A Garden of Spring Flowers in Paint

….in this part of the world spring is not close at hand

Looking at blogs that originate in Ireland, the United Kingdom, parts of Europe and the west coast of North America I’m amazed to see so many gardens that are already in bloom with beautiful spring flowers. With some luck we may see our first daffodil in late April but most of our flowers won’t appear until May.

To get us in the spring mood I painted some simple made up flowers using watercolours and circle shapes. For the background I used a scraping technique that I learned from Carla Sonheim. Once the paint was dry I added more detail, sometimes with  more paint but mostly with black ink from a Sharpie. I liked the final product so much I adapted it for my students and when I return to school this week I will plaster the walls with their beautiful gardens of flowers. I will share their work with you later this week.

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Cee’s Odd Ball Photo Challenge -March 19, 2017

….thanks Cee for hosting Odd Ball Photo Challenge

In Carla Sonheim’s, Year Long Video a Day: 365, on-line class we were assigned a photo challenge. We had to stand in the middle of a room and with our eyes closed start shooting the space while turning around. Here are a few shots of my living room that were taken with my eyes closed.

A Backyard Visitor

…an opportunity to pull out the ‘zoom’ lens

As you know from previous posts I’ve inherited a zoom lens that I’ve been dying to use on wildlife. My moon photos were a complete bust but I’ll try again when the weather isn’t quite so frigid.

A few days ago, before the snow storm hit, a squirrel was darting around on my deck looking for water. I grabbed my camera and started shooting through the glass of the patio doors. The first few had too much glare because I was shooting at an angle. Then I was able to get a shot straight on and it made a big difference. I wanted to say ‘huge’ but I’m trying to avoid that word as much as possible.

I was hoping to open the doors so that I could get a shot that didn’t happen through a glass window (a dirty on at that) but as soon as I did that the squirrel took off and look who showed up (3rd photo). If the squirrel hadn’t run away when I opened the door , Frances’ presence would have scared him off for sure.

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