Sweet Basil
colored pencil on Bristol board

Basil is all grown up now..he's my granddaughter's cat.

I started a watercolor demonstration here...autumn leaves scattered on the ground......it was fun...started out with the sketches, cut up all the leaf pix and taped them in various positions ...arrangingarranging...then the time consuming task of taking the pix...lighting wasn't good...and on and on...finally I ruined the actual watercolor.....well, I whiled away an afternoon...haha
My art room is downstairs...and when Jack asks me where I'm going I usually say, "downstairs to ruin a picture"

What I should have done is posted the whole thing and then showed a different picture at the end...that's how it goes a lot of the time anyway...but I wasn't amused at the time, and didn't come up with an amusing ending.

I tried to do it too fast...I was just reading PERPETUAL CHOCOHOLIC 's blog, where she is giving a lesson in colored pencils...drawing an apple...and she said it was too daunting to put the whole lesson on at once....should have read her blog first.

Now I'm going to do it backwards....have the final picture in my hand before I show how it came to be. That's what they tell you about writing too....have your ending before you begin...good advice for me...I can think up all the characters...all the situations...but never come to a conclusion....maddening.
Speaking of writing reminds me of when I was still in my twenties...I had a few articles published in magazines....one was of a neophyte trying to ride her too-much-horse-for-her article..(true story) .....Another was an article on breast feeding. It was back when the saying "Happiness is...." was popular and my article was called Happiness is a Fifth of Carnation...published in a Carnation milk publication....a house organ.
It was written in an article writing class I was taking at Clark College in Vancouver, WA. I had no idea what I was going to write. Your grade was based on you writing an article, and sending it in....if it was published, well you aced the course.
Week after week I listened to the teacher and couldn't come up with an idea...but a gal in the front row was bugging me to death. She went on and on about her article which would be on the benefits of breast feeding...how wonderful it was....how you couldn't consider anything else. Week after week she obnoxiously yammered about the poor children who were denied this treat...making it sound like they would wind up in reform school with rickets.
Well...my children weren't breast fed. It wasn't even talked about....I came out of the anesthetic already bound tightly, and I unquestioningly swallowed my meds which were drying up pills...(I was so innocent it's unbelievable)
But I figured my kids were as healthy as hers and finally I had had it with her....I was going to write an article on Not breast feeding.
I was really jazzed about it...and started researching....ha! Nothing out there to support my theory...well, almost nothing....so I shamelessly began dirty tricks. If a doctor had a quote saying, "Breast feeding is best for babies, but in the event that isn't possible, formulas are great."....I would dissect his quote and come up with, ".....formulas are great."
Oh my....I filled a whole article with this kind of writing...I had a lot of funny things in it, too....and it just flowed off my fingertips onto the typewriter keys. Sent it in....had it published...Carnation was only too glad. Not a lie in it...but oh, the fudging.
Miss Obnoxious in the writing class never wrote a single word.....she just talked the talk.......as a matter of fact I was the only one published.
What's the moral?...hmmm...
no morals in this story...haha....
or don't tick off Pat...
or better yet, don't believe anything you read.

Holland Isla

I think my pilot light is out...my leg is healing from my fall but I don't want to do anything....and I don't want to do anything about not wanting to do anything...

34.

pencil on Bristol Board
baby Blue Jay used to have a mother but after drawing her three times I told her to take a hike and I'd watch him myself.

Today's weather was just lovely...and my leg hurt a teeny bit less so I guess things are ok.

33.
below is the art challenge from http://rosy-artblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/its-art-challenge-time.html
She offered three pix to use for artwork, and I chose her cute mom Juanita.
Sorry, Juanita, that I couldn't quite nail it, but it was fun trying.

Bummer week...recuperating from my fall...on pain pills that just take the edge off...lotsa napping..using cane...not wanting to do anything.
Better today but not walking around.
Perusing through the photo album, came across a favorite pix of mine taken in about 1932 of my mother in law, Ethel. I always liked her hairdo and the dress...so I sketched it....Then I came upon a picture of me taken sixty some years later with the same hairstyle.
Well, I guess there's only so many ways a gal can wear her hair.
Hurts to sit here so gotta go....but hurts to sit there, too.

