JANUARY 31

This cup and saucer are part of a set of dishes that my Aunt Lou gave to me some years ago when she made a move. I've used them ever since, though I don't use the cups often.
I'm using a different paper today, the same I used for my Jan. 14th painting. It is a rough handmade paper (from India, I think) in a book that I got from Daniel Smith quite a while back. I'm seeing with this painting every day how differently I paint on different papers, out of necessity, I guess, to obtain what I'm seeing. In the end, my paintings seem almost a different style using different papers. The paper is presenting a challenge but I'm kind of liking what I did today, so think I'll keep working in this book. I got another book with the same paper at the same time I got this one, and ended up using it for collages because I found it difficult to paint in at the time. Or maybe because of the format.... the one I'm using now is landscape format, the other one portrait.

JANUARY 28TH, 29TH, AND 30TH

I decided to try painting another leaf after doing such a lousy job last week. I did this of another leaf on illustration board.

I worked all day painting a larger painting on Thursday, and so for the first time this year didn't do a little painting. But I did 3 on Tuesday and this is one of them. I drove down to the beach, too cold and windy to go for a walk, but painted this from the car... lots of snow and very dark water.


Yesterday we got a box of fresh produce flown in from Juneau, the first in quite a while. Its so nice to have fresh tomatoes and avocados this time of year.

JANUARY 26TH AND 27TH

There was lots of snow on Monday. Two large moose wandered through, probably bucks, more skiddish than most. I resorted to taking a photo in order to draw this one walking.

No snow today. There were short instances of sunshine showing through above dark clouds. It looked like an Ansel Adam's photograph, but I didn't get my camera in time. After the sun was gone,I painted this pine tree, using gouache for the white. This is the best one of the two.

THREE MORE DAYS

Friday, January 23, was not a good day... sometimes life just throws you a curve ball. That might be evident in my painting. I just couldn't get the dried up curled up cottonwood leaf to look like anything. The one on the left was done in watercolor and the one on the right in gouache....its shadow ends where it ended as the leaf set on my sketchbook. There is a faint indication in the scan of a drawing of a spruce cone between the two leaves.


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A much better day on Saturday than it was on Friday. This is the same old view out my window. I had great hopes that it would look good painted with gouache.. started in the morning when the light was interesting making shadows in the snow, but got distracted by something or other and by the time I got back, everything was an uninteresting silhouette. Late afternoon, when I finished it, the light was completely different, the shadows gone, and this is what it is.

It has gotten cold again, clear and sunny yesterday, and the snow has hardened up so you can walk on top.... even the moose aren't sinking in... at least not the young ones. I took a long enjoyable walk, out beyond the trees here to the beach. I had my paints with me, but didn't even try to get them out... just taking off a mitten with a glove underneath to take a photo was enough to put a damper on that idea.

This is todays painting, yet another view out the window. I painted it in one of the little sketch books to try out a new set-up to paint. I got the idea on one of my new favorite blogs, Gurney Journey , written by an extraordinary artist named James Gurney. There is all kinds of great information there.


Here is my set up. I've tried for years to get something I could hold in one hand, and this is it.... I never thought of using the clips. Had tried rubber bands and just holding it all together with my hand. I glued the water cup to a piece of plexiglass and can mix paint on the other side of it.
I've had this little palette for years and it is now hinged together with duct tape. The paint is from my tubes. It fits perfectly on the books which is a favorite size for me. I'm left handed, so a right handed person would put the paint on the other side. You can see Mr. Gurney's set up by clicking here.


The little book on the right is the one I just painted in. They are both 4" by 6 1/2 " and both almost full, so I think I'll make a new one.

JANUARY 22

Another try of the same place... this one is a little larger. The weather turned colder, down in the teens and sunshine this morning.

JANUARY 21

The ditch running through our property has filled up with water, a combination of melting snow and rain. This is the most water we've seen there in the 34 years we have lived here. I painted this from the kitchen rather than down stairs as usual.

JANUARY 19TH AND 20TH

I had about 45 minutes to kill yesterday between helping out at the school and tai chi. Stopped into the library and drew this. Added the paint after I got home.
I spent today glued to the TV, starting at 8AM (noon in DC). What a great day for our country. Not a good likeness, but you must get the idea.

JANUARY 17TH AND 18TH

Birthday cake for Bill's 79'th birthday.

Gary watching the football game this afternoon.

14th, 15th and 16th

I was asked to show some of my paintings at the school for a few weeks, and decided to include some of the watercolor postcards I had done in 2006. I mounted about 60 of them on 4 pieces of matboard and hung them yesterday. It was fun to get them out and go through them and reminded me what a worthwhile thing it was doing them. And after doing them now for 16 days without fail, I am resolving to do one everyday of 2009. Well, I've done it now; guess I am committed.

