Category Archives: About Me

Playing With the Zoom Lens for an iPhone

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…..it’s a bit tricky holding the iPhone with this long lens attached

I was very excited when I received all those wonderful lenses for my iPhone at Christmas. I used the fish-eye lens first (which I promptly lost) and posted a few of my experiments soon after I received them.

A couple of days ago I headed out for a walk with my trusty iPhone in hand and the zoom lens in place. I came across a group of birds, flying back and forth and hopping from one branch to another. This is the best I could do.

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As I got closer to the park the wind picked up and the temperature fell. I came across some ducks, some in the lake and others in the pond.

I tried using the zoom lens for some landscape shots, sometime focusing on the branches in the foreground and other times on the background.

I’m not sure why it’s happening but can you see how the horizon  line in the second set of photos is bowed?

Here are a few more photos taken of objects and scenery in the distance.

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The only disadvantage of taking photos in January, even on a relatively mild day, is that your fingers freeze very quickly. Did I mention that the winds picked up and the temperature dropped? If I didn’t feel frostbite coming on I would probably have stayed out longer. As you can see from the last shot I was losing the light anyway. If you have any suggestions about using the lenses for an iPhone I’d be very appreciative.

Cheers!

Thursday Doors – January 25, 2018

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….thanks to Norm for hosting Thursday Doors

On Wednesday of this week I went on a little road trip with my husband to Collingwood. He had an appointment with a client and he invited me come along to keep him company on the two hour drive there and then home again. It was a beautiful day and the drive was easy.

As we got further north the countryside was almost magical. It looked like they had a dusting of fresh snow that coated all the trees and the snow itself was still pristine white. Luckily the roads had been cleared and driving was pretty uneventful.

Collingwood is very much a tourist town, with cottagers in the summer and skiing in the winter. The population is only about 18 000. The Main Street is where most of the shopping and restaurants are but I’m sure that somewhere in Collingwood there are malls and box stores and fast-food restaurants. I was happy to be dropped off on the Main Street while my husband drove to his appointment.

I spent most of my time browsing through the stores, checking out the art gallery, photographing the store fronts and enjoying a coffee at one of the local coffee shops. The downtown area has been designated provincially as a historic site and many of the storefronts have maintained it’s original architectural features. Two of the older buildings house the municipal offices and federal government offices.

Many of the stores still had some Christmas decorations in the windows and on the sidewalk. I loved the art on the exterior walls and I can imagine that in the summer when the trees are adorned with their leaves that walking along here is very pleasant.

I met my husband in a lovely coffee shop called the Espresso Post. While I waited I enjoyed a flat white and sketched in my drawing book. I loved the feel of the place with it’s heavy sturdy tables and chairs and high ceilings. When my husband arrived he also ordered a flat white and then we walked down the street to a restaurant called Sol Kitchen. It was recommended to me by the ladies who owned the art gallery called Butter Art Gallery. It was a great recommendation. The food was excellent and there was art on all the walls from local painters. My kind of place.

365 Days of Art – Day 24

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…..spent most of the day on the road and in Collingwood

My husband had a meeting with clients in Collingwood today so I decided to accompany him on the trip. While he was with his clients I spent time walking up and down the Main Street of Collingwood, taking photographs and checking out some of the stores. After awhile I stepped into a lovely little coffee shop and treated myself to a flat white. I had to ask what it was and it sounded interesting so I ordered it. Delicious!

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I brought my sketch book with me and some markers. It was the perfect place to practise my one-liners. Carla Sonheim wanted us to make several one-liners of birds, cats, potted plants or flowers, shoes and houses. For those of you unfamiliar with one-liners, you literally draw an object without taking the pen off the paper until you’ve finished the drawing. It should be loose and free flowing. They’re fun to do but sometimes a bit frustrating. My favourite are the flowers and houses. Here are a few pages that I worked on in the cafe.

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A Busy Weekend

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……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

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…..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.

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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

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….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.

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Sunshine

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….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

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…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.

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