Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Sunflower Surprise

The first sunflowers painting is done, might glaze it tomorrow. I will do one or more, different perspectives and making a small series. This one got a green garden-like background, it is what kept coming to me, no matter what else I tried, I kept coming back to this. A garden jungle of friends for he sunflowers. I really had fun with the foliage and enjoyed working on it. But the sunflowers I painted began to turn color swiftly yesterday, especially their leaves. Their flowers were not very open before, but have begun to change and open quite rapidly, almost before my eyes ! I have trimmed their stalks and given them fresh water, and they are looking good and ready to pose for the next painting.

And after I finished the painting, I discovered a small surprise in the painting. See if you can find and figure out what it is..... Or read the next post for the answer !

Winston here helps me wish all a Very Happy New Year 2010 ! (but he refuses to wear a party bow or hat for a festive photo shoot). I'll be back with more posts next year ;)

Monday, December 28, 2009

Green Leaves


I did a bit more on the sunflowers today. Mostly work on the leaves. Adding more hues and shades of greens. Brilliant Green, Bright Green, Pthalo Green Hue (mixed with other things), Sap Green, Australian Yellow Green, Hookers Green...and greens made up of these. You can say I had a very green day.

For a bit of excitement, I (accidentally) got paint on Pookie's fur, and his hind flank was smeared in Bright Green ! Must have happened when I moved him from a place he should not have been to a more suitable napping station. I guess wet paint on my apron got on him. He was actually quite understanding while I cleaned the (dried acrylic) paint off his fur with methylated spirits, and then while I washed the white spirits off (so he would not get ill from them). Even though it matched his eyes, he looks better without green painted fur !

Still not sure whether I will finish the sunflowers in oils or not. Now thinking maybe not, because I have some other new things to start and may want to move faster on this for the next sessions....

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Sunflowers

It finally felt like vacation, with a short to do list and lots more time today. I got to make a start on painting sunflowers, the ones I bought on Christmas Eve with all the holiday flowers and greenery. I had gotten some sunflowers a few weeks ago, because sometimes you have to get what is available. But I did not have any time to paint them. So today I got to right that :)

I will not be making the painting's background brick colored, but the light was best on them here and there was a good place to paint them from life, with room for my easel and paint supplies in the right places for this. I sketched a rough sketch composition in willow charcoal and applied fixative.

Then I prepared a color chart, just so I could get them right and match to what I saw. I made up my paint table pretty neatly too, and everything was ready (see above).

Here is a simple underpainting, will get lots more work, but has a good start going now. I have made some corrections to the unopened flower, which got painted up out of proportions and I need to do that over again tomorrow. And then start adding definition to the leaves and shapes in the greenery parts.

I am not yet decided whether to use oils over this. But it is quite possible, I am over 50 % inclined to move in that favor. I think the greens especially will look really nice in oils.

More soon !

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Merry Christmas

Hi All, hope you enjoyed a lovely Christmas. Here is a small peek at some preparations here, for what has been a whirlwind of holiday hosting here...so I have been so/too busy to post or do anything else !

Lovely Christmas tree, done with a color scheme for decorations this year. Silver, white, and pale greens. Also has small birds, glass ornaments and tiny vintage watch dials for decorations. The top has three small butterflies on it.

It would not feel like Christmas if I did not get flowers to arrange for the holidays. And I decided to work to make a super-nice arrangement, befitting my practice styling flowers of late ! These are in same decorating colors as the tree. There are lime button mums, hypericom berries, dusty miller, white lisianthus, some native pods that look like silvery pinecones, and banksia candles plus some sunflowers.
The hypericom berries and vine leaves plus sunflowers were for other arrangements. Also the banksia candles and some of the like line cones in their own vase. Every thing else went here (see left).

Then I wrapped gifts, this took me all one day it seems. Just lots to do and I did not pace myself, did it all at once. I had a helper for this task, here is silly Pookie, helping me with some ribbon (he loves ribbon).

Merry Christmas to everyone out there, enjoy a lovely holiday :)

Monday, December 21, 2009

New Encaustics Techniques

A bit late to post, while I finish pre holiday To Do list chores, but here is my update about some encaustics work I did last week at Salon Rouge Gallery in Kapunda, South Australia.

It was scorching hot weather and hot inside the (not insulated) gallery too. The heat pans for the encaustics waxes made things hotter. Like being in a sauna !

