Farewell to Summer

I know the heat and humidity aren't gone for good, but darn if it didn't feel like fall is on its way today. It was the first full day of school for my kids and it was cloudy with a nice cool breeze. We enjoyed the weather by biking to school. Fall is my favorite time of year and I can't wait to switch to a fall palette and colorful autumn scenes, so I thought I would say goodbye to summer with one last beach scene.

Redstart

I love this plump little guy. He was fun to paint. I really need to work on foreshortening technique, he looks kind of silly, but I'm very pleased with his head. For some reason I have a terrible time with beaks, but this one worked out pretty well. Shhh, we won't mention that wing. So much to learn!

Warbler

Warblers have a special place in my heart. I was out to sea on a research vessel and a storm blew in one night. The next morning was clear and calm and when we came out on deck there were little warblers everywhere. They must have been scared to death but they were so pooped from fighting the storm they just stayed and rested. I sat quietly next to one perched on a ladder and we just watched each other while he regained his strength. I will never forget all those beautiful tiny birds.

Mater Season

Don't you just love tomato season? Here are some quick studies of tomatos from my husband's garden. As much fun to paint as they are to eat!

Today's painting

A quick sunflower sketch keeps me up to date!

Three new paintings

In keeping with my new goal of a painting a day, I have three to show you because I wasn't able to blog for a few days. For the hollyhocks in the first painting I used my standard technique, painting onto a complete drawing on dry paper. In this second painting of the desert, I did only a little sketching of the main lines, and then painted wet on wet while looking at a photo I took on a trip to Arizona. The desert painting has some problems, but it is really beginning to grow on me.

I tried wet on wet for these magnolia blossoms as well. I will be back later tonight with today's painting.

A painter paints

I haven't been painting much lately so I have decided to challenge myself to do a painting a day. A "sketch" painting in my watercolor journal will count as well, as long as I am painting. I will still be working on my colorful quilt, and I have a cute embroidery project in the works too, which I hope to post soon. I won't be able to post for two days, so I should have three paintings for you to see by Sunday.

My new romance (the next big project)

Several years ago I was smitten by a couple of books by Kaffe Fassett. I bought the books and some fat quarters and they have remained in my mountainous "someday" project pile ever since. Then along came my new blog friend Carolina, and suddenly I found myself sewing. Now Carolina has been bitten by the Kaffe bug too, and we are planning to each make a quilt.
I haven't even dug my Kaffe fabrics out of my stash yet, but of course I just knew I needed to augment what I have, so... Many of these new fabrics are by another Rowan designer, Philip Jacobs.

The fat quarters will make the quilt top along with the purple and magenta you see as borders. The quilt back will be the grape fabric, here is a bigger shot of that...

So it will be a Kaffe Fassett inspired quilt, LOTS of color saturation. I couldn't resist a few more fabrics, I think these next two will make another messenger bag.

Magic Eight Ball

While traveling to Annapolis the other day, I found myself compelled, COMPELLED I tell you, to go into Borders and browse. After the sewing frenzy of late I soon found myself in front of the sewing section and spotted this little gem "The Sewing Answer Book" by Barbara Weiland Talbert. Now right on the cover Barbara makes the claim, "Solutions to every problem you'll ever face (seriously?), and answers to every question you'll ever ask." Wow. As I stood there in my state of dubiousness, pondering all the questions I could ask of this magic eight ball of a book, and weighing the merits of purchasing it, another woman walked up, quickly scanned the shelves in front of me, grabbed the other copy of this book and left. That sealed the deal for me.

P.S. Of course I will let you know if I can stump the book