MORE FALL COLOR

4x6 watercolor

Aimee's guest house. We lived in this little cottage our first winter here while we built our house. Its has been greatly improved since then. I did this the week before last before the rain started.


4x6 watercolor

A view outside my new studio window on Monday.... last month Van replaced the old window which had gotten foggy between the thermal panes.



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A WEEK OF WATERCOLOR POSTCARDS

Last week with unusually beautiful sunny weather for this time of year, and after a long time passing where I've hardly touched a paint brush, I went out walking in the neighborhood with my painting kit and did these. They are all 4x6 inches watercolors.


View across the Salmon River from the Smokehouse porch,



another view from the Smokehouse porch,



the Salmon River bridge... I had drawn this in pencil in 2006, forgotten and found in a pile of paper. It took me a while to find the spot where I sat then in the grass and brush last week to paint,


the cottonwoods are so beautiful this time of year. These are next to our neighbor Don's house,



and so are these.


Down at the beach, not in the neighborhood.

Its more like normal now with a steady light rain, but I'm determined to keep doing doing these little paintings regularly and post them here again. So, I'm hereby reviving this blog.... again.

TIME TO HAVE JUST ONE BLOG

.... and its not this one. I'm going to abandon this blog again. I started this one in 2006 when I was painting postcards almost daily. These were usually done from life, almost always in less than an hour. When I stopped doing the daily paintings, or maybe I was still trying to do them, I started my other blog, Carole Baker Journal to show my other art work. Though I'm painting almost every day now, I'm not regularly doing the postcards. Lately, I've randomly put the small things in gouache that I've been doing either here or on the other blog and it just doesn't make sense to continue to do so, so this will be the last one here, at least for now.



.... just a small tree I did last month in gouache on a cream colored paper.

So, come on over to my other blog to see what's new. And thank you to all who have visited here and an even more thanks to those who have left a message.

BEACH TREES WITH GOUACHE

Beach Trees gouache 4x6"

I'm still plugging away with the gouache painting. This one is from a photo I took last month at the beach. I struggled with the foreground but loved painting the trees. I'm still having trouble judging the change in value when the paint dries.

DON'S HOUSE

The sunshine didn't last much longer. It has snowed and has mostly been raining for the last few days. I've been continuing on with gouache paintings. Here is one I did a while back.



gouache on mat board 3.5x5 "

I took a walk in late afternoon fog and took a photo of my nearest wintertime neighbor's house and painted this next morning. Kind of reminds me of one of those Kincaid guy's painting.

SUNSHINE!

gouache 3x5 1/2"

Friday was the sunniest day I can remember in a long time. And the first time I've painted outside the house this year. I drove down to the beach at about 2 and painted this from the car ....the Beartrack Mountains. I took a long walk on the beach and took lots of pictures of trees and the sky as the sun set and disappeared behind Chichikof Island at about 4 in a blaze of color.

Some years in the past I've been able to paint outside in January.... not this year. Maybe its just that I'm more susceptible to the cold (age can do that) but for the last month, just getting to the car has required walking on ice, and except for the paved one, most roads and paths have been sheets of ice.

With the days getting longer (about 8 hours now) I'm vowing to get out more. The snow is gone in a lot of places and hopefully we it won't get really, really cold.

Hard to believe how fast time flies. In a little over a month, we will be heading for Florida.

TWO LITTLE GOUACHE PAINTINGS

I needed to do something in color yesterday. Working on the monochromatic gouache studies has been getting monotonous.... just like the monochromatic landscape outside lately. I did these 2 little paintings from photos. Both were done on a manila colored paper.



This is Shelikof beach of Kruzof Island.... I did a larger watercolor of this last year but the bottom half of that painting got cropped.... I didn't nail the water coming in on the beach here either.


This is from a photo I took in Glacier Bay in October when Van and I were up there fishing. I think near the mouth of Geike. I'm not happy with the rocks.

SOME TREES

I've done several monochromatic gouache paintings in the last couple of weeks as I follow the 2010 Gouache Corner Challenge Thread on Wet Canvas. This is one I did today.



These are some trees I see from my window..... there are some behind them on the right that I left off. We had over a foot of snow this week and now its raining and there's starting to be some bare ground out there.

DOW AND TAO

I haven't quite gotten rid of this cold. Maybe it's flu. I've been painting everyday though, mostly working on gouache with great help from a Wet Canvas challenge here.



Another tea cup with my favorite tea. I've been studying this book, by Arthur Dow, in particular the part about Notan.