31,
Had an adventure today. I was in the dog kennels washing out their water pails when I tripped on the hose and fell down.
Shock...pain...Sally took off, but Bekka stayed and barked and growled...she was locked behind a gate so she had freedom to the yard but not to me.
I lay there tensing this muscle and that...trying to determine the damage....nothing broken.
I just leaned against the fence, still gasping...hose running all over the place, when it dawned on me I couldn't get up.
First time in my life that I fell and was helpless.
First shock...pity...desperation, and finally anger.
Jack wasn't home.
Usually I get on my knees and get up, but my knees were scraped, bleeding, and bruised and one was already double size. And, there was no grass...only concrete and gravel.
A bleeding gash on my arm...from the fence, I guess, though I don't know how.
Everything hurt...ankles, wrists, shoulders, side. What in the devil was I going to do...
I decided to get to the front porch steps. I knew I could turn backwards and hoist myself up on the first step with my arms, grab the rail and stand up....but the steps were across the yard....gravel driveway all the way.
Ok...just do it!
I fanny bumped my self along...the heels of my hands bleeding from the rocks...my clothes slowly shredding.
shut up and just do it!
bump...slide...bump...slide...
Four feet from the step, and Jack pulled into the driveway.
There I sat in the middle of the driveway smiling at him...(to show absolutely nothing was wrong, just bumping along for the fun of it....dang...I had wanted to be on my feet and cleaned up when he got home.
Funny how much worse you feel with sympathy....
We got into the house, pulled off my wet, dirty, torn clothes...grabbed a clean mumu and the disinfectant and a towel...and collapsed into a chair.
He brought me a full glass of wine.
That was four hours ago and oh my...my nose is the only place not aching...but I am so happy nothing was broken.

30.

colored pencil on off white bristol,
too large for scanner
When Beans, (pinto) and her twin foals came racing into the ranch with the rest of the band my jaw literally dropped. I hadn't seen her up close for about a year...watched from the hill with the glasses, checking up on the herd, but hadn't noticed from that distance she was expecting.
She came tearing down off the hill, head high, proud as a peacock, and who could blame her. Two spotted babies marked every bit as pretty as she was raced along side her....god I hope they hadn't inherited any of their witchy mother's tendencies. She was the most godawful horse I ever owned, bar none.
Would not be tamed, period. Kicked down every fence I put her behind...she wound up living in the bull pen....she couldn't faze the logs that fence was made of. I should have gotten rid of her a long time ago, but she was so pretty I just liked looking at her.
I hurried down to the pens to get a closer look at the newest addition to the horse band. (excerpt from Pony Crossing..which will never be finished, I'm afraid.....ahh me...so much to do, and soaps to watch, too)

cradle boards are art work to me, and to many Native Americans. I started a color book of the different styles...but the book was longer than my span of attention so it languishes, crying to be finished.

This drawing isn't typical of the color book drawings...they are straight line drawings with designs to color.

I contacted Martha Berry, a Cherokee bead work artist for information and she told me that the Cherokees didn't use cradle boards...interesting. I haven't looked into how they contained their babies but will.

I like the idea of making everyday utensils artwork. Harpoons and kayak paddles decorated with charms for good hunting...cradleboards with beadwork beckoning the good spirits. Everyday clothing made of bright colors and designs....not cool, I guess.

28.

slowly floating up out of a black place, I see gray......no sunlight, but somewhere light is finding its way in....I come up from two days with the blanket over my head, and wander out into the yard looking for a reason to hang around. A little gray lizard stopped to talk to me...he asked to be painted sky blue...he never wanted to be gray in the first place...

Tell me about it, I say.

Great, a gray lizard is my muse......figures.

Not Iris, the rainbow queen, nor a bubbly water nymph, just a little gray guy.

but, I like him....he looks me in the eye and sympathizes...the least I can do is immortalize him.

Listing my blessings does not help. This is not feeling sorry for my self...this is an imbalance inherited from my family. I am middle of the road...neither the worst off of them, nor the best.

Trying to figure out why I'm hiding under his desk, the doctor asks, Does your husband abuse you? (He's constantly fiddling with his new computer.)

NO...and DO NOT ASK ME THAT AGAIN. I've told you before we're fine....but he follows the program on his computer, asking the same old questions....I flip through my magazine in the dark shadows. He never looks at me.

(Have you lost any weight?

Yes, I now weigh a hundred and three.

Good, he says, still not looking at well nourished me, and dutifully types it in.)

(in my dreams)

It is what it is

27.


colored pencil on bristol board
My favorite plant...hen and chickens

tiled in Photoshop

My garden is not doing well...it's actually only in existence because as soon as I finished making my teeny fishpond, I was still raring to go...so started a garden growing around the pond.
This is the second full year and the poor soil is doing its work. Then our week of triple digit temps curled the leaves of my poor hosta, and melted my ice plant.
About the only things doing really well are the daisies and the dragonflies.

I'll have to admit the garden looks a little lush in this picture but walk around the paths and you'll see the ailing little patients.
the little wire fence around the pond is crooked because of Bekka's constant lizard hunt....without the fence, I'd have a pond full of rocks.

Eventually, only the things that do well will remain...the survival of the fittest is my motto....I'd like to find a little garden plaque saying just that and stick it out there to give them fair warning...no wimps in my garden!
(hard woman)