We experimented with some new techniques. One involved cutting small squares of the freezer paper the size of our art boards, and dipping into wax and applying to the board in layers. Very interesting. Even more interesting was dipping colored tissue paper into the plain beeswax and layering it on. You might think the tissue paper would rip, but the wax actually seems to have strengthened it ! This was with a single layer of the tissue paper too, so pretty delicate on its own. You do have to be careful, using tongs, or you fingers to dip most of the tissue paper in the wax and remove it in a way not to drip, but fast enough to adhere to your layers in the works. Then you can use a paintbrush in the plain wax to put some wax onto the bit of the tissue paper (corner ?) you were holding, so it gets covered too.

It came out great though ! First, the colored tissue paper retains its color and character and the wax gives it some shape, so it has more structure. Second, it does adhere and bind to the layer before. Doing different colored tissue paper as layers or stripes looks really good. You ca also build up your layers with some dimension and crinkle or fold it, and make it build up not just flat, but with some very interesting structure to it.

I added in some bits of vintage maps, and put clear paraffin wax over the surface of them that was intended to be seen. Beeswax can be opaque and the detail of the map would not show. I do not prefer working with paraffin, I find it cracks and I don't like its lineage (it is a petrochemical product), so I use as little as possible to achieve the result...and I use beeswax around it.

My maps were of Baja California. I was born and grew up in California and have fond memories of travel along or south of the border or listening to radio stations from places like Calexico or Mexicali (good spanish language practice !). One of the maps had some detail I extended in beeswax and pigment and the other board got a similar treatment, but no real map fragment, I just emulated the other.

And I did some other layered pieces in this theme. One has cardboard under the tissue and other paper. So it is taller and it has an interesting side, and has some dimension too. I spilled beeswax and pigment over the side, in sea greens, I liked how that came out. Its companion shown here is a small piece I did with tissue paper and I folded it in accordian pattern before dipping it in the wax...and also folded it to make it look like a wave. Then I painted on the foam on the wave at its edges.

It was a fun little warm up.

Then for bigger things we started working on large boards. See the next post for more about that !


Friday, December 18, 2009

Hot Landscape

I spent the past four days in South Australia, painting at Jacqueline Coates' Salon Rouge Gallery while my daughter Karen and her boyfriend Greg took the hire car and toured the wine country in the Barossa and Clare Valleys there. Karen and Greg are visiting on their break from Norweigian Cruise Lines Pride of America, which sails around the Hawaiian islands and where they work as bar managers. The weather was fine on arrival, but got hot and hotter each day we were there. Working with encaustics in the gallery was a good sort of experience, akin to being in a sauna (dry heat !).

Jacqueline had other people doing encaustics too, so the first two days we spent in a workshop. I stayed on to paint landscapes in oils on Wednesday.

It turns out Wednesday was really hot. 40C at least ! (that is 104 F if you are American, yes, pretty hot). But we prepared things and went out to find a scenic view to paint in the countryside. Here is what we found, a lovely farm scene with some rolling hills in the background, hay bales, an old rusty roofed farm building, and some trees, vineyards, and fields. A fence line in the foreground with some nice purple wild flowers (maybe weeds ?). We set up easels and paints, turps, medium at the shoulder of a country road and worked on painting. Jac works much faster and more confidently than I do...but she has a lot more experience and skill too.

This was a bit of adventure, for me anyway...we got visits from flies (once I started to perspire, they came after my face and neck !), bugs got into the oil paint, on easel and also on painting !, I had some sunscreen and also borrowed a hat for awhile, before its string (to keep it from flying away) broke. Sunnies for sure, it was bright out. And winds were high and at times something to manage in the face of. Occasionally big trucks would whiz by on the road.

I did ok for almost an hour and a half. As you can see from the large pic above (which you can see closer up if you double click it), I used a palette knife and put the paint on thicker in places. And then the heat got to me, I really felt it, started to make some mistakes, and experience some frustration. And I had forgotten to sunscreen my hands and also feet, and one foot got pretty sunburned. Not the plan and I definitely felt it. But my painting was Almost Done, so just small things, for another 10 minutes past that, which felt like forever...but made a good difference. Jac is an excellent teacher and had some good critique and tips for me to finish this off, so we could pack up and escape the heat.

See my finished painting above ! I accentuated the rolling of the hills and also used bolder colors than I might have thought to use, which was a positive thing for me, and was pretty happy with the experience and the result.

The painting is drying at Salon Rouge and will travel here by post when dry enough. You can see we had different vantage points for this painting session. And I can tell you those hay bales are harder to paint than they look, at least they were for me ! Painting landscapes out on location like this is not as easy as it might look...

