Back to the Studio

Monday was a very busy day doing housework including cleaning all the windows downstairs both inside and out (except for the high ones in the family room - that's for next week).  While I didn't do it all myself, it was tiring so I overslept this morning.  Fortunately, that didn't stop me from getting to my painting class - almost on time.

Yes, I decided that I'd go back.  Even though my eyes get in the way of doing fine work, I don't do very "fine" work with a palette knife!  Broad strokes are more the order of the day.  Besides, I wanted to spend some time with my old friends the acrylic paints.  Since we have a quick trip to New Hampshire in the planning stages and our usual trip to Vermont, I'd like to take the acrylics rather than the oils because the former dry quickly.  Hauling canvases with wet oil paint is not fun! 

Anyway, I really loved being back in the studio, so it didn't much matter what I did or how it looks.  Actually, I forgot to take a photograph of the painting so I've including my picture of a monarda aka "bee balm" with a falling petal for some color today.  It isn't the subject of today's painting, however.

Yesterday as I was cleaning the windows on the side of the house, I was inspired to stop (well, I was cleaning - never my favorite activity!) and take a picture what I could see outside the window - a tree with a wonderfully textured bark, deep green, shiny smooth rhododendron leaves, daylilies seen through a fork in the tree trunk, rough wooden fence behind the flowers, and a neighbor's house putting it all in context.  Lovely. 

Today I roughed out the scene with bold, bright splashes of color and got some valuable lessons in acrylic vs. oil paints and the differences in the way colors appear when each paint type dries.  More work is called for, that's for sure.

Before I start the second day's work on the painting, I'll try to remember to take a photo.  It was glorious painting again - sketching keeps one looking and practicing, but painting, oh my, what fun!

P.S.
Can one write a PS to a Blog entry?        added at 11:10 P. M.

We had just gotten ready to call it a night when David went down to check the hose (we have occasionally forgotten to turn it off after watering the bonsai).  Suddenly I heard him coming in quickly and crossing to the foot of the stairs.  "Put on your bathrobe and come out back," he called up.  Fortunately, I had the foresight to shove my feet in my slippers also before I ran down to follow him out the back door.  As I rounded the corner of the house, I could just see his outline and made my way over to him.  As I did, I caught a flash in the sky. 

"Heat lightning," I thought to myself.  And then there was another and another and another.  Amazed, I turned to D and asked, "Are these the northern lights?"   Aurora Borealis or lightning?  We may never know, but we certainly had fun thinking it might be the fabled nothern lights!  To cap it off with something we knew we were really seeing, we saw, for the first time in years, lightning bugs vying with the light show for attention of any nearby female lightning bugs.
What a night!