I've been having trouble getting on line lately.... something to do with power outages in Juneau, I've been told by AT&T. Rather frustrating. So I will probably continue not posting them daily.

Wednesday painting was out the window again, but on different paper in a different book. Smoke from a neighbors fire and the rare sun shining through flattened out the trees.
Merlot and crackers, after a busy day.
Thick fog today, and another painting of my view from the studio window.

JANUARY 12TH AND 13TH

A still life on Monday with gouache. The snow is melting, its raining. I don't want to be out there, I don't want to look out there.


Its still raining. I found a little bit of color out there today. I'm still not liking this paper.... nor the only rapidograph ink that I have which is brown and bleeds.

JANUARY 11, 2009

The sun tried to come through today around noon. It doesn't look like the sun is much higher in the sky, but I trust it is. The weather has changed sometime over night.... now rain. Most of the snow is off the trees. It was gorgeous last night with the closest moon of the year lighting up the snow covered landscape, though I didn't see it through the clouds.

JANUARY 9TH AND 10TH

Friday's little painting is our house and was done from a photo I took on Thursday afternoon.

Saturday, the 10th: I scanned the whole page in my book, cropping out the writing on the sides. The trees once more are some of what I see south of the house. The stained glass, also a view in the window was a gift years ago from friend and mentor Carol Janda. The ice cycles have been growing since before Christmas. They are gone now. Van knocked them off and soon after snow poured off the roof.

JANUARY 7TH AND 8TH

Yesterday's views outside were so, so the same.... more snow and painting it again just wasn't what I wanted to do. So a still life instead, something about somewhere else... we are going to Florida about 6 weeks from now and I'm beginning to look forward to it.


This morning, six moose were roaming out in the field while I was fixing breakfast, so I just had to sketch some. I put the trees around these two and am loving the beauty around me again.

I'm not loving this paper I'm painting on though. But I am still determined to fill the pages of this book before starting another one. Another foot or more of snow predicted today and tomorrow.

JANUARY 6, 2009

It stopped snowing today, but hasn't gone away. We have over two feet accumulated. I painted this looking out my bedroom window this morning.... not very happy with it (the scan looks better than the painting) and planned to do it again later today, but as usual, the days are just too short to do all I want to do. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. Frustrating day in the studio today; the painting I've been working on for several days is garbage.

JANUARY 5, 2009

I've used these for models before, and after doing this little painting and I might do something else with them. I used white qouache for the lines on the origami crane.

POSTCARDS FOR JANUARY 3RD AND 4TH

I've managed to do a postcard 4 days in a row! Maybe I will do one every day of the year. But I'm not making any vows to do so yet.




My belladonna amaryllis has bloom almost constantly since last spring, but I think this is the last one for this winter. I brought back a bag of bulbs from a friend in Maine about 10 years ago and have enjoyed the flowers ever since.


Today I spent most of the day in the studio, working on a larger painting, while it snowed for most of the day. All day, I thought about drawing this cottonwood, came upstairs about 3:15 to do so, as the view is better up here, but by the time I made a cup of tea and really got started, it was nearly dark. Kind of guessed at a lot of it.

BEGINNING ANOTHER YEAR OF POSTCARDS

This is my first posting here since the beginning of last year. I've decided to revive this blog and keep up my other one as well. Again this year, I will probably be painting a lot of views out one or the other of my windows to the south.


Yesterday morning, New Years day, the morning was gorgeous. The scan of my little painting lost the color in the sky, though. The temperature was 10 below 0 that morning. Four moose wandering around the field, gone when I started painting .


This morning, a gray sky and snow. A light snow for most of the day. I went out this evening and a sliver of the moon was showing through thin clouds and snow.

I painted these 2 in an old sketch book of nice fairly heavy drawing paper. I bought a beautiful handmade book with Fabriano watercolor paper when I was in Florence but decided to fill up some blank pages of others books before I start painting in it. My postcards will probably be mostly in book form from now on. Most of the ones on this blog so far have been on separate pieces of paper. I've always thought of them as my journal, though, and have not sold or given but a very few away. I keep them in cigar boxes and some day might put them into a book.


This and the next one are in another little book I made with a few pages still blank. this is on Nidiggen paper with gouache.

I'm not sure what kind of paper this is. It's the same little cyclamen. I started it from seed about a year ago.