More tomorrow, with a post on some really interesting encaustics painting I did at Salon Rouge Gallery earlier this week.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Simply Stunning Roses

I thought my flower photo shoots were done. Then a call came through letting me know there were David Austin roses in fine condition were available. In a lovely mid yellow color, with some really pretty character. I made arrangements to pick them up the next day.

The flowers were a really gorgeous bunch, in a rich golden yellow that was very classy looking. Being a hot day, some of the blooms were very open. Leanne of Annette's Florists in Mt Colah sprayed them well with water and wrapped them in brown paper for me to take home. I decided to go straight home and photograph them, because they were looking just perfect.

It did not take me very long to "style" them in a stoneware jug. I then found excellent late afternoon light by a window, with filtered light (sheer curtains at that window). I got the most amazing photos !

The first one here shows the flowers, with the drops of water still on the petals !

The roses had a nice aroma and bouquet. This was noticed by the pussycats, who followed around and watched the flower styling and photoshoot. They interfered a few times too ! Though Pook looks quite sweet and innocent in this picture here.

I have just finished a commission this week and was painting it last weekend in yellows and blues. And the new flower photos of these yellow roses are tempting me to continue that yellow theme and give these a go !

Sunday, December 6, 2009

In Season

I have been waiting to source Peonies, and thought their local availability season may have been and gone while I was away, because November here is a good time for them. But my local florist called me to say they thought they could source some and so I picked them up Friday. The florist's source has said this is it, there will not really be any more. What a short season !

But sometimes that is how things go. I have to take what I can get, this is what I have learned about flowers and photoshoots with them. I wanted vivid colored ones, rather than pale and so I got a bunch in quite good order, not yet opened, so they should last a few days as they open up. I did not get to view the color first. The color was rather on the purple side of fuschia, more purple than I wanted. So I mixed in a few things to soften it up, some mid pink lisianthus and some snapdragons plus a bit of greenery with green berries. Very pretty.

On photographing the flowers, I was quite pleased to see they photographed less purple and more pink, very nice indeed. Here they are on day 2 (larger photo above). I will be photographing them each day, as they open up.

I also got some white hydrangeas, just stunning ! Photo here shows only a third of them. And as an impulse buy, some lovely sun flowers. These are three distinct bouquets, for three sets of photos.

In order to ward off the Grazing Felines, I had to bring in some garden roses, which have been chewed happily, and now have very ragged edges to the petals >^..^<


Monday, November 30, 2009

Clock and Christmas Fair

I did not have much free time this trip due to a tight schedule, and also more transit time due to traveling eastwards. So I did not get as many photos as I ordinarily might. But I did have a free Saturday in Prague and got to look at a few things, courtesy of an colleague from the local office who took me out (Linda, thanks for showing me around !). And I enjoyed also a night time tour of the city all lit up from another colleague (Jaroslav, thanks for showing me and Jonathan the castle and city !). All in all this was a great opportunity, because the work I was there to do was done and so it was possible to enjoy the sights and relax a bit.

I saw a few things on Saturday out...the famous Astronomical Clock, which has a bit of a mysterious lore to it. It is built in the late 1400s from accounts and has had enhancements and repairs made between then and now. It has been restored and some animated figures are added, which move about when it chimes...the skeleton on the right of the main clock dial is very cute, pulling a bell ringer and there is a small gold metallic rooster that crows at top of the hour. To read more about it, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Astronomical_Clock

The face and dial of the clock is beautiful, with gorgeous blue and golden yellow coloration and shadings on it, depicting night and daylight hours. The link above gives more info also about the symbols shown on the dial.

While in Prague I also saw a Christmas Market. This one was one of the few open the day I was there, many others opened the following weekend. It was in Peace Square, outside a large cathedral. It was lovely to see the traditional wares sold in these markets and also some nice local snacks. We found a glass bead maker whose handmade murano style glass beads were very beautiful. I got a few of those and also some small holiday decorations depicting carp, which is traditionally eaten on Christmas.

The air was crisp at the end of the day, with a fall-like feel to it. As the light of the day got darker, the lights of a large Christmas Tree in Peace Square were lit up, making it feel like the holidays are truly around the corner !

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Gargoyle Lion

Returned from a brutal bit of jetlag after more than 24 hours of journey (plus transit) from China--I am relieved to be home. And way behind on posting to the blog and also painting ! First I have had to hit a couple walks of exhaustion, which really puts me out of commission, but is good in that I do rest. I think it is necessary for recovery.

