…..the weather is getting me down
I’m feeling a little out of whack, just like this cycle post. Bring on the sun!
Here are a few more photos for Cee’s Odd Ball Photo Challenge
The Monday Blues
5
Category Archives: About Me
A Busy Weekend
……surrounded by family and friends
This weekend started on Friday when my husband and I drove up to Vaughn to buy a porchetta for our family dinner on Saturday. I really should have taken a photo but I didn’t. I find more and more that I’m just enjoying the moment without having to document everything with my camera.
On Saturday I continued to organize my studio and I started to put together the last piece of furniture from IKEA. At least everything is now in neat piles and I’m able to move around the studio without tripping over boxes and random bits of paper, frames and canvases.
Later in the afternoon I went to a surprise birthday party for a friend from my teaching days. It’s been a busy week for this lovely lady as she and her husband are getting ready to fly to Mexico for her son’s wedding. Her son and future daughter-in-law were in town for a few days so they were able to attend the party. They actually boarded a plane later that night and are now in Mexico to make final arrangements for the wedding.
When I got home around 5:30 my family were already at the house and my husband had prepared all the food for dinner. Again I didn’t take any photos. We had a very nice time and Winnie and I snuck off after dinner to give her parents a few moments to relax with the rest of the family. Winnie’s favourite TV show is Peppa Pig and she was mesmerized for about 15 minutes.
Today started off nice and sunny but quickly became very grey and overcast. Fortunately is was very mild so when Kevin and I went to visit a friend in the hospital we were able to park on the street a little ways from the hospital. We didn’t mind walking and I was able to get in about 4000 extra steps. After our visit we decided to walk up one of our favourite streets in Toronto, Roncesvalles, and look for a coffee shop.
When we got home tonight, Kevin made dinner again and afterwards I phoned my sister in Calgary and then my Dad and I played a game of cribbage. I haven’t yet painted today but the evening is still young and I tend to do my best work at night anyway.
Here are a few shots that I took on Friday when I went for my walk.
365 Days of Art – Child’s Play
…..day 18
Today I drove to Hamilton to spend the day with my granddaughter, Winnie and her mother, Gaelan. I brought some apples with me and together we made applesauce. I peeled and quartered the apples and Winnie’s job was to put them into the pot. She did a great job and she included her own version of quality control by tasting every piece before dropping them into the pot.
When the apples were stewing, Gaelan and I continued to get the ingredients ready to make an apple cake that Jodi from The Creative Life In Between posted yesterday. We made it almost exactly as written except that we didn’t add the glaze because we thought there was more than enough sugar in the cake. While the cake baked I played with Winnie in her playroom.
One of the things that she desperately wanted to do was finger paint. To my daughter’s credit, she has a very strict rule when it comes to painting and that is that everything in the playroom has to be put back where it belongs so that there’s a nice big empty space on the floor for painting. Winnie was very reluctant to do this so the paints didn’t come out. When it was time for me go home she was quite upset because she didn’t get to paint with her Oma. Gaelan told her one more time that she had to clean up first and this time she listened. With our help the floor was emptied of all her toys, a plastic sheet laid out and she was undressed and covered with a plastic paint jumper. Gaelan spread out finger-paint paper and scooped out four colours of paint onto individual paper plates.
We had so much fun. I know why Gaelan completely undresses her before starting this activity, including her socks. Of course she wanted Oma to get right in there with her and I managed to get paint on my sweater but it washed out pretty easily. We worked on one painting together where I painted the flowers and she painted the ground. The other paintings were done solely by her.
Of course when we were done, Winnie went straight into the bath tub and we said our good-byes, this time without any tears.
P.S. The cake was delicious by the way. Thanks for the recipe, Jodi!
365 Days of Art – A Study in Patience
….on day 17 I finally attempted the exercise that Carla Sonheim assigned last week
When I saw this assignment, called Target: Animals I was immediately reminded of Norval Morrisseau, an indigenous painter from Canada. When I was teaching I introduced this wonderful painter’s work to my students and we painted our own favourite animals in a similar style which we called X-ray paintings.
The assignment involves producing circles and painting target rings inside each with different colours of acrylic paint. This is where the patience comes in because each colour has to dry before you start the next. I was fine at the beginning but as the circles got smaller and I finished sooner I barely waited long enough before I added the next colour. I think it’s somewhat evident in some of my circles.
Where do I go from here? I’ve been debating with myself as to whether I follow the assignment exactly as taught or if I put my own spin on it. I think I will do the latter because the animals that I’ve seen produced look too much like Morrisseau’s work. They’re lovely but I need to try and be more original.
Sunshine
….hooray, hooray!!!!
Today was the first day in a long time that I was able to go for a long walk and actually take photos. It was cold but the sun was so bright and beautiful that I hardly felt it. I managed to get in an extra 3000 steps and now only have another 4500 to meet my goal of 10 000 steps a day. I’ve been very bad as of late. I’ve just wanted to hunker down and veg in front of the TV or my computer screen.
Here are a few of the shots that I managed to take today.
The best part of the walk was that for the first time in almost two months I was able to take Frances with me. This is the farthest she’s walked with me willingly without my husband at our sides. Hopefully she’s turned a corner and I’ll be able to get her out more often now.
