….but not posting every day
Sometimes it takes me three days to finish a piece like this which I started with Winnie last week. After I filled in the spaces with watercolour I add to add some marks, so for the next three evenings I sat in front of the TV and added the tangles with black and white ink.
…haven’t posted flowers in awhile because I haven’t been able to get out
Today I had to take my husband to the hospital for blood work and his annual check-up in the oncology department. Currently the hospitals don’t allow visitors to accompany patients so I spent time walking through High Park and up and down Roncesvalles. Not many stores are open but the green grocers had flowers sitting in front of their stores and I treated myself to a bunch of these yellow tulips. My husband is fine by the way and his cancer is still in remission after 9 years.
….finished way too late last night to post my finished piece
Yesterday I was inspired by Lisa Congdon after watching one of her art videos. I really enjoy making line drawings of flowers and Lisa takes it a few steps further by adding lots of mark details and another thing that I love, collage. Adding all the marks is very time consuming but also very meditative and I think that’s why I lost track of time when I made this piece.
The second photo is the piece that I just finished today. After not being very happy with my last ‘family portrait’ for Carla Sonheim’s class I decided I would try another. I’ve discovered that if I take my time and let things dry before moving on I get a much better result. Also this time I really enjoyed the assignment where as with the first attempt I wasn’t having much fun.
….I could do these all day long
I started with a random doodle with charcoal and then started to add blocks of watercolour. When the watercolour dried I added marks with black and white pen. Is it wrong to like your own work?
…thanks to Becky B for hosting January Squares https://beckybofwinchester.com/2021/01/03/square-up-3/
On Day 3 for SquareUp I’m posting my ring light, one of my requested Christmas presents. I’ve discovered that during Zoom meetings I’m always sitting in the dark or I have shadows over my face. Not sure if this is an improvement because now I look very pale. Unfortunately I tend to get pale in the winter anyway but that’s life.
….trying out my new pencil crayons that my son-in-law gave me for Christmas
To start the New Year out right I signed up for a three hour art class that went live over Zoom. There were over 500 people in the class and I recognized a few faces that I’ve come to know from Carla Sonheim’s on-line classes.
The class was intended to bring out our creative juices in writing and drawing. It was hosted by Carla Sonheim and Chris Wells and featured painter, Bobby Lucy and Guitarist, Jeremy Bass. It was a very relaxing and enjoyable session. I especially enjoyed the writing activities.
Before the class began I put together some art tools for the class and I came a cross an old ink line drawing that I had done years ago. I decided to test out my new coloured pencils that my son-in-law gave me for Christmas. The colours were rich and lovely to work with and gave the old line painting new life. My first official bit of art for 2021.
….I like photographic challenges, they keep me on my toes when I’m out walking and looking for interesting subjects to snap photos of
I’ve always wanted to host a photo challenge and I think I’ve come up with one that is relatively original. The challenge is to find subjects that show up in a cluster or group of three. They can be birds, animals, people, flowers or inanimate objects. They can be staged or things you find naturally in the great outdoors or indoors. There are no other rules. They can be in black and white, colour, square or rectangular.
There is no need to write a story or even leave a caption with your photos. That’s not to say that you can’t add a poem or some text if you are so inclined. Whatever floats your boat. I’m looking forward to see if there is any interest in this challenge. If you decide to try it copy the link to this post and paste it into your blog. I should get a ping back and I’ll respond to your post.
Enjoy!
….Christmas was certainly different this year for most people who chose to stay safe
Some things didn’t change. We cut down a tree with the family, albeit socially distant and masked, and I decorated it. The difference this year is that I totally decorated it on my own and it was up a full two weeks before Christmas. Normally I wait until my daughter can come over and help me and it often doesn’t get done until a few days before Christmas.
As much as we love being with family on Christmas we found new ways to celebrate the holiday. We exchanged gifts but this year the gifts were exchanged in front of the house. I still filled everyone’s stockings but this year everyone took them home. Gaelan brought special donuts from Hamilton and we exercised the dogs for a few minutes in the park down the street.
Our son and his family live in London, England so this year we opened our gifts early. We always open presents on Christmas Eve but 3:00 in the afternoon was early even for us. When everyone got back home we had a Zoom Christmas so that everyone could watch their gifts being opened. It was a bit hectic but in the end watching Sevin celebrate her first Christmas was very special. Technology this year has kept us in touch and brought us closer to all our family members.
My husband and I decided to still make a special Christmas dinner for just the two of us. The only thing that was different is that we didn’t cook a turkey. Instead, we bought a nice big capon to roast and at the last minute I decide to make cranberry sauce. My husband is an amazing cook and I’m no novice when it comes to cooking but even after all these years of experience we can still mess up. The difference this year is that we could laugh about it. There were no guests to worry about or timelines that needed to be met. So when the capon was undercooked and we had to put it back in the oven, after slicing off the cooked parts, we just relaxed with more wine and started off with the wonderful salad that Kevin made.
My cranberry sauce…..well lets just say that you should never walk away from a pot of boiling cranberry sauce. In the end I was able to salvage it with a little more sweetener. Kevin likes to tell people that we had twice baked capon and smoked cranberry relish.
We’ve learned that it’s the little things that bring us joy. Even though we knew we wouldn’t be together as a family for Christmas I still decorated the house. I pared back on the decorations but I’ve learned that you don’t need to put everything out. Simple things like lighting candles and playing Christmas music brought us joy and peace. In a way this Christmas prepared us for the day when we might have to spend more Christmases alone. There will come a day, perhaps, as the grandchildren get older they won’t want to come to Oma and Papa’s house on Christmas Eve or maybe some of our children will move further away. As for now, though, we hope we can have a few more Christmas Eve celebrations together as a family.
It was certainly a less stressful Christmas this year. Hopefully 2021 will bring back some normality. We will probably all have to adjust to a new normal and hopefully 2020 taught us some valuable lessons about life and what is important. My husband and I learned that even though we love each other, more importantly, we actually like each and enjoyed our self imposed isolation in 2020.
Cheers and a happy New Year!
Carol
…after predicting a 20% chance for a white Christmas the weatherman was wrong again
Christmas Eve started out with rain, mild temperatures and grey skies. It looked like we would be having yet again another green Christmas. After our Zoom Christmas with the family in the afternoon I packed up a few more gift platters for the neighbours. The sun had just set as i set out to make my deliveries and looking up into the street lights I could see that the rain was changing to snow. All of a sudden everything seemed that much more Christmasy.
The next morning everything was covered with a clean white blanket of snow.
Frances and I went for a walk and came upon our first snowman of the season. Something was missing but I soon figured out that our little snowman had not been given a mask to wear during the ongoing pandemic. Problem solved.
….on Christmas Eve
We decided as a family this year to celebrate Christmas in our homes and connect via Zoom. On Christmas Eve, early in the afternoon our kids drove to our house to drop off and pick up gifts. Gaelan ordered special donuts to share with everyone. It was not a particularly nice day but our meeting took place between rain showers so we also managed to get in a walk to to the park at the bottom of our street.
Everyone wore their masks, some more festive than others and some of us wore our special hats and antlers.
I even got Frances to get into the festive spirit for all of 10 seconds. My husband said she’s slowing down in her old age.
Our get together was short because we all had to get back home and do a Zoom Christmas with Brendan and his family in London, England. It was Sevin’s first Christmas and it was fun watching her open her gifts from the family.
Mama Cormier 