Monday, March 18, 2024

It Was Cold

I went out this afternoon and filled all five of the bird feeders and, man, it was cold. Cold enough to see my breath. Now you understand that's normal for March but this winter we've been spoiled by warm weather so seasonal cold was a bit of a shock. These Sparrows showed up just as soon as I came inside. Usually it's the Chickadees that are first back to the filled feeders but today the Sparrows beat them to it.



The Daily Practice today was another still life. Still Life with Cherries. I wasn't too thrilled with it when I finished painting it but now that I've had some time to look at it, it isn't too bad. I'm glad I used more than one shade of red for the cherries. It made them look more real, I think.


Today's Daily Art prompt was to draw people with your non-dominant hand so I picked up my pencil with my left hand (which felt very weird) and got to work. The one on the left is the first one I tried but I think I was in too much of a hurry. The other two aren't too bad considering I'm not a leftie.



Then as if I hadn't drawn enough already, I drew these flowers out of Draw 500 Fabulous Flowers. They aren't very complex but I like the way they look.


I went to the grocery this morning for lunch things, bananas, and ingredients to make cheese soup on Friday. It wasn't until I got home that I realized I'd forgotten to put red grapes on the list. So I had lunch, put my coat back on, and went to U Bake for goldfish crackers (an extra big bargain because of their short dates), to the birdseed store, and then to a different grocery for grapes. I got the last bag of red grapes! They had a sign on the cooler that said they had a supply problem so it seems I was lucky to get any grapes.

Did you watch Jeopardy! tonight and hear Ben Chan give a shout out to Zambaldi Beer for hosting watch parties for him? Too bad he didn't win tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

--Barbara

Sunday, March 17, 2024

A Quiet Sunday

I spent the day just goofing around with watercolors and spent a little time on my manuscript. I can't seem to stay away from it but I'm finally having ideas of things to put in it that Rose can work to overcome. I'm so relieved. Whew.

 


First thing when I opened the drapes and looked out I could see that it had gotten below freezing overnight because the birdbath was half frozen and on top of the ice were little snowflakes or ice balls that look like dandruff. I noticed a few flakes flying around through the day when I looked out but nothing came of it.


In the front flower bed the hyacinths are sprouting and a few of them have baby flowers coming up too. I was surprised to see the purple and white buds when I went out to check on the sprouts.



I don't know if you can see them but the squills are sending up buds too. Squills are tiny little white flowers with blue stripes on them. They grow from a little bulb and come back every year. Evidently they don't taste good because the rabbits don't eat them.


Today's Daily Practice was tiny still life paintings of a clementine and a lemon. I liked painting them and wish that tomorrow's still life had a clementine and a lemon in it but it's a bowl of cherries and last time I didn't have the best of luck painting that. But I'll try again and see if I can't do it better.



My birthday book is called Free-Spirited Watercolor and the next exercise was some brush play. I used one of my favorite colors of paint, Quinacridone Gold, and followed the directions. I'm not sure that I did all of the movements right but I did okay. Some of the marks look like the examples in the book. She recommends only using one tapered bristle brush called a dagger which is new to me, so I may take another run at the movements to get used to the brush and the way it paints. The flubs aren't the brush's fault, it's operator error. I'm sure of it.

 

The Gratitude Journal page took some thinking since I didn't do a lot of things today and it wasn't sunny so I didn't even have that to draw. However it was windy again and it's supposed to get even windier later. Great.

 

--Barbara

Saturday, March 16, 2024

A Lot of Art-ing

I did two things today. In the morning I did art. The Daily Practice was to make an official watercolor of the cup and saucer with the pompoms. I painted the cup and saucer in pale gray and it really doesn't show up very well but I'm happy with the outcome.



Then I pulled out the watercolor book I got from DD for my birthday and did the next thing. It said to trace circles on watercolor paper, wet the circles one by one, and dip your favorite colors into the circles to let them spread and blend. I liked doing that a lot.


After lunch I pulled out You Can Draw Anything! and drew a cowboy boot. I managed to draw it cockeyed on the page so I had to take a picture with the paper tilted so that the boot looks semi-normal.



This little Downy Woodpecker landed on the suet cakes and then flew over to the birdbath for a drink. He held still long enough for me to take a decent photo. He looks smaller than some of the Downys that show up.


