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Inktober 2021 Day 19 – Loop

My very first thought when I saw this prompt was how I have played a certain set of cds on loop for the past year to comfort me and keep my spirits up thru all the losses around me.

I originally thought of drawing the stack of cds, but I was following one of my favorite singers/songwriters and she kept posting photos of her new puppy. I just had to! Wouldn’t you?! Then I watercolored it.

The watercolor of this little girl was then sent to the singer who has blessed me so over this past year. A giving back for all her gift has given me. Share your gifts, they were given for the uplifting of each other.

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Inktober 2021 Prep

A project has been selected (a theme), my nieces are prepared and zoom meetings scheduled, content has been collected! I am ready!

In the meantime, I have already started playing around with some of the content and watercoloring it. I may do a different image of the flamingos for October. Let us hope I can keep on task – I keep getting sidetracked into watercolors as I choose my images.

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Children’s Furniture Project

In April-May I began a massive clean out of my art studio. After over 40 years of collecting projects and resources, I have decided I have “been there, done that” and I know what I want to concentrate on from this point forward.

So nieces and nephews were the benefactors of all sort of fun things, but also, there were a few projects I really wanted family to have. While I donated a large amount of raw children’s furniture to a new church nursery, I held out a few pieces for my nieces and nephew. This was the result.

This table top was their Grandma’s farm with the chairs celebrating a childhood cat (a nod to their daddy – and Grandma still has cats on the farm) and the hummingbirds ever present in the summer.

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Farm Journal Watercolor Project

Quick sketch of our childhood farm in the 1980s

The kids continued to ask for more classes, so in February I sent them all watercolor paints, brushes and paper. We had loads of fun as I taught them how to use their new tools. In the meantime, I continued on with my own project of painting family memories. I am trying to get looser with my sketching, making it less of a detailed and frustrating project.

One of my favorite things is using old black and white photos from my Dad’s family farm. I want to amass a large group of these. Maybe a picture book with stories in the future.

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Tanuary 2021

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. from the Finding Your Roots (PBS) show

I like to work on a tan sketchbook in January – although I was too busy with nieces and our weekly zoom coaching sessions to do the full Tanuary challenge on social media. We had a lot of fun, even so.

I challenged the kids to use different surfaces, including cardboard pieces and talked about charcoal, pencil, crayon, pen etc. It was good drawing practice for all involved.

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Bandits

This is Notch – I think she may be a first time mother. She has at least 2 babies so she got bold enough to come up to the deck. It seems they get hungry about this time of year. I also see them in the deep winter when the snow is thick. Otherwise, they only visit at night. How do I know? My tomatoes growing on my second story deck keep disappearing.

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Rose-breasted Grosbeaks

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The Rose-breasted Grosbeak’s have been plentiful this season. I have my own photos, but a friend, Steve Bradley, took one of a male that truly inspired me. I used his photo for my painting and one of my own for the female.

First I practiced drawing them since their big old beaks were a new shape for me.

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Then I tried the male on my Mom’s Mother’s Day card/letter. I decided I liked that so well, I did the couple in my nature journal (the first image above.)

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Nest Building

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I watched a Cooper’s Hawk wrestle with a huge stick that had a smaller one hooked to it.  When he finally got them untangled, he ended up with the short stick and appeared quite disgruntled about it. He tossed it down and left, at that point, and went up into the tree and started wrestling with another branch. It was very entertaining.

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