Photo of the Week - March 30

I had looked forward to photographing the sights in and around Lincoln City last week, but between the fog and the rain, it was too wet to risk taking out my "real" camera. We did manage to bundle up and get one good walk on the beach, so I put my old point-and-shoot in my pocket before we left. Even though the breathtaking panoramic views were nearly completely obscured, there was still plenty to see in the details.


I love to collect shells on the beach, but these mussels were all I found this trip.


Oregon's coast is made up mostly of volcanic rock. These ancient lava flows are everywhere, forming tide pools all up and down the beach.


Let's see... I see sea anemones, mussels, barnacles... I didn't notice any shrimp or crabs this day, but you never know what life you will find in these pools.


This massive sea star looks well fed. I've never seen such a pretty red one before.


I didn't draw this, but I couldn't resist taking a photo as I walked along with my own Jake. I "heart" him too, LOL.


We got back to the suite to find this "Psycho Crazy Gull" trying to terrorize the girls into giving him some food. He and a buddy were actually pecking on the window to get their attention. Too bad seagulls can't read -- the sign he's standing on reads "Thank you for not feeding the seagulls."

I know, I know... I am WAY too easily entertained.

Home Again

I can't believe that here we are, home again from our little coast expedition already. It was SO nice to get a change of scene, even if only for a few days. The weather was dreadful, but the company was wonderful and we all brought along plenty of other things to do in case of rain.

I spent most of our down time sitting at the table looking out over the ocean playing with my watercolor pencils. I finished a color sample chart and began working on a portrait of my mother. My reference photo is a faded old snapshot taken around 1950 - she would have been 12 or so. I attempted it in oils a while ago, but I am having much more success this time with a smaller format. So far, so good!


Guilt-free sleeping in AND unlimited creative time... my favorite kind of vacation!

Cheating, I know

It's My-World-In-A-Photo Monday, but I just didn't have what it took to get out the camera today, so I am going to cheat and put up one I took this time last year while the girls were on Spring Break. Every year we pick a few days to go to the Oregon Coast and just hang out, and this year the escape just can't come soon enough.


If ONLY the weather will be warm enough to let us go barefoot again!

More watercolor pencil

I would have posted these earlier, but I've been fighting another round of bronchitis this week. Fortunately, watercolor pencils are the ideal companion to hide out in the corner of a couch with. I have had these pencils for a while, but I would never have learned how to really use them to their full potential without the gracious teachings of Sherry Goshon.


I'm not crazy about the lettering on this one, but I love the way the bloom turned out. I used Macro Pearl pearl-ex powders to enhance the texture edging the petals.


This one is going to say "Love" with one letter in each corner once I give the darks another layer of pigment. I lost my black pencil and am finding it difficult to lay down a rich dark the way I'd like.


And this one -- yet another attempt at a white-on-white project -- is going to be "Grace".

I want to make a few more undersketches so I can take them along with me when we go to the Coast next week. I haven't been this excited about learning a new medium in a long time.

Photo a Week - March 16

The birds are returning to the Willamette Valley... could this possibly mean that spring is near at last? I couldn't see any of the newcomers to photograph today, but I got lucky anyway.

This little guy is a year-round resident. (He doesn't look very happy about having his picture taken, does he?) I caught his portrait by accident when my finger snapped a photo while I was still trying to adjust the focus. The white-ish blob to the left is what I was *really* trying to photograph.

Ah, there he is! This enormous red-tail and his mate have set up housekeeping in one of the oak trees across the road. It's too early for nestlings yet, but you can be sure I will be watching!


I have been trying to take a decent portrait of him for a while now. I wish he would let me get closer. Thank goodness for zoom lenses!


I saw a bald eagle yesterday while driving in the country. I didn't have my camera with me (arghhhhh!) but I will be on the lookout for another glimpse. I knew that eagles lived in the foothills and along the Willamette River, but I didn't know that we had them here in the Valley too.

March 9 Photo of the Week -- All I Want is to Rock Your Soul

(That is actually a song lyric. My daughter's dance team is using is as the music for their competition piece this season. Wouldn't it be cool though, if some day I could take a photo good enough to rock souls??)

Silverton High School's dance team has a history of excellence, and this season is no exception. I know I'm prejudiced because my daughter is senior captain, but I really do love going to these tournaments. All the teams work so hard, and many of the pieces are absolutely wonderful to watch. These are some photos of our girls at their last competition before the state tournament next week. I'm getting better at action shots, but I still need to track faster. I will keep trying.


Smile for the judges ladies!


Grace in movement... beautiful.



A dramatic team moment...


Extend and keep smiling!


This was my best shot of the day. I actually caught them in mid-air this time!

Evolution of a Canvas

I was so happy to find a way to rescue the canvas I ruined that I couldn't put it down. Because it is not my project to give away I didn't photograph each step, but I can give you a wrap up of the finishing process.

