Happy Birthday, Joanna!!

It is Joanna's birthday today. Happy Birthday, Joanna!

Does it fall to the oldest to be the responsible, caretaker child? Joanna has been the person we call on for taking care of our house, money, other children, etc. She took care of Jennie during Jennie's Junior and Senior year of high school and our house. And much, much more. She takes care of friends and co-workers, too.

She is our tech support and adviser in our computer world. We started out with hand me down computers from Joanna. We can complete each others sentences. I can't say enough good things about her.

She is also a great photographer as a hobby. One of my favorite photos is one she took here in the back yard when we first moved here, so that is about 12 years ago, right? How time flies.

Our Backyard
Photo and copyright, Joanna.

You can see a baby photo and some fireworks from her birthday last year. Another thing that is fun is go to her home page and click on her photo on the upper left of her page. I love it! And, I love Joanna! I hope her day is so special.

P. S. It is also Cody Castillo's birthday and Jerry Rawdon's birthday, a couple of nephews in the family. I hope they have good birthdays as well. Happy Birthday!

On the road again.......

I was hoping to get a collage up of the paintings for the show. Oh well, all good plans, etc. We went to dinner with the girls last night and with Larry tonight. We hoped to all get together for Joanna's birthday tomorrow, but it didn't work out. We had a round about celebration and now we will have to celebrate all our birthdays when we get back.

We will be on the road tomorrow, in Magdalena on Monday, then Albuquerque, then back to Magdalena for the show next weekend. Whew! It will be fun to see everyone and then arrive in the cool mountains of Angel Fire for the summer and relax! And be cool!! It is still 93 degrees out at 11:30 p.m. here.

Our internet is fixed now that we are leaving, sigh. We don't know what kind we will have in New Mexico, but I will be posting one way or another.

See you down the road.....

Wendy Jones, Sad News

Lilly at Peppers

Our trip to Magdalena and Peppers will include a very sad part. Marky's wonderful daughter, Wendy Jones, passed away. It was such a shock as she was very young. We will all miss her. Wendy was warm and sharing and fun to be around. She was very instrumental in getting me started at Peppers and taking care of all of us there at the gallery. Her daughter, Lilliana (Lilly), is a delight and Wendy encouraged her talent in art, both painting and acting.

We will go to Wendy's memorial service on Monday in Water Canyon, one of her favorite places. I'm glad we will be able to be there to share the good memories.

Wendy enjoyed the bustle at the gallery especially during Old Timers, so the show will go on. It will not be the same this year. Our sympathy and thoughts are with Marky, Lilly, David and all the family at such a sad time.

Magdalena Catholic Church - Acrylic Painting

I was putting together my painting list a couple of days ago and realized I only had one small painting for Magdalena. I took the two small paintings to Austin for the Scarbrough Show as you recall, so I decided to get with it and do one more for Magdalena.

Buildings and perspective are not easy for me, but I am pleased with the results on this one. I chose acrylics for their quick drying time and ease of framing for Gene. I painted on one of the little boards that I prepared with the Colourfix Medium for pastels. It works nicely for acrylics as the paint seems to stay wet for a few minutes longer. After drying, I finished it with Kaymar varnish and it looks great.

Mary Magdalene Church
Acrylic, 5 x 7 inches

It is framed in a coppery plein air frame.

I have all the paintings labeled, in their packages and ready to go. I am taking 21 paintings for the show. Some have been in Magdalena before, but that is OK. There will be some new guests and new opportunities.

I am now going to pack my studio .. I take most of my art supplies. Thanks to Gene for the help and encouragement to drag it all along. Hopefully I will get many paintings done and we will have a great time in the mountains.

Maggie Stiefvater and Shiver

You probably thought I had forgotten about Maggie. She is such an inspiration, super artist, author, mother, wife, etc. I haven't kept up with her writing blog like her art blog, but I still check once in a while to see how she is doing and have a smile for the evening. She is such an entertaining writer..... The books are aimed towards teenagers, but very entertaining. They keep you riveted.

Here is the trailor she made for her new book.




This is amazing in itself. You can win lots of things connected with the book. Just hop over to Maggie's blog or live journal and check it out.

Here is a link to her oooolllllddddd art blog. You will find inspirations, how to's, WIPs and so much more. Even a kick in the butt to get you motivated. Just search in the box at the top of the blog. I cannot imagine the energy this one person has combined with talent and good sense. Well, maybe not that part about sense! She writes to me, after all. Heh, heh. She can budget time like no one else and still is a procrastinator, too.

I so wish her well in her work. She is a musician, music writer/composer, too. Whew!! Congratulations, Maggie!