As promised, here is the gargoyle lion. He is dark and a bit scary looking, with a great roaring shout emitting from his mouth ! But that is just his gargoyle style ! Check out his ribs (you may have to look carefully to see them) and also the bony joints of his feet and claws ! And nice curly mane, with dark of many years atmosphere he has taken in.

I think he is a bit moody a subject, given his environment and also his nature. Being the lone lion gargoyle in his area on St Vitus Cathedral of Prague (not sure if the other part of the cathedral had more ?), he has an important protector reputation and mission to uphold !

For a lighter bit of trivia, here I am on one of many bridges overlooking Prague and the lovely river running through the city.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Found on the Cathedral in Prague

I spent a nice better part of a week here in Prague. Work had me really hopping, but we were all very happy to have gotten past a big audit, and after the closing meeting on Friday we finished up loose ends and finally relaxed for the first time in several weeks. I have been running in a crazy mode for about 3 weeks, so the whole trip and week leading up to it. Wow !

Thursday night we had a nice night tour of Prague and went up to see the famous Prague Castle. It is very pretty at night and from the grounds is a wonderful overlook of the city at night. Because the castle is on high ground, it allows a nice view of the river, the city scape. All lit up prettily at night.

We also saw a Cathedral on the Castle grounds. St Vitus Cathedral. I was delighted to find gargoyloes leaping out from corners of the main entrance of the cathedral. One (and only one that I could tell !) of the gargoyles was a lion ! Sitting tall, but mounted with seat and paws on side of cathedral and with a big open mouth roar, in good gargoyle style ! No pics of this to post yet, as I left the camera cable home this trip ! But here is a pic of the cathedral, courtesy www.panoramio.com, found via Google. The gargoyles are shown here in this pic as dark shapes at corners of the arches around the door and what not. Rather hard to discern here, but they are there ! Here in this pic you can see the gorgeous decorative detail of the main entrance of this excellent example of gothic cathedral. To see the detail of the gargoyles, they have to be photographed standing under them. Most are bird like creatures, but I did find the one lion.

I will post the lion gargoyle pic on my return. Tomorrow I head to China. Now at end of the trip. More soon.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Pink Socks

Hi There and sorry for the slowness of posting. This trip has been a very interesting one, not least because I am traveling eastwards (always more difficult than the alternative) and also because it has been a very jampacked agenda in each location. Jetlag has had me waking up every few hours. I have have been pulling longer hours than usual. That is saying something, because I work long hours on trips as a matter of course. Audits have kept me busy and Iconfess to a few wrong time wake ups that have had me in a cold sweat or panic think I missed a flight or an appointment or something else important. This is unusual for me, so... Very Big Yikes !

Here is a small vignette I wrote in one of my small notebooks I carry around, while almost falling asleep into the soup I had for dinner in an old carriage house pub at the hotel I stayed at, one night earlier this week (I was so tired and this was true !). Perhaps this was observed, or did I imagine it in my half sleep state ?

He was wearing a black suit that was very smart.
And his socks were a bright pink. Don't ask me why I noticed
this, but I did. When standing up, one couldn't tell. After his dinner was done, he got up and was standing there gazing
at the antique musket that was hanging on an old ceiling beam in the dark pub. He looked up at to admire it,
holding his hands clasped behind his back, perhaps he also enjoyed the warmth of the fire in the fireplace of the pub. When he sat down, his trousers revealed such bright socks, of a vivid coral pink hue. What a surprise and so completely unexpected, the man wearing the pink socks.

More next post, when I hope to bring you some other tale or half dream from the road of my travels !

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Go Fishing

I am now on business travel and have weathered and de-jetlagged over the weekend in Reno, and move onward tomorrow. I realised on arriving that I had forgotten a number of things. Very annoying, some of these are things I need. Like another set of contact lenses ! And also--the cable to download photos from my camera. How silly was it to forget those things ?!

So after today and until I return to Sydney on 27th November, my posts will have links and images from inspirations other than my photographs. Today though, my father kindly offered to take a few snaps and upload them to his computer, which I am using for composing this post. So a few photos today.