In this view the design has been colored and blended, and a layer of glaze has been added to give warmth and a unifying tone to the whole image.


And then because I am an absolute failure at working pale, I sponged some deeper richer colors around the edges to add depth.



I still want to add some flat back pearls as "blossoms" along the vine, but with the addition of lettering she is essentially finished. (The lettering is the only addition - she looks lighter because I photographed her in different light. And oh yeah... I fixed her crooked upper lip. I think...)


So of course, rather than moving on the the next UFO (UnFinished Object) I had to start another canvas. I HAD to -- this is an image and an invocation that I have been wrestling with for some time and it is more than time to let it out.


I am all for World Peace, but these days I will settle for a truer faith and a little inner peace.

Photo of the Week - More Layers Play

I have been wanting to try this technique since I saw a similar example in a magazine a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, I don't have an *ideal* photo to try it out on, but this one is almost good enough. Don't I just wish that I had unlimited access to my subject for more photos...



If I had known how easy it was, I would have tried it out sooner. In fact, I think my new problem is not going to be so much "what do I do now..." but knowing when to stop!

And yes, her eyes really are that blue.

Trying something new

Time for another challenge! A few of my friends and I are going to tackle our backlogs of unfinished projects -- just one a month. Today is the first of the month, so I present here my first UFO. I began this one last month and set it aside in disgust when I found out that I had bitten off more than I could chew. Just about the time I was afraid that I had lost all urge to create... the incredible Sherry Goshon shared her techniques for a wall canvas using watercolor pencils and I HAD to try it.

While I do own a small set of watercolor pencils, I never played with them much until now, so the learning curve proved a little steep -- I made a total mess of my first attempt at using these techniques. sigh... I was too embarrassed to take a photo to show how badly I had mangled the canvas, but now I kind of wish I had because I think I may have rescued it.


It took a layer of gesso, a partial layer of texture medium, and yet a little more gesso to almost cover the original problems, but I'm pretty excited about the way she looks at the moment.

At the very least, I think I have finally learned to keep a very light hand with delicate techniques. My personal preferences run to the rule that "more is better", so this has been a challenge!

It's So Much Easier This Way!

Last week, a friend and I were discussing the drudgery of "bucking hay" -- gathering and storing bales of hay in the barn for winter when we were kids. In those days, the 2-rope bales we handled weighed about 70 pounds and had to be handled one by one at least 3 times before they got to the hay loft.

First we picked them up from where they were dropped by the baler out in the field and threw them up onto the hay wagon, where they were caught and stacked by someone else. After being transported to the barn, they were tossed back off the hay wagon down to someone who would load them onto a conveyer belt that took them up to the hay loft. In the loft, we caught them as they came off the conveyer and stacked them as neatly and as high as we could.

This was inevitably done on the hottest day of August while wearing long pants and a long sleeved shirt to protect one's flesh from the sharp hay. It was and ugly job, but it had to be done. Gads we got tired and dirty!


You will understand then why I have so much fun watching a load of hay being delivered and unloaded for me these days, especially since the monster bales we buy now weigh several HUNDRED pounds each! A load came in this morning and I managed to catch the end of the process with my camera. I think the drivers thought I was nuts -- it was foggy, damp, and COLD out there!


These are the last 18 bales left on the trailer. Just look at the size of those babies!


That's the "Squeeze". I love that machine. The driver takes aim with those long arms at the base of the stack he wants to remove from the trailer, and...


...Carefully now! ...he scoops up 6 bales...

...backs carefully away from the truck, and then sets them down.


He drives to the other edge of the stack to get a good grip on the long edges, pinches those big mechanical arms together and lifts one more time...


for one last trip into the hay barn. Each trip takes about 3 or 4 minutes at most.

Wasn't that easy? If I had had any sense I would have watched the whole thing from inside the house with a last cup of coffee in my hand, but I wouldn't have been able to take very good pictures that way.

Photo of the Week

This is Gatsby, our resident goofball. You may remember him as one of the litter of kittens that was dumped on our front porch a while ago. (He was the "hungry one", and believe me, he hasn't changed much, LOL!) He literally moved in to our house and would not be moved out. Every time a door was opened, in he would scoot. Eventually, we succumbed to the inevitable...

I'm not sorry because once I got used to him I learned to love him. He is the funniest cat I have ever met and has been the source of many smiles as well as outright laughter. Not only that, but the girls swear he can see ghosts. I have seen him staring intently at something only he can see myself.

***

I wish I had some artwork to share, but I have been completely unmotivated to do much more than read or spin this week. However, I have been working hard trying to learn some of the more advanced aspects of my PS Elements program. All of my books seem to stop at the same place, leaving things like layers, filters, and blending modes almost completely unexplored. So I decided to just start punching buttons and see what happens. Blending modes are still a mystery to me, but I think I am getting a good handle on layers, filters, and textures.



