Daisy and Friend

Candy and Bryan asked me to paint his dad's dogs. They are getting older, but still have personality.

Mom and Mark at the Ocean

This painting is of Mom and Mark walking to the ocean to spread my dad's ashes into the sea. June of 2011. It is done on yupo. First a wash of fluid acrylic is put on the paper and dried. Then using a subtractive method, alcohol is used to remove the whites. Finally, the darks are added with water color.

CHRISTMAS CARDS

I have never posted these two Christmas cards. The first is the one I was going to send out this year, but never got to do it. Don't know what happened. The second one is done on yupo in a sort of monoprint style.

ON INSPECTION

Before they moved to St. Louis, my grandkids would take turns coming over for Sundays. It was Iris's turn. She had on her pink fuzzy hat and was intent on inspecting a small plastic dog with a magnifying glass. I don't know why.

Mine is not to question it...just to paint the moment.

FOR THE BIRDS

I was reminded that I've never posted my paintings from the trip to Parrot Island, a bird sanctuary in Tennessee that we visited on our last reunion.

The first is a sun conure, done in watercolor pencils. I really enjoyed teaching myself more about watercolor pencils and doing an entire painting in them. Until this time, I'd only used the pencils for touch ups or details that were hard for me to do with just a brush. (I don't have steady hands with tiny brushes.)

The second of the blue parrots was one I considered a total flop. The original background was just too muddy. But I cropped away until it was this skinny, used it as a bookmark, and I like it way better. (Backgrounds are my weakest area)

This bird was also in the sanctuary. I believe it eventually landed on my sister Judy's hair. We were able to get into the large cage and photograph these birds.
This little guy is done on regular 140 lb Arches cp, doing the background wash before anything else was painted.

My Grandma Dorothy

This is my father's mother, Dorothy Mae Mackey Dearing. I painted this from one of Dad's favorite pictures of his mom. The greatest difficulty was that it was one of those old fashioned studio portraits that hand painted over the lips and cheeks. So it was difficult to see where the true lip line and cheek structure was. It gave me a lot of pleasure to see how much Dad liked his surprise Christmas gift.

I printed it in two ways: the original color version, and the black and white on brown paper. I liked the way they both turned out.

TILE MOSAIC PROJECTS

Since Katy gave us a set of coasters she'd made from tiles for Christmas, I keep getting ideas for things to do with plain white tiles. I printed out some of my paintings, put them on tiles with mat medium, and sprayed them with acrylic to seal them. The second picture is an example of some I've done. You might recognize some of the paintings.

The first painting I printed out as a 5 x 7 picture, cut into small squares, and with mat medium, I applied the squares to a piece of watercolor paper that had an ugly painting underneath. I wanted to see what would happen if I printed out a large painting, cut into 3 5/8 inch squares, and applied those to white 4" tiles. I am seriously thinking of trying that, now that I see how it might look.

Problems: When I print on plain paper, sometimes the ink smears when I put a layer of mat medium over it. (It doesn't smear on the layer that I use to glue it to the tile.) This is fine for soft edged things, like the birds. But on some paintings, especially those with white backgrounds, it is too obviously a smear. This smear problem doesn't exist with, say, magazine pages. Just those I've printed on plain paper in my printer.

Problem #2: How can I put the overcoat of mat medium on without the paintbrush strokes showing? I have tried buffing them out when they are dry with a piece of steel wool....too much work, and not too effective. I haven't tried rolling with a breyer yet because I am afraid of smearing the ink more.