Reno is big for outdoors sports and also skiing, being very close to lovely area of Lake Tahoe. Fishing is popular here, on the Truckee River, which travels from Lake Tahoe to Pyramid Lake. I hear that Pyramid Lake is a big trout haven, home of "Big Cutthroat Trout" ! And today we had shopping errands and saw some new sculptures installed in a large outdoor shopping and outlet area called Legends. It was nice to see sculptures there. There were some very nice silver fish sculptures.., some of them were jumping over a long arrangement of steppes of rocks, as if swimming "upstream." Then at the top/end we came upon a giant fish sculpture, shown above, in fact this is a huge silvery fish made up of small fish. See the closer up below on right to see the thousands of smaller silver metal fish in this sculpture. Really imaginative, a nice installation.

Then we saw another set of sculptures, bright red orange ram and big horn sheep. They looked redder than they photographed (which is really a full on orange hue) I am in the background, beyond them, to the right and waving hello !

Tomorrow I continue eastwards. As it always is traveling in eastward direction, jetlag is hitting hard. I have an early up tomorrow, a wake up call at 4AM. So bye for now !

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Crossed off To Do List

I have been a bit slow on painting this week, because I have had other big item chores to get done, and before I go away on work travel. One was the painting of the bathroom and toilet room walls. And other was the baby quilt.

The walls were just needing painting above the resurfaced and bright white tiles. It took the weekend. Plus a few cameo bits of work by Ian, doing the tip top edges I could not reach. And I had to redo the window trims too, to be a freshened up bright white. A fiddly un-fun job, but happy to say it is all done and looking very nice.

And the baby quilt, which was pieced and assembled and simply needed machine quilting. Now done, and looking very nice.

I depart on a biz trip travel tomorrow...and next post will be from Reno or South Carolina, connectivity and other factors permitting. Work have me traveling the "wrong" direction round the world (that is eastwards) this trip...So much more lost time to transit, and worse cases of jetlag, that will be compounded as I move eastwards I am sure. Itinerary is US, London, Prague Beijing.

So nice to have sense of accomplishment from the big chores knocked off the list. By the time I return from this trip, there will be little time before the "silly" season sets in here !

More from the road !

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Entries

I have been superbusy with work this week, getting ready to travel next week. Plus, I had to make decisions about what paintings to enter in the local art prize contest. It was hard to make a decision on just one, so I have entered two (up to three entries per person were allowed). Rules are that they have to have been painted in the past year, and both of these have been.

I had to also decide the name for the lion painting, because I had not yet named it ! It is now titled The Guardian.





I am missing Spring Waratahs already. The new waratahs painting is there as a placekeeper, but it is a bit smaller (30 x 40 instead of 36 x 48...inches !). It does not fill the space as well. And it is not done yet. But after I work on it each day and it is dry, I prop it up in that space, because the wall looked lonely and sad without its colorful painting.

Ian helped me remove the wire hanger on the Spring Waratahs and put the contest spec "strong cord" on it and the lion. I filled out my entry forms and yesterday drove to submit them. There were already a lot of paintings and art work in the "holding" area. There was screening to make sure entries were compliant with all the rules. Mine were and I paid the entry fees and the paintings were whisked away and put in the holding area. There were big piles of entry forms I saw...and with 6 and half hours to go for submitting artwork in the contest, they may have had lots more entries. So perhaps it will be a big field.

There will be a selection for the artwork that will be in this exhibition. And the announcement of which ones make it is just an hour after my flight leaves next week ! So I will have to wait that whole long flight, until I reach LA and then need to see if I can find somewhere to check the outcome.

More tomorrow...I am painting today, but nothing all that fun. I am doing the walls above the bathroom tiles ! But it has come out nicely, and looks very good. Another thing to cross off the to do list.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Greens

I did a bit on the greens of the waratah trio painting...and will be doing plenty more. But here is a preview of it, just getting stuck into adding a lot of green into the painting and also working mostly the shadows and background foliage today. Some of it will be a bit blurred, because it is pushed way back and out of focus. But it is a bit fun to do, though it still requires some thought about what marks will suggest the right depth, color and shape. Decisions, decisions !

And today is my daughter Katy's birthday, she has completed her first quarter century, here's to many more for her ! I baked a rum raisin cheesecake (from scratch, using a special recipe !) this weekend for her birthday cake. She was here last night and really loved the cake (she and Ian gave it a 10 out of 10 rating score, not bad...) We had a lovely dinner with her in early celebration. Tonight she is out with friends at the 'Flying Squirrel,' a popular tapas bar in the Bondi Beach area :)

Happy BDay Kat !

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Reds




After what seemed like heaps of chores, I got to do some painting on the waratahs composition. Today I concentrated on reds. Permanent alizarin, cadmium red medium, and my favorite rose madder deep/ The rose madder is a red with some real oomph to it !