Roda’s Critter Connection – January 15, 2018
…thanks to Roda for hosting Critter Connections
This is my pet budgie that I’ve had for at least nine years. He was a class pet. The kids named him Snowball. Last summer his partner, Shadow, who I adopted at the time passed away. She was a feisty bird who fought off Snowball’s advances all those years. I didn’t relish having baby birds, so I made sure that there was never a box or any kind of nesting material in the cage.
Snowball is beginning to show his age. I’ve never owned budgies that lived this long. Most of them, if they died naturally only made it to six or seven years. The guy in the pet store told me that they could live to be 10 years old.
Snowball wasn’t exactly thrilled about me taking his picture.
365 Days of Art – Day 13
…..more patterns from Creative Bug
This latest pattern that I worked on from Lisa Congdon’s daily videos was the Matisse pattern of fern leaves. The recommendation was to use gauche paints but at the moment I don’t have any here at home. I think I left the ones that I have up at the cottage which is probably not a good thing because they will probably freeze over the winter. In fact, they are probably frozen solid already.
I used watercolours but I can see why she recommends gouache. Watercolours are very translucent where the gouache paints are much more opaque.
Share Your World – January 15, 2018
…..thanks to Cee for hosting Share Your World
Complete this sentence: I’m looking forward to….
….doing more painting and art projects. I’ve been reorganizing my studio space for the last few months and even though I’m still not finished I have started to work on small projects.
What is your favorite comfort snack food?
My favourite comfort food is anything with carbs but I’m not suppose to eat them too often because when I start I can’t stop. My all time favourite comfort food is pasta.
What was one of your first moneymaking jobs (other than babysitting or newspaper delivery)?
I remember working in my parents’ milk store when I was 14. I did that till I was 16. When the store was held up for a second time and I was working that night my parents gave up the milk business and opened a fabric store.
What inspired you or what did you appreciate this past week? Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.
This past week I spent time with a friend who is going through a tough time. I helped her check out nursing homes for her partner and I consoled her on the phone. It made me realize how quickly life can change and how important it is to live life to the fullest. I also spent time with a couple of other friends. With one we went out for lunch together at a really nice restaurant in a hotel and afterwards we walked downtown and browsed around in a few stores. With the second friend we drove to the mall and had lunch and did some shopping for a gift. Then we went to Costco and did our shopping together. We ran into another friend from our teaching days and quickly got caught up with what was happening in our lives. Each moment with all these friends was special in it’s own way.
On Sunday my sister came to visit with her daughter, son-in-law and her baby grandson. She lives about 3 1/2 hours away and she had to cancel a couple of times after Christmas because of weather. I knew that my husband and I had a funeral to attend on Sunday but I didn’t want my Dad to be disappointed again so I didn’t call her back to let her know we wouldn’t be there. Luckily they arrived before we had to leave so in the end we had a short but sweet visit and my father was able to finally take them out for lunch.
At the funeral we were able to reconnect with some of my husbands cousins, got caught up with up was happening in their lives, learned a few things about the family which we didn’t know and promised each other that we wouldn’t wait for the next funeral to get together.
365 Days of Art – New Books
….the last two days have been very busy
Days 13 and 14 are still brewing in my head. I haven’t yet learned to just grab my sketch book and draw whenever I have a spare moment or two. Today and part of yesterday I cleared away some of the Christmas ornaments and tidied up the house for my sister’s visit today. The unfortunate part was that I only spent about 20 minutes with her before my husband and I had to run off to attend a funeral out of town. I didn’t want her not to come because she had cancelled so many times since Christmas because of bad weather and I didn’t want my father to be disappointed if they cancelled again. When we got back from the funeral my father talked at length about the nice visit he had with my sister and her family. He took them all out for lunch before they had to head back home.
The funeral was out of town for a family member on my husband’s side. We’re glad we went. The service was pretty long but it was clear that our cousin’s husband was dearly loved. Afterwards it was nice catching up with some of the other cousins and promising that we would have a family reunion in the near future that wasn’t at a funeral parlour. Most of the day was spent driving to and from the funeral and spending four more hours at the memorial service.
Just before we left a parcel arrived at my door. On Friday I ordered two art books that were recommended by Evelyn Flint on her blog. Jill Kuhn also used the collage book and recommended doing the 50 collages challenge. The first book is called The Collage Workbook by Randel Plowman and the second one is Atmospheric Watercolour by Jean Haines. I’m looking forward to reading both books and am very excited about making more watercolour art. Stay tuned for more 365 Days of Art. 
365 Days of Art – Mostly Red
…..day 10…playing with patterns
I’ve subscribed to Creative Bug for a few years now and I love the variety of classes you can take. There are knitting, quilting, watercolour, acrylic, sketching, photography, weaving and sewing classes, just to name a few. You can try it out for free and if you like it you can subscribe for about $6.00 a month. Classes that you really like you can hold in your own personal library to pull up whenever you want.
The latest class that I’m following is demonstrated by Lisa Congdon and I love her work. Every day for a month she is filming a video challenge on pattern drawing using watercolours or gauche. Yesterday I worked on a chevron pattern and a harlequin pattern.
https://www.creativebug.com/classseries/single/daily-painting-challenge-31-patterns-to-paint?auto=1
Mama Cormier 