Telephone and Internet Rant and Pastel Painting

It has been an interesting few weeks with such intermittent telephone and internet. I usually write my blog on-line but today I will write it and post whenever I notice the internet is on. If Time Warner doesn't get this fixed before we leave, how will we check messages? We will have to give our cell phone numbers to people to run up our minutes. Not good........ We have had problems for at least three weeks and maybe more. It started with the TV cable and now it is the internet and telephone. The internet and phone come and go, a few minutes, an hour or off several hours. Argh.........

When I first started blogging, I wrote each blog in my journal on my Mac. Looks like I will have to do that again .. I cannot look back to see the last blog I finished or if I posted my last painting. My memory is not good, so can't rely on that. Sometimes I plan to do something so intently that I imagine I have done it. So here we go, back to the journal:

The Austin Pastel Society had an in-house competition for the meeting last Sunday. Rae Andrews, Vice President, came up with the idea of categories to make us think and paint. (you can see WIPs on her blog) Each artist could paint a variety of faces or shapes in the same painting, with overlapping or a bird's eye view, looking down on something, or an ant's point of view, looking up at something, or something to do with the arts. The paintings could be for sale with the money to go to the scholarship fund if the artist wanted to donate. I chose the ant's view because we have all the tall trees in the yard. I took a photo .. I didn't want to lie on the ground and draw .. and worked from that. I also took the "Stacked" apples painting, just as a sample of shapes.

Looking Up
Pastel, 9 x 12 inches

The entries were varied and fun. There were faces, birds, dancers, cactus, flowers, chairs, and more. There were some nice prizes which I hope encourages more participation the next time. :) I won one, some pastels, Pastelbord and a mechanical eraser. I don't need the eraser .. I don't make mistakes, right?

Sketches, Pen and Ink - Plaid, stack

I worked on painting cards, inventory, mailing list, etc., today. I have a tired brain. :) I made homemade flour tortillas for Gene. I hadn't done that in a long time except for breakfast. Must have been a shock for him. I also made tortilla soup with beef and green chile.

I sketched a bit after dinner with a Micron 05 pen in the 7 x 10 inch sketchbook for Scavenger Hunt 136. Short sketches as usual, freehand. Nice to rest the old brain.

Number 4, plaid - the couch cover and Number 5, stack of something - books on the bookshelf. The bookshelf is part of the entertainment center, so it is not lopsided and shaky like the drawing.

Now we shall see if the internet stays on long enough to publish this. It went off when I tried publishing about an hour ago and lost the last paragraph. Drat.

Internet and Phone Problems

We are having internet and phone problems. We have a bundle with Time Warner and things haven't been going well. First it was the TV so they came out and re-wired everything. Then the internet and phone started going out. It will probably be this way until next week, so I will answer e-mail and post when I have the green lights.

We are spoiled people, I feel like I am cut off from the world when the internet and the phone are down. We do have cell phones, but they don't work well here at the house. Sigh.......

Baseball .. All over but the crying .. or not.

Congratulations to the Texas Longhorns! I guess most of you know that the Longhorns lost the last game of the College World Series and the LSU Tigers won. LSU has a great team and had been number one for most of the year. They are deserving champions. The Longhorns had a great team spirit and they should be so proud of their accomplishments .... we are!! It was the two best teams playing for sure. Both schools have such a history and devoted baseball fans. The players were amazing and the way they played as a team was super.

This is a photo from a game in May. I just like it. And.. of course, I don't have any from Omaha!

The Longhorns played their hearts out and we had the most exciting end of a season that I remember since we have been here .. well except for the times we won the College World Series, of course! Some were calling them the Heart Attack Horns. They were amazing in their feats of courage and talent. I'm pretty sure that the team will be back in the heat of things next year as most of the pitchers and players will be back. The team should be so proud of themselves for persevering and making it to the last game. I just hope that they know that the fans were all there in spirit if not in person. Best of luck to the seniors and the drafted players.

You can read a great commentary and all about it on Joanna's Longhorn Baseball Page, the official Horns page and all the other stories you can Google up about the games.

It said in the paper that we will play a weekend series with Rice next year. That should be very intense and fun. I am already having withdrawals and cannot wait for next year. Go, Horns, Go!

Flag Day Revisited

I didn't post about Flag Day, June 14, this year. Shame on me. Teresa, over on Blueberries, Art and Life, wrote a column for her local paper. You will find it interesting and touching. It makes me proud to be an American, from the USA. Thanks, Teresa.

The last time I posted for Flag Day was in 2007. That is a long time. Charlie, our dear friend mentioned in that post, died last year. His birthday is always a reminder of Flag Day. We did talk to Gen and we called Crystal for her birthday. I should have posted. I will try to do better in the future!

I love my flag. I was telling Teresa that when we were in South America I would get a catch in my throat when I would come around the corner toward the Embassy and see Old Glory. The Fourth of July celebrations were so special when we were away from the United States. My eyes get teary when the National Anthem is played, even at the baseball games. I always think of all the great people before us that kept our country free. I just hope all of you realize what a special country we live in and are a part of. God bless America!