TEA AND BOOKS AND W,X,Y AND Z

Nursing this cold for the last few days. I've finished 3 books since Christmas (The 13th Tale was the best), written often in my green journal, and drank many cups of tea. I should have included my laptop here too. Feeling better today, but not great. Tomorrow, I'm spending in the studio regardless of how I feel.

Goofy looking ellipse.

And here's the rest of the alphabet:

A START FOR 2010 AND T, U, and V

For the last few weeks in the overwhelming month of December, I was contemplating whether or not to keep on with this blog. Though I've done some sketching last month, I've hardly put a thing here (though the scanner not working was a good excuse for a while.) I had just about decided to give it a break and not make any sort of resolve to try to paint every day this year. Having 2 blogs and trying to put something here every day in addition to getting other art done and on a blog, and, not to forget, my non-artist life.....life takes energy and time and I become stressed when I don't do what I've committed myself to do.

For the last few days, nursing a feverish cold, I've gone back and forth on the matter, writing and deleting these last few days. Tomorrow is Sunday, another day of renewal, so its time to stop the anguishing and decide and put it down in writing:

I will draw or paint every day for the rest of 2010. And the small watercolor sketches will be posted here.

and I'll get more larger work done this year... and delve more into some other media... and get more serious with my gallery next summer.... and its way past time that I have a show in Juneau so I will make an effort to arrange one.


So, maybe there won't be as much here. I hope to be be putting more art on the other blog this year.... guess I never should have named this one "Watercolor Postcards" because that limits what I can put here. I hope my few followers will look at both blogs.


Notice I said "rest of 2010." On January 1st I hardly felt like getting out of bed.



But today the fever is gone, I'm feeling better, and got the last 2 oranges and painted them here.


And here are T, U, and V of Alyssa's alphabet book.

PQR and S

MN and O

JK and L

GH and I

DE and F

The scanner is working, but I'm not... I've been playing with my granddaughter Alyssa who is visiting through Christmas and keeping me happily busy. I will continue with the ABC's I did for her a few years ago until the holidays are over.

ABC's

I'm having trouble with my scanner. The same thing happened before, but darned if I can remember how I fixed it.... have spent too much time already. I have an old scanner that I may have to drag out but for now found some things in my photos to put on here.

Quite a few years ago, in one of those times when I just wasn't motivated to paint anything, I decided to do a little ABC book, doing one letter each day.... This was long before my granddaughter was born 8 years ago. I think I'd gotten to E. Anyway, when she was a couple of years old, I returned to the project and finished it. Most of the paintings have special meaning for her. I made her a copy and will some day sew the originals into a book which will be hers....the letters are on double pages front and back.

So for lack of anything newly scanned to put here, I'll put the pages here a few at a time.

YET ANOTHER VIEW OUT MY WINDOW

As I come to the end of the year, my resolve to paint my little watercolors has almost disappears. I've been spending much of the few daylight hours in the studio and not getting out to walk much.... and wouldn't be stopping to paint if I was with temperatures in the 20s. Feeling a bit guilty and did another little painting out the window a couple of days ago.


This is smaller than most of my postcards... 2 x 3 1/2 inches and I started with a layer of gouache, with light blue at the top and some red at the bottom which doesn't show up in the scan.

INK DRAWING

Having used just about every throw away drawing pen and thrown away lots of expensive technical pens, and cursed them many times for not writing or for leaking, I decided to splurge and buy a good fountain pen. I got a Sailor 1911 while in California and love it. I've been doing a good bit of sketching with it, but I only have non waterproof ink and haven't been painting what I've drawn until yesterday.... just so I'd have something to put here.



Here it is.... another view from my window. I first drew the scene and then just used water to bleed the ink and put some more lines in after it dried.

I've been looking at Noodler Ink to order, which from what I've read is waterproof when it reacts with the cellulose in paper and will not harm the pen.

I finally finished a commissioned painting that I've been working on (mostly avoiding) for months. You can see it by clicking HERE

POSTCARDS FOR ABIGAIL

A writer friend Abigail, called today. She had been inspired to write a poem after seeing one of my older postcards that I had displayed in my gallery. Most of them are not for sale as I consider them my journal, and she had asked to have a copy of it and another one that spoke to her. I said I'd scan it and send to her. And since the scans are right on my desk top and I haven't had a paintbrush in my hand today since I'm getting ready to go to Juneau for a couple of days, I'm putting them here. They were done in January 2006, before I started blogging.


This is pretty much how its been looking off and on since I got home from California, though its been raining more often.


My note on back: "1-9-06 I walked at the duck pond and these 7 swans were there. sketched in the cold and painted when I got home." It must have been warmer than usual, because the pond is usually frozen in January.