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Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Watercolor Artist Mary Whyte was featured this past Sunday on CBS to inform people of her work and documen­tation of vanishing jobs and disap­pearing ways of life. I usually watch Sunday Morning with Sue but this past weekend we were out at Flea Markets looking for gems and missed it. I had no idea that it appeared until I read about it on the Artist Daily website. Mrs. Whyte has a new water­color DVD workshop for sale that was recently released and an upcoming museum show where her series, as was highlighted in the report, will appear.  Good stuff. As usual — Thanks CBS.

Ovation TV has a show running called Art Race which follows two competing Artists traveling coast to coast with no wallet or support system. They live by their wits and their Art is traded as their currency. Meals, lodging and travel… paid for with Watercolor or Oils. If it were only that simple. It’s on again tonight — check it out… We seem to have a favorite in Kenny here — sorry Ben. Good luck to both Artists. And oh my gosh — So refreshing to see something beyond Bob Ross reruns and Donna Dewberry’s One Stroke Painting. Yes indeed Ovation is giving me an Art fix…

Had my fill of medical diagnostics this past week and need to go do something different. It is slightly more bearable than last week — temper­ature — humidity wise outside and that will help a lot. I scribbled the cow below earlier this week. I hope to go see some more farms and countryside today. Been reading and getting inspired. I think that the Grange Fair will be happening here soon. Yep — Angorra Bunnies to Belgian Work Horses whose shoulders are taller than I am.

We aren’t likely to see storms till sometime Sunday. We had some nice ones last week and fortu­nately the blackout associated with the heat did not last too long. Hope that everyone is using the new Weather dot com apps that the site is sharing. I appre­ciate the data link that they provide down the right margin of this blog. I think that I can hear my wife starting to wake up. I came down at 4:00 AM and did the dishes and made the coffee — so I’ve been pretty quiet. Darn email is down as my provider had a “hardware emergency”. Maybe it will be back sometime today? Been gone since yesterday afternoon when I got back from my testing.

This video is directly from YouTube. Sure it’s been around for a while but… is it a concern that during those years in the White House… Oh jeez — I meant to hit that other button. Other versions of this exist on YouTube and a simple search can locate them.

This is what I do to rest my eyes when I take a break from painting. I hope to finish my painting this weekend and maybe go somewhere that we can draw on the spot or paint. I think that I should have number of them going at once. 

I suppose I ought to get back to my Watercolor image now. Wash is dry.

It has been so hot here that the prospect of Plein Air painting is somewhat repulsive. Perhaps a drawing done on the spot with color notes and lots of photo reference is the way to go.  Right now I’m setting up at the drawing board next to the computers. The Weather Alert radio upstairs just turned itself on automat­i­cally with some warning or advisory. It was in a cabinet in the dining room staying quiet. I’d just taken it back out again. I know now that we have another day of excessive heat expected here on Saturday. Oh joy.

I’m surrounding myself with these OTT Light bulbs. They give you brilliant illumi­nation but they are CFLs and will save a lot over a period of time and they are daylight balanced. You can find a nice display of OTT lighting at any JoAnn Fabric Store and I’ve even seen them at Michaels Arts and Crafts. They are also available here online and have a nice variety of shapes and forms that they come in to suit people’s different needs.

Color-wise they are much more effective than the old Luxo Lamps that I was used to working with. They relied on a round fluorescent tube and in the center was a spot for the incan­descent bulb. While this gave you more balanced lighting than fluorescent or incan­descent bulbs alone… it still did not come close to daylight. These OTT bulbs seem to make a big difference. You ought to check them out. These bulbs do reduce eyestrain quite a bit.  I’ve got to get on into painting here now.  so … I’ll keep writing  …more later

Another year passes and the Fourth of July remains symbolic.

Greetings to all from Holland, Pennsylvania as another July 4^th marks the anniversary of freedom from British rule. I’ve been diluting the water­color pigments and marking the cotton paper. Been looking around Bucks County for a good old fashioned Chicken Coop.

