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Posts Tagged ‘Art’

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

For the past few weeks prior to Christmas — I’d been working on five drawings of the grand­children of Mr. Robert Leffler, my father-in-law out in Tucson, Arizona. We’d even gotten in touch with La Paloma Art Gallery in Tucson so that mats would be cut and waiting when we got there. You just can’t transport art properly on the airlines. If we’d framed them the glass would need replacing at the very least. Stuff gets tossed around. Sue bought two heavy plastic frames and and we nested and taped them together with the drawings carefully placed in a tracing pad between the two. From there, they would be my carry-on luggage along with my camera, extra memory cards and a battery charger.

Initially we were set to fly on the afternoon of Christmas Day. Turned out that our flight from PHL on US Airways was canceled due to a shortage of flight crew. So Sue went to work resched­uling from this to that… and back again. It wasn’t too much fun. We got up at about 2:45 AM and I brewed the coffee. We left in the dark. It was rainy. The night before I’d finally cleared a snow drift and plow in with the VW Beetle and the driver’s side window regulator broke in the pouring rain. Murphy’s Law. So — Trash bags were taped over the window and the rain stayed out. Thank goodness we were taking the van to the airport. We parked and dragged all the luggage into the United terminal at PHL. Two connecting flights and we were finally in Tucson.

The entire reason for our going West was to attend and document Mr. Leffler’s 80^th Birthday Celebration that was held on the afternoon of Saturday, December 27, 2009. Good thing that I had the art and the camera because our luggage was nowhere to be seen. The morning of the party — Sue, the girls, Lauren and myself all had to go shopping at 7:30 AM or so — otherwise… I’d have been in the same t-shirt and jeans that I traveled in. As would all of the group that departed from Philly. So — We had clothes. Late Sunday night, the day after the party, they found our bags and brought them to the house in Tucson. You pay $20 each for 4 bags from point A to point B and they lose them. Will we be compen­sated by the airlines for the loss of the bags and needing to go buy clothes? Who knows?

The first thing that I did on return was to jump onto the computer here to “process” the Olympus Raw Format “ORF” files in Photoshop CS3 Extended and convert them into uncom­pressed Tiff Images (2.26 Gigabytes). Then I made full size Jpegs, half size Jpegs and quarter size Jpegs and burned all materials onto a data DVD and onto 3 CD-Roms for distri­b­ution and safekeeping. As of yesterday afternoon all were ready to ship. That’s good. In case the extended family is inter­ested in them — I’ll pop them into a NextGen Gallery and post them here very soon. For now I have to work on a website.

The VW Beetle is now in the shop to fix that broken window that I mentioned and the parts won’t be in until Friday. So I’ll be right here working I suppose. Lots to do. Got to go change over the laundry and get another load of wash in. I’ll be back and corre­sponding again soon — but nose to the grind­stone on that website for now.

I hope that everyone has a warm, happy, and wonderful Christmas. If you live in the Northeast like me, we actually have a White Christmas. Most unusual according to the statistics. I’m very typical of my standard behavior again this year… a bit nostalgic and melan­choly missing my folks and my brother. I have the blessing of my wife Sue’s compan­ionship and my stepdaughters who are always “enter­taining”.

Had a couple unexpected bumps in the road recently and I’m glad that I’m here. I don’t take it for granted. I feel a need for a few days of quiet that I’m unlikely to see — but I think perhaps that isn’t a physical quiet but instead a quiet that you carry with you inside. The animals feel a peace now. Maybe it’s the snow. Things are a bit more muffled than usual. That is okay. I’ve listened to the Christmas Carols on the radio and I’m in the mood. I’ve been drawing and designing a whole lot of stuff lately and right now I’m working on a series of portraits. I’ll be done with them soon. I really don’t want to run out of projects. But if I did — I’d update this blog with lots of new things.

I hope that everyone here in Bucks County takes a piece of their Christmas break to go to the Visitors Center to see Daniel Troy’s exhibit of Railroad Photography entitled “ON TRACK”. It runs until January 9, 2010. Go to the Visitor’s Center website for additional info and direc­tions and also see lots of Dan Troy’s work at his website. It’s a good show. Image below ©2009 — 2010 Daniel Troy.

We found really nice Mums and Gourds at the Farm & Garden Station here in nearby Ivyland, Pennsylvania. Not too far from here out old Almshouse Road in (depends on your source of infor­mation) Ivyland or in Warminster, Pennsylvania. I notice the same problem with Tanners in the web look-ups. The shots that I have here were done on October 10, 2009 in the afternoon. The tracks were quiet but the New Hope & Ivyland Railroad crosses near the property — hence the name “station”.  It was a nice day and my wife Sue wanted to go bring home some Fall decora­tions.  So that was exactly what we did.

The shop there had a couple Enormous Pumpkins on display. If you guessed the weight of the large one inside you could win it. Then you would have to figure out exactly what you were going to do with the rotting hulk and seeds… Clever. The store at the Station doesn’t really have a great deal to sustain it during the winter months. It gets pretty darned quiet around January there but each Spring they continue to be a good source of Mother’s Day plants and flowers. Lots of nice hanging plants. Anyhow I enjoyed bringing my camera and catching the color and light patterns. Here I’ll share them with you in a little NextGEN Gallery. Incidentally the NextGEN Galleries are very compatible with CoolIris and it makes a nice little slide show of the images.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

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If you’d like to go see the Farm & Garden Station — here is their address and phone number. I’m quite sure they’d appre­ciate your business.

Farm and Garden Station
1370 Almshouse Road
Ivyland, Pennsylvania 18974
Phone: (215) 396‑6898

A cold and rainy week here in the Northeast. Over the past few days,  a couple nor’Easters came through with snow as close as the western edges of Bucks County. There was a serious frost this morning and it sure seems as if winter may just be creeping it’s way in here.  I guess it is just about that time of year. It sure is nice to have the Philadelphia Phillies in the Championship again. Remains to be seen if they’ll be in the World Series again or not… Hope so. We had an early snow during the Series last year and the power was out for nine hours or there­abouts during the rain — snow out. The trees couldn’t take the snow with their leaves still on. The Bradford Pear trees suffered lots of damage.

Been working on a bunch of design projects with Victoria lately and haven’t been around to blog much. Well actually I have but the time spent at the computer was for other people. Met a nice printer up in Lansdale, PA named Dave this past Friday afternoon. He gave me a tour of his facility and Vic and I did some estimating work. I didn’t get home till about 8:00 PM Friday night. That gave Sue a chance to rest before I got home. We went out and got Mums last weekend and on Sunday we went to Tanners Farm Store and shopped. I had a nice oppor­tunity to photo­graph their herd of steers.

So — I’ve got a lot of new photos of Fall scenes with Pumpkins, gourds and flowers at the Farm and Garden Station and the Cattle at Tanners to put up in galleries. Sue had some fun looking at a large beast eye to eye as he snorted. He had an inter­esting presence.  I’ll be back soon with more stuff. On October 22^nd I snuck in here and resized President Lincoln.