Then, while I had the camera trained on the Woodpecker, a Chickadee landed on the opposite side of the birdbath and stayed long enough for me to take a picture of it too. Amazing! Usually they barely stop but I was lucky.



Look at the daffodils! They've gotten so tall and flowers are shooting up. They look like they might open soon. I noticed that the mini daffodils on the other side of the duplex are blooming already. They're a little cheerful pop of yellow.


And the second thing I did today, in the "Yikes!" department, I was reading the manuscript and suddenly realized that I had a huge timeline booboo. HUGE. I had three chapters that were scrambled together all wrong so I copied them one by one into separate documents, carefully read the manuscript, and put them in the correct time order. I had to take out some parts and change others so that they made sense but I am so happy that I discovered it now and not months down the road. Whew.

It was really windy today. So windy that I could hear it whooshing all day and when I went out to fill up the birdbath it was chilly out there too.

--Barbara

Friday, March 15, 2024

No Peeking

Today's Daily Practice was what she calls "contour play." You look at a picture and try to sketch it without looking at what your pencil is doing. It's very challenging. I did my best not looking but think that my peripheral vision got in the way. Anyway, here's my attempt at drawing a cup filled with pompoms.


Next she said to draw it again but this time we could look at the picture. So much easier. Then we painted it with watercolor remembering to be loose and relaxed. No strangling the brush. This didn't turn out too badly, if I do say so myself.

 

I went down to Zambaldi Beer this morning to visit with DS. This tank is filled with beer brewed by one of his Brewer For a Day persons (or groups). For $500 they get to plan the beer recipe with DS, he orders the ingredients (which they've paid for), they get to come on brew day and help, then when the beer is ready they get to host a release party in the brewhouse with friends and family. After that the beer goes on the line over the bar. Because the batches are so small the beer won't last too long but the Brewer For a Day gets to send in friends to try "his or her" beer while it lasts. It's been amazingly popular so far.



A female Downy Woodpecker showed up on the suet pellets this afternoon. No it's not beheaded, it's just craning around the back out of sight. The level of the pellets in the feeder is going down fast because the @$#%& Starlings have discovered how tasty they are and two or three of them land on the feeder at once and go to town.


I saw a lot more green up on top of the retaining wall and went up to investigate. The day lilies have really shot up in the last week. I love seeing green when I look out there.



For the Daily Art prompt today there was a web of lines on a page and instructions to color patterns in the spaces using analogous colors. Those are colors that sit side-by-side on the color wheel. So I pulled out my markers and my color wheel and got to work. I didn't finish because it was time to Zoom with knitters but I wasn't too inspired by the prompt anyway. It's good enough, I decided.


Here's today's Gratitude Journal page. It was a beautiful sunny day, I got to visit DS, and a couple other things I'm grateful for. I have to learn to draw things smaller so I can get more on the page.



At Friday Night Knitting I worked on the foot of the Sockeye Salmon Hermione sock. I'm about an inch from time to decrease for the toe. That last inch takes a long time to knit, at least it seems that way.


I worked a little on the manuscript today. I added a few sentences here and there and started to write another scene. Little by little I'm getting through it--again. Maybe this time I'll get it right.

--Barbara

Thursday, March 14, 2024

My Heaviest Jacket

On Tuesday I didn't need a jacket when I went out. Yesterday I wore a hoodie. Today I wore my winter jacket and mittens when I drove across town. I had to walk a block and because there was a cold wind whipping out of the north I wore a beanie too. It's supposed to be in the 50s for the next 2 days and then dip back into the 30s for a few days after that. I have a row of jackets in the closet (all of them red!) ready for whatever Mother Nature throws at us next.

The only birds that braved the windy day were Sparrows, Mourning Doves, and Chickadees. I got this picture of the Sparrows riding the slowly twirling tube feeder. I'm rarely fast enough to catch a Chickadee photo and the Mourning Doves blend into the grass. Although there was a moment when a Mourning Dove was on the seed in the platform feeder and two other Doves were on the roof of the feeder.



The Daily Art prompt said to draw the profile of a face using negative space. I think that's what I did. I'm not sure. It doesn't really look like anybody I've ever seen.


