Maggie is Great with Advice

If you need some advice and encouragement, Maggie Stiefvater is dishing it out on her writing blog. It can certainly apply to art as well. Something to think about until I post again.

I'm off to lunch with my working buddies from Continental Airlines in the 60s. Wow! That is ages ago. We will see how much we can remember!

Sketching Above and Below

The newest Scavenger Hunt 149 is on-line and ready to go. I sketched yesterday evening with a Micron 05 pen in my regular 7 x 10 inch sketchbook. While in Albuquerque, there are family and friends for us to visit. I use this as an excuse to paint and sketch less. I'm not really sure how the tally comes out. Maybe I should do a little check and see. Hmmm.

Number 1, above - the ivy and pots above the TV and Number 2, below - the phone book and shelf below the TV. We figured this house would have a big new TV for the new HD TV signals. Not.... :) We don't watch that much anyway, we are on the go. But, we were surprised.

The Balloon Fiesta is well underway. We visited the west mesa today and got a few shots of the balloons. We will go on Thursday morning and see the special shapes lift off. Should be beautiful. There were 550 balloons that lifted last Saturday morning for the first day. Amazing.

Balloons far over the Rio Grande yesterday. Beautiful sky.

A balloon that was close to landing near the road to Corrales. A Longhorn balloon ... no the little Horn on our radio antenna.

The balloon closer to landing with the sheep on the run.

Very close to touching down.

Looking across the valley from the west mesa. The direction they go depends on the breezes, of course. It is always interesting to see which way they go everyday.

A couple of dancers, Miguel Caro Dance Group, performing folklorico dances at the senior center next to the place where Gene's Mom stays. They were great and it was a beautiful day. I forgot to post these.

The main performer when we were there was a young singer, Yolanda Pinela.

The hat dance.

More dancing.

Another great dance.

This was cute, with the hugging as they danced.

Back to Basics, Acrylic Pears

I'm back to painting in acrylics. Regina is working on a pears project so in anticipation of that I decided to paint a couple of pears. I painted over the Last Flags which was a practice piece and a way to get outside and paint. I painted inside today. It is a beautiful 69 degrees out there, too. Ah well.

I painted a still life of pears on a table and tried to use my notes from the other day. A fairly quick exercise of a little over an hour.

Opposites Attract
Acrylics on Canvas Panel, 5 x 7 inches

This will be for sale as a Jo's Notions on my web page for $50 including postage.

First iPhone Sketch

Oh, what fun the iPhone is for sketching! I confiscated Gene's phone for a while this morning and tried to do a quick sketch on Brushes, a painting app (application). The app was $4.99. There are some others that I will check out when I get my own iPhone. Ha.

I had about 5 - 10 minutes of actual sketching and about 20-25 minutes to learn how to switch from brush to eraser (I didn't use that much), etc. The eraser is actually like a brush as you can make it in colors and vary the transparency. I also had to learn how to "undo" (Regina's disliked tool in digital 'painting') and change colors. It is good for my old brain for sure. Keep the grey matter busy. My excuse for the unfinished look is that Gene had to leave and took his phone!

One thing I kept doing was trying to move the sketch with my painting finger. Any touch makes a mark. To move the image around and make it larger or smaller you use two fingers. I got better as I went along, but that was what required the 'undo' button. A big plus is, that I saved it to the photo gallery on the phone and then sent it to myself via e-mail. Then when I received it, I downloaded it directly to iPhoto for storage or editing of size. I am amazed.

This is sketch number 4, peanut butter and jelly, for Scavenger Hunt 148. Sketched with new "Brushes" on the iPhone. The bottom ellipses were better before I put in the table, but as I said Gene was leaving and I had to do that very quickly, right?