This is the unretouched original of a photo I took last summer, one of my favorite cow portraits. It's also a nice simple subject with a clean background -- a good photo to play with.


I may have gotten a little carried away with the posterization, but I love how the clouds turned out at least!

Photo of the Week - February 16

Recently, my friend Linda sent me a link to a photo of a calf born in Japan with a heart on its forehead. (The article called it an "ox", but it looks an awful lot like a plain old holstein calf to me, but oh well, I'm just a farmer's wife. What do I know?!)

Anyway, I knew I had seen hearts on our cows too so I went out to investigate... turns out, they are awfully common. This little girl is just a few days old.



Happy Valentine's Day!

Sunbathing Cows

Bright sunshine is a precious commodity in the Pacific Northwest in winter. Still, we can usually count on a high pressure system to bring us some clear days in February. Even the cows appreciate the respite from the seemingly neverending dark and damp. They all congregate at the end of their barns to stick their noses out into the sunshine. I can relate, LOL!



Just for fun I'm including this photoshop rendering of the above photograph into a pencil sketch. Just about the time I think I know what I'm doing, I realize that there are dozens of buttons in that program that I haven't even pressed yet. Thank goodness for good, clear tutorials! (The tute for this project can be found in the current issue of "Digital Scrapbooking.")

Meet Margeurite

I made this doll as a custom order -- she has safely arrived at her new home so I feel safe posting her here now. She told her owner that her name is Marguerite.



I think this is the first doll I have ever made that I am completely satisfied with how she turned out.



I think if I had been going to keep her I would have added more beads, but she was already way more work than I had anticipated and she wanted to go home.



If you are interested, the instructions for her hair vine can be found here.

My Sweetheart

I actually have a new doll all finished and ready to post, but it's Monday and the first day of our new modified photo challenge -- how can I waste such a golden opportunity to share a photo of my one and only granddaughter, LOL?!

I have bunches of more conventional snapshots, but I am quite taken with this one of her playing with Jake's hand. She *was* playing with her toes, but he thought it would be fun to interfere...



I tell you the truth... I can't resist these sweet laughing blue eyes.

Last Day

Whew... I made it. Here it is the last day of our challenge and I DID IT! I thought when we started that for sure I would run out of things to take pictures of before the end, but instead I learned to look for new things. My world is so much more interesting now that I have learned to watch for photo ops, LOL!

Thanks for issuing this challenge Linda. It has been a wonderful experience.

Today is also the beginning of the end of another era. My youngest daughter is a senior captain on her school's dance team. Today was the first competition of her last dance season. I can't say I will miss the busy-ness of being a dance mom, but I will miss the dancing so much. They are so beautiful! And finally, after FOUR YEARS, I have learned enough to set my camera to take a decent photo in a high school gym. (I owe Linda big thanks for that too!)



And one last photo. This one is an "oopsie" -- I spotted our resident hawk posing on the power line at the end of my driveway and hurried to take a picture. I was in such a hurry that I forgot to switch the camera from ISO 1600 (for the gym) back to 100 (for a sunlit afternoon.) I also did not get a chance to change settings and snap another photo before the darned bird flew away. This photo is straight from the camera, completely unedited.



Sometimes, a "mistake" still makes for an interesting effect.

Spring?

One of the very first signs of spring around here is the appearance of pansies and primroses for "winter color" in the garden. Now, I love my garden as much as the next Oregonian, but I am much to lazy to even imagine myself crawling around in the ice cold mud to plant anything at the time of year! My mother-in-law does though, and she adores primroses.

These appeared on display this week on tables in front of my local grocery store. (The plastic is to protect the blooms from the freezing fogs we have been having this week. Alas for spring!)



Aren't they pretty?

PostScript

The planet so close to tonight's crescent moon is Venus, according to In The Sky .

It amazes me how close it looks in the sky to my eye, and yet in the photo, it is quite far away. Gotta love perspective!

New Moon

OK, so it's not technically *exactly* the new moon tonight... but it's the first time I've seen the moon in a while and it's more new than anything else!

Come to find out that the human eye is still the most magnificent optical instrument in creation. I can see it all at once, but I find that with my camera I can show you either the whole moon, with the sunlit side completely blown out in glare...



... OR the really cool sunlit side itself. Alas for a lens that could REALLY bring detail into focus at that distance. As it is, I used a 300mm lens, a tripod, and a delayed shutter release so my hands wouldn't cause any lens blur.



I wonder if I were to try a manual focus if I couldn't get it just a littler sharper...? And I also wonder what planet that is -- anybody know??

My Comfort Junkie

Anybody who has ever shared house room with a dachshund knows that they like to snuggle. It doesn't matter what the temperature is -- they will find a blanket to huddle under.

This is Sailor. He has long hair, but it makes no difference.



Some days I wish I were a little dog.