Dear Amy...

  Dear Amy.
I have decided to see if treating blog writing like writing a letter to a good friend will help me to blog more often. 


So, What did I do today? I painted sunflowers; two 5x7 paintings, one on canvas paper and the the other on watercolor paper.


The Pine Barrens Tree Frog sitting on a red maple branch came out really nice.  I hope someone likes it enough to buy it. The swordfish came out nice too but I like the tree frog better. Both of them are painted on canvas paper.  


I got my order of 4x6 prints from iprintfromhome.com. They're nice! But next time I'll order the prints in a satin finish.  I'll be gluing them onto white card stock and using and selling them as blank notecards. 


I have been making mixed media painting at 5x7, because I hope that a less expensive painting will appeal to a different stratus of art lovers.


I painted each with acrylic paint first, and then went over the first one with oil paints to add richness to the composition.  And I decided to fool around with laying down brush strokes of complimentary colors, rather than blending them. So, where the sunflower petal is yellow, I used purple to make the shading, with out mixing them. Likewise, when the petals were in orange shadow, I made the darker spots blue.  On the green leaves, the darker shades were made of alizarin crimson. It's only my first try at this technique and I'm not sure I like it but I'll play around with it a little longer to see if it grows on me. Tomorrow I'll add oils to the other 5x7 and see how I feel about it.


The weather today was pretty neat.
When I woke up this morning the temp was 58*.  By lunchtime the clouds had muffled the sky. By 2:30 the wind was whipping and the rain came down in sheets, but then it dwindled away and the temp took a nose dive.  When I got back to the house the thermometer said 50*. Now, at 11:30 at night the wind is still whippy and the air is down right cold! Now it is morning and the it's very wintery outside.  Tom left for MD before the sun came up.  


My daughter said she'd drive me to church on Sunday if Tom isn't back from the Naval Academy in time for the 4:00 service.  She says she wants to come back to Shore life Church, that God is telling her it's where she belongs.  I hope she sticks with us after this.  There are so many people who love her there and so much encouragement for her and her husband.  Hopefully he'll come back to church too.  


Today I have the car so I'll do the grocery shopping. It being a night when Tom is away, I'll have my traditional Stouffer's Mac and Cheese.


Oh yeah! I’m going to experiment with wiping cooking oil on some eggs from the coop to see if that will clean them up before I bring them to Karen tomorrow.  Here’s hoping it works!