Memorial Day Thoughts

Today is Memorial Day.

Today is also my maternal grandmother's birthday. She would have been well over 100 by now, but still I remember her birthday.

I don't have too many veterans in my family. I think our age is such that my parents, aunts and uncles were too young for WWII and too old for Vietnam.

But my husband's family has several veterans in it. His father fought in the Pacific in WWII. He was in the Navy and arrived at Pearl Harbor a month or so after the attack. He was on a supply ship at Iwo Jima and he was on the Missouri when the peace treaty was signed. We didn't get a lot of details about his service from him. He said that he say too much blood and too many things that no man should ever see.

My husband's uncle was a gunner on a B-52 bomber. It's a wonder he survived the fighting. He was stationed in England and flew bombing runs over Germany and France. He used to tell us about being trained in Montana because flying over the land looked like the area in Germany where they would be flying.

Published in Ann Kullberg's new book

I'm in Ann's new book!

It is a critique book and she take me to task. But she's right about what she says! My artwork is shown on page 88 through page 90.

You can purchase a copy from Amazon or from Ann Kullberg's website.


On a more serious note, today is 3 months since I lost my beloved cat of 15 years, Ziggy. Sometimes it seems that I can still see him out of the corner of my eye as he zips through the house. We still miss him. My hubby's cousin died in April and we will be fostering his cats for a while. Poor kitties - they miss their person.

Group Effort

My local chapter of the Colored Pencil Society of America, DC114 is doing a group project for the society's conference in Atlanta later on this year.

We chose to reproduce an impressionist painting that is part of the collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art. The work is by American painter, Frederick Carl Frieseke (1874-1939). It is called "The Garden Parasol" and was painted in 1910.

The artwork was divided up into a section for each of us who are participating in the project. To the left is my section.

It was difficult to capture the paint strokes in colored pencil. I had to think about what colors were available in 1910. Certainly some of the newer pigments were not even invented then. I think Frieseke would have had Cerulean Blue, Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Yellow, Burnt Umber, Raw Sienna, and White. I've seen the painting in person and I don't think he had a pre-mixed green, but made his own from cad yellow and cerulean blue. At least for me, colored pencil is not my first choice for an impressionist work. I think I ended up using my pencils more like pastels. My work is close but it's not quite the same colors as the painting. It will be interesting to see how the entire projects looks when everthing is put together.

You can see the Frieseke's entire work here.

when it rains...

What happens when it rains on a bale of straw? You get your own mini wheat crop.

The kernels on the grain head were actually more difficult than I had thought. But I like the turned leaves.

It was a good drawing exercise.

Dogwood Branch

This is a quick sketch of a dogwood blossom branch. All the dogwoods in our yard had nice blooms on them this year. Some years, an early frost gets them.

Postings will be a bit sparse for the next few weeks. We have had a death in the family.

These dogwoods remind us that spring means resurrection for the spirit and for Mother Nature.

spring is here

Spring has finally arrived at my house. Everything is in bloom. First to bloom was one of my orchids. This sketch is right out of my sketchbook. It is colored pencil on top of graphite. I didn't want to erase the pencil and am tyring to figure out how to use the pencil so that I can leave it in. Something along the lines of griselle. But colored pencil is a transparent medium so the graphite often changes the intended look. These days, graphite is not a true gray or black tone anyway.


The next one is a sprig of weeping cherry blossoms. I planted a weeping cherry about 10 years ago and now it is just covered in the spring with thousands of pink blossoms. It's one of my favorites in the spring. Butterflies love it. There are often two or three swallowtails on it.

Stay tuned. More sketches are comming. On the list are dogwoods, azaleas and jasmine.

However, first comes the taxes!

Is it done? Maybe?

This may be my entry to this year's CPSA show. This was my Grandfather's hand drill. He used it many years and I could almost feel the places where his fingers rested.

This drill was a pain to draw - everything had to be so precise. I don't think I could have done it, had I not taken drafting in college.

I didn't set this box on a table or add any background other than the paper color. This is fawn Stonehenge paper.

I'm never completely satisfied with any of my artwork. I always see something that needs improvement. If you're an artist, and you don't see something that needs work, then your ego may be bigger than your artwork. That's just my opinion!

However, I'm fairly satisfied with the wood grain in the box and the gear wheel. I'm still looking at it, thinking about the shadows, and highlights.

This may be the first of a series of old hand tools that have been passed down to me through the family.

In the spring and summer, I want to do flowers, so old tools may have to wait for a while.