Nature Notes 3

My crocuses are all gone, but daffodils are coming out in the neighborhood in profusion. I first thought a daffodil painting would be perfect for this week's entry for Michelle's Nature Notes.

But as I was entering the basement door after walking my dog I noticed these tiny, delicate little purple flowers growing along the edge of the concrete step. They were so tiny - the plant barely two inches high, and the flowers no more than a half inch across. But they were so pretty - and so suddenly *there* out of nowhere, a much more subtle sign of spring that the riotous daffs. Everyone sees the daffodils. But no would ever bother to notice these tiny little flowers growing against my steps - so they became this week's choice, though I just about had to get down on my belly to get a photo of them to use as a reference. :-)

Nature Notes 2

Okay, I admit I could never get myself tied down by things like 'Watery Wednesday' or 'Sunday Scenery'. That's far too organized for me. I like to keep things as loose and freeform as possible, both in art and in life. It would be torture to me to try to stick to certain themes, especially on certain days of the week. I'm not much of one for memes in general. But I do like my friend Michelle's 'Nature Notes' since it ties in so nicely with this burgeoning time of year, and I do love keeping an eye on nature and seeing what Mother Nature is up to.

So I took about 40 minutes to document more of what nature is up to this week. The crocuses in the back yard are in bloom (the ones in the sunless front yard have not even showed their heads yet). My crocuses are mostly purple, though I have a few mysterious white ones in the yard also - mysterious as I never planted any white ones, and they are growing in a spot where I would never have planted anyway! But the purple ones are looking brave and colorful, even while the ground around them is still mostly brown and bare. So these are my Nature Notes for this week. Done on 9x12 Art Spectrum.

Nature Notes

My friend Michelle, over at Rambling Woods , challenged us to take a look at Nature and see what we saw. Is spring coming? What is happening? Michelle is a true artist with her photography, but my own photos are rarely better than serviceable snapshots - so I had no real nature photos.

But this past weekend I saw my first robin of the spring! My Birds of New Jersey book says robins are year-round residents here, but I never see them in the winter. They always vanish in the fall and return in the spring, and seeing your first robin is always one of the classic signs of spring. I've added some raisins to my bird feeders to hope to entice them to stay around. Last year robins built a nest on my front porch, and it would be such fun if they did it again this year.

So that was surely a sign of spring for me! My photos certainly were not so great. Even this painting is not very good I know. It's a real rush job quickie done in less than 30 minutes, but I wanted to do something to share with Nature Notes and was not sure when else I would have time.

What Type of Blog are You?

LOL, I just got this link from a friend's blog : http://www.typealyzer.com/

You go there and key in your blog address and it analyzes your blog to tell you "what personality is behind the blog" though with the caveat: "Note: writing style on a blog may have little or nothing to do with a person´s self-perceived personality."

 However I'm a sucker for little tests like this. So I had to try it for my own blog. Hmmmm, maybe I'll analyze friends blog too, LOL. Anyway, this is the way I turned out: 

The analysis indicates that the author of
http://www.dcusickart.com is of the type:

ESFP - The Performers

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves. 

They enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions. 

Cardinal Plate

My sister wanted me to go with her to "Doin' Dishes" in Montclair, NJ last weekend, a paint-your-own ceramic studio, where you pick a ceramic piece of your choosing (the have dozens of choices), and then paint it as you choose.  They then glaze and fire it for you, and you get it back about a week later. It's fun to do, and my sister's whole family joined us there. My sister wanted to make a plate for her boss's upcoming birthday and wanted my advice, and possibly some help. 

I had no special reason to make a plate, but figured I would do *something* as long as I was there. I liked the cardinal I had done at Christmas time, and decided to try to paint him on a plate. Of course painting on a plate is an art itself! For one thing, the colors are totally different when you paint them from what they are when the piece is fired. The red of the cardinal was a very pale pink when I painted it. They only seemed to have fat paint brushes which didn't allow for much fine control. 

But it was fun to experiment. I used sponges to dab on the blue background, and that was a fun and simple part. I struggled with the cardinal himself. When I saw some of the gorgeous examples of works there I saw I have a *long* way to go before I could be a ceramic artist. But it was lots of fun and I like my plate. Maybe not high art, but I can eat my breakfast on it, which I can't do with one of my paintings. :-)

More non-pastel :-)

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. I had a great Christmas, and the biggest news of all was learning that I am going to become a Grandma in 2009! This put all sorts of "baby" thoughts into my head, and one of those thoughts was that I had to make a baby quilt.

To give a little background, I have always loved quilts, and made my first one (not a very good one either, since I had no clue what I was doing) back in 1978 when my own son was born. For years thereafter I made many quilts. It was my own form of artistic outlet at the time. I'd always been drawn to the arts but steered clear of fine arts for years. My sister is a wonderful and gifted artist, and I never felt I could measure up to her artistically. So quilts were my outlet. 

But quilts take a lot of time and effort, even the simplest of them, and I slowly backed away from them, and finally decided that some form of fine art was *really* what I wanted, and it was for me alone, not a competition with my sister. And once I found pastels in 2005 I knew I had found my niche.

But a BABY just needs quilts! The baby's other grandmother has also recently taken up quilting, so surely the baby needs something from both grandmas? So what to do? Well people who have seen my art know that I'm a colorist. I love bright and vibrant colors. I was discussing ideas for the quilt with a friend. She was saying that supposedly sharp contrasts of black and white were the first things babies made out. Maybe so, but who wanted to make a black and white quilt for a baby? Not a colorist like me, heheheh. So she then said that next they were attracted to very bright primary colors. Now that was more like it. Bright primary colors I could do, LOL. What I *didn't* feel like doing was a quilt done in the typical baby colors that we refer to, oddly enough, as "pastels". 

I still have a giant stash of fabric from the days when I did quilt, so felt there was no need to buy more at the store. Surely I had fabrics I could make a quilt from? I pulled out some likelys and noodled around with design for a bit, and finally ended up piecing together the top seen above. Now to actually start quilting it. 

Of course my son and daughter-in-law may not even like it. Maybe the colors will be too wild for them! I did use a namby-pamby fabric for the backing, just in case. LOL.  Heck, if they don't I'll just keep it for myself. I'll make them another baby quilt. I probably will anyway. I have lots of ideas. Maybe the baby will get three or four quilts!

Happy New Year everyone.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Okay, it's not pastel! But one thing I like to do every year is make my own Christmas wreath. I have a big yew shrub in my front yard and I try to keep it from growing too tall. So every spring I trim the top down to be level with my porch railing, but it puts up new shoots all summer long. So every December I trim off all the new shoots, and then make them into a wreath!

I have a wire frame, which I use year after year. This year I went on a "Conifer ID Walk" at the Van Vleck Estate with my friend Karen. There were tons of pine cones and holly leaves and things just lying on the ground, so  I picked a few up, and added them to my wreath! My big expense were the three birds I bought this year, about $2.50 each at AC Moore. 

And I think it's a fine wreath, and all my own. I don't think I could like it more if I'd spent $65 to take the wreath-making workshop at Van Vleck!