Naples Palm Trees

I am playing around with Palm Trees! These trees are at my brother's house in Florida. I tried sketching them a couple of ways, including just outlining the shapes. Fun!

Lucky Fish

This weeks EDM challenge is to draw a fish. One of the few things that is not yet packed is this little hinged metal fish sitting on my art table. Charles gave him to me when I was jabbering about Feng Shui and the fact that Fish symbolize abundance, prosperity, wealth. Also, Carp swim upstream and are known for their strength. I know there's more to it in the Chinese culture, but that's how I see it. I focused on abundance and strength while painting the little guy, so I expect plenty of both in the days to come--and hope you have enough, too!

Our house

So, I see everyone in the EDM (Every Day Matters) group is drawing their houses, so I joined in. It is fun seeing paintings of so many homes around the world! The first one is a re-post from November, soon after I started sketching and blogging. It was done on very thin paper (not watercolor paper) with my "little kid's" box of paints. I didn't dare use much water, and whatever paint I did lay down, dried instantly. Now, I am almost at the end of my first Moleskin= that I re-bound with Fabriana hot press paper. I used mostly Windsor Newton paints. I sat in a different spot this time, so I could paint the whole house. This would be a fun exercise to do every few months, but this is my last painting of this house since we are moving very soon. Next house painting will be of our new place in Texas!

Spring has sprung!

There is so much blooming in our yard...well.. actually all over the Bay Area. I will never get over how gorgeous it is here! I played around a little and painted a sampling of some of the "show-offs" in my yard right now. It smells FANTASTIC, too!

Farmer's Market

I will surely miss the many Farmer's Markets in California. You can find one pretty much any day of the week, in several communities, within a 20 minute drive of our house. Today I stopped by the one in Concord on the Todos Santos Plaza. I listened to the lady play the harp, watched an artist paint portraits, smelled the fresh flowers and brought home some beautiful artichokes and kettle corn. The colors of the tents, flowers and the sky were all so vivid, I really should have painted straight out of the tube. The way I see it, the scenary on a Tuesday afternoon doesn't get much better than that!