I liked the Daily Practice today. We had a picture of a Van Gogh oil painting that she challenged us to try to paint something similar in watercolor. Oil paint is a lot different than watercolor so it was a real trick to make those swirls in the sky that he liked so much. I don't think I did too badly. Sometimes I worry that I'm wasting my money going up to The Clearing to take watercolor class for a week. But then I remind myself that I have a lot of fun doing it and am marginally satisfied with most of the things I paint. I'm never going to be "a painter" but I can dabble around for fun.



Then when I got home from my errands this afternoon I was looking for something to do and pulled out Drawing Cute and drew a dumpling and sushi. I've gotta draw these more often, the Chibis too, because I love the results almost every time.


Today's Gratitude Journal page took some thinking. I kind of took the day off from accomplishing stuff, just did art and portioned out a carton of ice cream, so I was a bit stuck for what to draw. I figured it out in the end.


--Barbara

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Only In The 60s

It wasn't as warm today as it was yesterday. Today it only got into the mid-60s which is pretty darned terrific for March in Green Bay. However tomorrow they're predicting that it'll be in the mid-40s. Much more seasonal.

The Red-bellied Woodpecker showed up today again at least twice--that I saw. He clung to the side of the suet pellets feeder so that I could just get his picture. At least I saw the whole bird today.

 


I was happy to see a male Goldfinch on a crook this morning and I could see that his plumage is starting to change colors. After I snapped this picture he went over to the finch feeder but bent around the backside so all that showed was his tail. Ah well, can't have everything.


Later in the afternoon a Downy Woodpecker came to the suet cakes feeder. It's funny, the suet cake on the house side of the feeder gets eaten much faster than the cake on the side away from the house. I wonder why. Maybe they're posing for me?



My Daily Practice landscape isn't quite as pleasing as my tiny landscape studies were yesterday. I did my best to replicate the parts of the little ones that I liked. Maybe I'm better with a smaller piece of paper to paint on?


Today's Daily Art prompt was to use a fine-liner pen and make loops across the page. I dug out three different thicknesses of pen and drew loops. I don't know what good drawing loops is but I did it and I can move on.



This morning first thing I sat down and drew a Gratitude Journal page for yesterday. I'm not posting its picture but I am posting the page for today. We had sun in the morning. It clouded up some in the afternoon but I didn't put a cloud on my page because I didn't want to. 

 

I spent a couple hours starting to reread the manuscript to see if the four little scenes that I added yesterday fit in where I put them and they do. Now I have to figure out more like that in the rest of the book. This writing thing is a challenge.

--Barbara


Tuesday, March 12, 2024

72 Degrees!

That was the high temperature this afternoon. I know that this doesn't look like much but I had the patio door all the way open and the screen pulled across so that real air could come into the house and go wherever it wanted to go for most of the day. Ahhh!



The Red-Bellied Woodpecker visited the suet pellets feeder this morning. Naturally it was on the back of the feeder so I have a lovely photo of its tail and the top of its head. I wonder if it makes any kind of sound. I've never heard it, only seen it.


My intention today was to read and listen to more of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel and I started doing that. I even went back to the first chapter to re-listen about giving the main character 1) a problem, 2) a want, and 3) a need. With the book was a spiral notebook with some ideas on it. I reread the page and suddenly words popped into my head.



So I came back here and started to write and in two hours I had four new, 1- and 2-page scenes and had slotted them into the manuscript. Conflict! A problem! A need! Rose already had a want, she wants Seaview to succeed but I didn't have a problem for her to overcome. I gave her a woman who wants Iggy and goes out of her way to bad-mouth Rose all over the island trying to ruin her reputation and hopefully send her away. Now I have to sprinkle negative encounters with locals through the manuscript until Rose triumphs. Which, of course, she will but not until late in the book.


I'm happy with today's Daily Practice. I didn't get to it until after supper (but before Jeopardy!) but I really like the way these tiny landscape studies turned out. Now if I can only paint a larger one tomorrow that I like as well. Fingers crossed.



The sun played peek-a-boo most of the day and found a place where the clouds were thin so it could shine brightly at sundown. Naturally the planet has tipped enough that the sun sets right next to the streetlight pole. Can't have everything.


I just realized that I forgot to draw a Gratitude Journal page today but maybe I can do it in the morning. Or maybe I'll post this and go do it now. I might do that.

--Barbara