Today's task was to add definition to the main flower, the one on the left. The mddle one is in the background and I will not be doing much more detail on it. The one on the right is the secondary subject and it gets some detail. Most of that is pretty good already, I just worked on its lower petals. The top of that flower is in pretty good shape.

The main focus flower on the left needed quite a bit of work, and I spent an hour and a half on it easily. For the dark tones, I mixed alizarin with a bright green, and got a neutralised red. Later on I used a wash of raw umber and gloss medium to add more depth to areas of the flower.

Pretty happy with today's Reds Session. Tomorrow's session will be Greens.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Lion 2 Done !

Today brought very exciting progress...Lion #2 is done ! Yeay !!

Here is the lion and also his last palette. He is in the upstairs studio now, having gotten his glaze coat this evening, it will be dry by morning. I like glazing in the upstairs studio, because no pussy cats have regular access and it is nice and dry and still up there now.



I had a leave day today, so
got the lion done early. And so I did a little color study of some flowers I have for a commission I will be working on late November (earlier if I can). The flowers have all been photographed and a composition has been selected. But since I will be away most of November on business travel, I thought some color studies would be a good idea to do up, while I have the flowers still fresh here to study from life and in good light. They are yellow roses and dark blue delphiniums.

Here is a close up of the delphiniums, such a deep bright blue, with only a bit of violet in it. In this close up, the petals have little striations...I will be working on capturing a bit of those. The backs of the flowers have a long spikey shaped back petal that is deep blue violet and has a papery texture to it, very pretty.

I did a color study of both roses and delphiniums in acrylics, which is what will be used for the painting featuring them, though not much detail is shown in the roses. It was about getting the colors right, especially the vivid blues and yellows. I am happy with it, I have the right colors here, plus white will be added on petals that are in the light, etc. And I also did some more little paintings of the delphiniums in acrylics, to get the hang of how to create their petals in small swirling strokes of the paint brush and that show nice texture.

More on the weekend, when I really dig into the waratahs painting, maybe with some impasto !

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Patterns & Textures

Here are a few textures and patterns featuring in my latest photo imports. These are being captured for backgrounds, inspirations, and other influences for artistic work.



First some industrial textures and patterns. Turns out I have a rich local source for some of these images, in Ian's garage ! The very cool toothed gears are part of one of the lathes (the big one). And then there is some metal "junk," or so I thought. I was corrected on this one, it is a box of nuts. The shadows came out with lots of electric blues in them too.









A bright and airy pattern, in a cheerful yellow green citrusy hue. A bamboo and timber birdcage, that is starting to sneak into some photo shoots. It makes a nice backdrop prop, adding an interesting color.


Behind the old pocket watch dials is text from an old dictionary. Lovely font and makes an excellent backdrop for vintage photos.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Happy Colors

Hope you are enjoying a lovely weekend. Mine is full of vivid color and thoughts of colors I will use for projects or just to have around to be delightful and pleasing to the eye.

From a fruit bowl on the table, lovely warm colors.

I have paints to organise. And I do find it easier to find things if they are at least put away in some nice order. So my boxes of paints have them as you see here, grouped by color. Though, when in use, they get quite mixed up on the worktable at times.
Palettes get ordered too, but I am far from pedantic about my palette having certain colors in certain places. I put the paint on next to other paints I know I will be mixing with that color, for ease of mixing. I try to keep dark and light colors on separate sides, to keep white clean and dark from muddying things up.

Here is a lovely scarf by Leanne of Rainbow Revolution. She makes awesome colored scarves, wraps, and more. She is doing a custom scarf in silk netting for me and I have ordered some rainbow striped socks too. Check out her etsy store to see more of her uplifting color work ! www.rainbowrevolution.etsy.com

And here a project I am working on, a baby quilt. Stripes that will be done in a lovely rainbow like sequence !





As a child I kept my crayons in order of the rainbow, or other color progressions. I recently bought a box of 64 Crayolas, the first I have had in many years. An impulse buy for reminiscing perhaps ?! Was a bit disappointed to find the colors not in rainbow or color order as expected when I opened the box, they were scrambled around...and also some classics have been swapped out for new colors with snazu names like "awesome" (a neon red), "giving tree" (bright green), and "super happy" (a bright lemon yellow). It has been decades since I bought a box of Crayolas, and obviously much has happened since I sorted my blue violet and violet blue crayons just so ! As you can see, I put the crayons back in the box next to their color relative friends ! The crayons of my world are happy like this :)

What color makes you happy today ?