Little me with my mom. Mom tells me she used to be little too 🙂
Happy Mother’s Day!
Tag: Me and My Studio
My palette
Here’s a shot of my watercolor palette, my brushes, and my applesauce jars full of water. I took a long time cleaning off my desk and setting up today.
I meant to include this with my video post but I can’t seem to do much blog post editing from Flickr!
Sick Days and Ducks in the Rain
In between sketching and resting, I watched the goings-on in our backyard. This is one of the first iris of the season. I ran out and got a photo just before the rain started here. It blooms faithfully, but I cannot remember its name. I will have to look it up sometime. I took some artistic license with the color of this iris for my “Jubilee” watercolor.
“Jubilee” was one of many paintings (and other projects) that I started and finished years later. I believe I had painted the iris in the upper left, and most everything else, except for the remaining matching two iris. There was something I didn’t like about the already painted iris, like the direction the light was coming in from, and so I intensified its color so I could move the shadows. The existing dark areas became the new light areas. With watercolor, you can’t just paint over what you’ve done, and so you have to get creative when you want to change something. That’s how all the iris ended up much richer in color than my model. I thought it looked quite joyous when I was done, which is why I named it “Jubilee”.
Once the rain started, we got some visitors. We used to have geese wandering through, and I was sad when they disappeared. This year, we have ducks on the pond down the hill, and they wandered up in the pouring rain to nibble on our unmowed grass.
I got a little wet photographing them, and my zoom lens doesn’t zoom as much as I might like. Still, they are awfully cute.
Not long after the ducks showed up, a pair of rabbits came to play leap frog, or leap bunny? I didn’t manage to get a picture of them, but they were very amusing, running and leaping over each other. At one point they each anticipated a charge by the other and leapt, simultaneously, straight up in the air.
“Afternoon Delight“! That’s the name of the iris. It just came to me!
Painting my kitten doll
I’m pokey, but I am making progress. Little Ziggy (I’ve decided he’s a boy now) has been coming right along. He’s got a pastel yellow onesie with a periwinkle blue collar and buttons down the front. I’m having quite a time keeping his whiskers white. I’ve had to repaint them a couple of times and I’m sure I will again. Painting thread is not as easy as I might have thought. I think what takes the most time, aside from painting his multitude of kitten hairs, is deciding how I want him to look. He is a stylized version of a kitten after all, and there are plenty of choices to make about how I want to do that. All in all, he’s a cute fellow.
Just an aside…Those are my African violets in the background. They are getting what looks like white mildew on them. I was so glad to be able to get them to survive, and I am not happy about this new turn of events. Does anyone have any experience with this? I read keeping a fan going helps, but it is cold for that! I’ve been trying to get rid of the infected parts, but I seem to be losing the battle 🙁
Another aside…We’re on “vacation” from our eBay store this week, in sympathy for the current eBay boycott. We’ll be posting our new dolls over on our main website. I’m working on expanding our art doll pages over there so people can visit, take a look at available and already adopted dolls, and read their stories. I don’t know if a boycott will have any effect, as I imagine eBay will continue to cost sellers more and more, but I do think the changes to the feedback system are insulting. In the coming months, sellers will no longer be able to leave negative feedback, but buyers will continue to be able to. Personally, we have never left any or received any negative feedback, but whether buyer, seller, or both, we should all be subject to the same policies. To do otherwise is to invite abuse. If eBay wants to reform its feedback system, I believe it would be more fair to do away with the positive, negative, and neutral signs, and just have plain, honest feedback. I believe if eBay users don’t feel threatened by potential punishment for saying what they think, that they will leave more accurate accounts of their transactions. I think that would be much more valid and much more fair to everyone.