Sue found me one out Newtown-Richboro Road at Solly Brothers. Trouble is that it is hard to gather reference through the chicken wire that these rascals are behind. Spot metering and focusing is difficult when the virtual layer exists and the infrared system sees that instead of the intended target. But I will locate some more acces­sible Chickens around here. I’ve seen them on the road down to the Buxmont Veterinary Hospital… I’ll keep looking. I’d like to draw some Roosters.

My personal calendar turns over on Sunday as I reach the 53 year mark. What can I tell you? Beats the alter­native I suppose. I sure don’t like the images that I’ve seen of me lately. I suppose that it’s a good thing that I’m usually behind the camera. Speaking of behind the camera… I see my childhood friend Rob Vaughn is the anchor on the Lehigh Valley’s Channel 69 10:00 PM News carried on WFMZ. I’d seen Rob on a special report or two in the past when they picked up their stories on another channel. I was very glad to see that he’s doing well. His Dad — Bob Vaughn’s voice still echoes in my memory “WCBS news time is… ” Seems like I always had WCBS on in the car when I drove… especially at night. While growing up Rob and I used to use telescopes to practice the primitive art of Astronomy. My synapses do barf up old info from time to time. Rob had a Tasco telescope and I had a Monolux Refractor. I still remember Rob’s mom Ruby, brother Michael and sister Pam. It was just real good to see Rob on television here. Good work Rob.

I hope that everyone has a great Fourth of July Holiday -
please leave the fireworks to the pros…

I hope that all you Mothers had a wonderful day

Sue and I went looking for some more raw materials for her new creative outlet on Mother’s Day afternoon. Sue is getting involved with making jewelry and has had a couple of very successful pieces as she learns the ins and outs of putting gems, beads and metals together. They are really looking nice. Got some nice images of a couple of them on Saturday morning and I’ll put a couple of small shots below. I’ll put up a gallery of images soon. Turquoise photographs extremely well and the lighting looks good.

We stopped in at Tanners and a friendly herd of Dairy Cows came by to look at the funny looking people on the other side of the fence. These are big soulful animals and I can see that they are pausing and having their thoughts about all of it as we stand there. I’d last visited with a herd of Black Angus Cattle that were on the other side of the fence.

I have hundreds of new reference shots (thanks to John at DigiTech) of the Black and White “Gateway” Cows and hope to do some drawings of them soon. Looks like it will rain tomorrow afternoon.

I am a subscriber to a Desktop Publishing Newsletter at About​.Com that is written by Jacci Howard Bear. Today’s article discussed a recent article by Smashing Magazine about Instant Gratification literally killing Good Design. That shouldn’t be a big surprise.

While I don’t think that anything will change, there are some inter­esting thoughts for us graphics people and it was worth going to the link at Smashing Magazine. I’d also suggest that the Desktop Publishing Newsletter has some very solid ideas — so sign up. 

If you have time that is…

Change is inevitable — so I’m changing this page layout

Just set up a new fixed width blog with what I hope will be easier to read text. All of my widgets and images in the main column will be out of whack for a while but it all will be lots better once I get it organized.  I used the latest version of Artisteer to mess with the theme and it worked out pretty well.

I had this blog design finished last month but Sue and I spent a long weekend down in Cape May and Passover then Easter came into play as well. Really nice here again today with temper­a­tures in the 80s but we are cooling off tonight and expect a line of strong thunder­storms before that happens. It has just been one extreme after another all winter long right into early Spring. I wrote a couple of long entries here about specific storms we’d had and sure enough the next week another would come along that was bigger and badder than the one that preceded it. All photog­raphy is currently offline. I took a shot at sunrise looking over the ocean from our deck and it was a fatal digital click that was heard in Cape May. I was fortunate enough to have captured a number of spectacular Victorians the day before though.

Is everyone aware that Cape May surely seems to be haunted? We were taking some shots at one of the old Hotels when a piece of siding hit the sidewalk a couple of feet away. With so many Nor’easters coming through over the past couple months — slightly hard to imagine that on this gust free, almost totally still day that a piece of siding just happened to coinci­den­tally float by…  Some pictures to follow later on.

Sue and I drew pictures of Cape May Lighthouse from various angles. Unfortunately the museum and light­house itself was closed due to the off-season. Tree damage around the parking area there showed that they had the same nasty winds that we’d had recently. Never seen so many broken limbs in my life.

B