birthday in March, and is having fun flying it around the mountain.  It provides some remarkable photos!

The first one is our cabin, driveway, and the pond below.  That is a reflection of the sun on the water.

The next one shows the cabin and surrounding land.

I recently ordered a set of Gelatos by Faber Castell.  I had noticed a lot of people using them on the Bible Art Journaling pages, and was interested in giving them a try.  The set I got had only pastel colors, a paintbrush, and some wedge-shaped sponges for blending and applying color.

                                                       

The first thing I always do when I get a new set of paints or "colors" is make a color chart.  These gelatos come in tubes like chapsticks.  I applied the color directly to a journal page, then used the paintbrush and water to blend them.  Don't you like the names of the colors?  Yum!

Next I tried making a background by just applying the colors straight from the tubes, blending with water, and then drawing over the background color with different Gelatos.  This have a rather pleasing effect.  The journal I am using has rather smooth paper.  I noticed you can still see the marks of the original application lines.  Probably should have used those blending sponges.

 Then I played around with a composition using the Gelatos to make fruit.  I had to add some darks with watercolor pencils after blending the Gelatos.  My set had only pastels and I just needed some darks for contrast!

I also brought up my Lucky Stars quilt materials to work on this weekend.  I now have stacks of background patches and lots of prints for making many more stars.  I even marked the diagonal line on all the small squares which become the star points.  I hope to do some sewing tomorrow.  I am making this quilt for my friend Marcia using fabrics that she purchased in Europe.  

                                       

I thought this would be a quick pattern to make, but it is not.  There is lots and lots of cutting, lots of seams to sew, and then you have to trim each block to size.  After that you add the rectangular blocks all around the stars to make 15" blocks.  Once those are done, it should be much faster to put this quilt together.

Here is a fun page that I made for the Bible Art Journaling Challenge.  It is about when Solomon was building the Temple, and all the artists and skilled women were called to weave and spin and make the garment for the priest to wear.  It is called an "ephod" and is worn with a breastplate that has twelve symbolic jewels.

I had to look up all this information, especially since I had no idea what an "ephod" was.  To illustrate this verse (Exodus 35:25-29) I decided to make an ephod and breastplate.

I fused Angelina fibers along with some Textiva film to make the garment.  The breastplate is on a piece of gold metallic fiber that you can sew through.  I glued on twelve hot-fix crystals.  I added two pieces of onyx beads for the shoulder straps of the ephod.  The ephod is attached to the page only at the top with Washi tape, so it can be lifted up to reveal the scripture beneath.

I used gold Lumiere paint to frame the actual scripture verses on the opposite page.

More later!