Art in My World

I love gardening for many reasons: it's great exercise, you can eat what you grow, many plants do double duty as medicine, and many flowers and herbs smell heavenly! Most of the things I like to grow are edible or medicinal, but if I do grow flowers I want them to smell. It is too bad that many of our flowers, including the wonderful rose, have had the smell bread out of them. The favorite saying is: take time to SMELL the roses! First, take the time to slow down in your busy life. This is so important in our tired and wired world we now live in. Sit down in a beautiful place, near beautiful smelling flowers, and breath in deeply. Relax! Secondly, smell. It is one of our five senses, and there is something therapeutic about certain lovely smells. So I take the time to grow beautifully smelling flowers, like roses and violets and narcissus. And then I take the time to enjoy them. It's good for you! It really is!   

A Wonderful Way to Relax Sometimes one just needs to take the time to slow down at the end of the day, make a good cup of coffee and grab a cookie or two, put up the feet and enjoy the quiet. These cookies are made for coffee and fit the bill. 15 years ago I picked up a little book simply named, Biscotti. It is full of various biscotti recipes...so many to choose from! After my family devoured my first batch made in over 10 years, I think I will try them all. Well, why not? Here is the first recipe in the book: Biscottie Toscani   1/2 cup almonds 1/3 cup of butter 3/4 cup of sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/4 teaspoon almond extract 2 teaspoons grated orange zest 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon salt  Place nuts in a shallow pan and bake in a preheated 325 degree oven until golden brown, about 8-10 minutes. Let cool. In a mixing bowl cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, vanil

Feeling Blue Maria Pace Wynters does some wonderful abstract-like paintings. I love her style, especially her backgrounds and it is those backgrounds that I wanted to try and mimic. Most of Maria's paintings are mystical images of her two girls, but she has several still life's and flower paintings that I thought were worth trying to copy. This was my first try. I just love practicing this type of painting.

Hats...I would love to wear them if I could find one that fit over my big head! Big head problem no more...now I can knit them! Knitting in the round sounded rather complicated, but thanks to the internet, I watched a few videos and took the plunge. My first effort was just the knit stitch, where the little curled edge just makes itself. How easy is that? And, I just loved this yarn color; another benefit to knitting your own. You can find your favorite color, your preferred style, and your size. All great reasons to continue in my journey with knitting :)

Took a break today from watercolor skies and spent a few hours splashing color on canvas with acrylics. This piece actually was inspired by a watercolor painting and so I tried to mimic the looseness and spontaneity of that medium. With a bit of practice one can almost do this, especially in the beautiful backgrounds one can achieve through the layering on of washes. You can't do this with oils, not unless you are willing to wait weeks between coats. Which it appears the masters did. I think my style favors this type of painting...loose and free. It would be nice to be able to have the patience and skill to paint with much more detail. With time? We shall see...

Golden Hills Continuing to work on mastering clouds in watercolor. Well, mastering is not something anyone can accomplish in one lifetime, but maybe improving in one's skill. There is an artist named Susie Short , who is a wonderful water colorist; she has put together various videos with different topics. I ordered the clouds one several weeks back and plan to work through her different methods of creating clouds. She is a very good resource if a certain skill needs work and direction.  This picture was taken in California while traveling through the state in 2011 from one National Park to another. I am always amazed at the pictures on is able to gather while driving.