A NEW BLOG

I am just now getting my start with good intentions for the new year. In contemplations over the past couple of years and what I want to accomplish this year, thoughts of this blog come up and I think how enjoyable it was to post here when I was focusing on my postcard paintings most days. But as that little obsession faded, so did my postings here. I just haven't been focused on painting in watercolor since my show in April but I've felt a bit of an obligation to post my few little paintings here thinking each time I'd rather be posting something I've been more excited about. I have usually been keeping my hands busy making something or other...... Through ups and downs I've just been busy with life and much of it as an artist, if I can call myself that. I've been having a lot of fun with collage and book making, and have started making prints again; I finished a couple of quilts, got a new camera and have taken hundreds of pictures and have been teaching myself Photoshop Elements. And my few postings to this blog over the past year have shown that I still do paint, and sometimes in watercolor.

For most of the past year though, I haven't been very well focused on any of my pursuits, and keeping this blog, I think, is a distraction from getting to that point where I am focused again. So, ta da...... I'm going to abandon this blog (at least for now) and start a new one. I changed the name of this one a few times in the beginning weeks but when I came up with Watercolor Postcards it pretty much limits what its content ought to be... I've avoided putting much on here that weren't my little postcard size things, though often I've really wanted to share what I've been doing. So I have just set up a NEW BLOG.
You can go to it by clicking here: http://carolebaker.blogspot.com

I will be posting photos as well as more paintings and whatever else I am working on and probably more non art related things. Who knows. Before I close, here are a few little paintings I've done in the last couple of months.




These are some of Kim's pottery that I bought at her sale December 1.



This poinsettia that I got in November was the one sign of the Solstice season in our house. Van and I were both sick during the holidays. We canceled our turkey dinner party and had Campbells Chicken Noodle Soup for Christmas dinner.


These are some of the treasures I collected from beacheslast summer.



And this was done from memory of the view of the afternoon sun (about 3pm) on Jan 14. coming home from the PO. The days are getting longer, the sun is already above the horizon, though I haven't seen it in a couple of days.

DECEMBER 1, 2007

I've been home for almost a month now so figured I'd better post a few postcards from my trip to Oregon and Washington. It was a fabulous trip... saw some beautiful places and best of all, visited and traveled with friends. I can't thank them enough for their hospitality and transportation. I am so lucky!

I first spent a few days with my friend Judith in Portland.



Her living room was a lovely and comfortable space; my little picture, done with watercolor pencils and pen and ink brings back memories of conversations, music and tea. The paintings on the trip were done in a small watercolor Moleskine... I finally broke down and bought one. I like the paper, the size, and the band around it but don't like the perforated pages.... nor the price. I will try to make one like it.



My friend Annie picked me up in Portland and we had a wonderful trip down the coast. Two nights in Cannon Beach where I painted this of the Haystack. We had beautiful sunny weather, visited two old friends we hadn't seen in years and ended up in Eugene where Annie lives. We stopped at just about every scenic turnout between Astoria and Florence.

I took the train back to Portland and met with JoAnn and we went to Port Townsend where we attended a really fun retreat (Artfiberfest), visited friends In Port Angeles and most of a week in Seattle.



This crooked little thing is about all I sketched for about 2 weeks of the trip.... I did do a lot of arty things at Artfiberfest though. The little sketch is in Katy and Joey's home in Seattle.

For the last week of my trip, I visited another dear old friend, Louise, who lives in the middle of an organic bosc pear orchard in Zillah Washington. I had some time to paint but also was a little helpful in the orchard and we made a very enjoyable trip to the Columbia Gorge



This is the orchard from the front porch of Louise's house.




This is the view out the North window of her house....Rattlesnake Ridge. That's a road in the middle, orchards all around.



And this is East, out the kitchen window, with pear trees in the distance.



Since being home, I did 2 small still life paintings of pears that I brought home..... But mostly, I've been working on a couple of quilts. I've also have been doing little collages.... trying to do one every day, but not succeeding Here are a couple of them.



The mussel shells were color copied from one of my watercolor paintings and cut out.




The cranes are a woodblock print on thin paper glued on with other papers.

I thank my few readers for their comments.

END OF SUMMER

I'm off on a trip south to Oregon and Washington tomorrow. It's been a busy 2 months since I last posted.... fun trips on the water; camping, hiking, walking, and visiting with friends; lively guests; a shopping trip to town on the boat; and lots of time with my new camera and MacBook.... too much fun! Not much time or enthusiasm for painting, but I do want to put a few little ones here.




In August, 5 women friends and I kayaked around P. Island and camped for 2 nights. This is a few from our camp site the first night at Black Rock.




This is from our campsite on the second night, looking towards home.





This was one late afternoon in August when the fireweed were blooming, down at my favorite place at the beach....



And this from the same spot looking North.



Also in August, I went up bay with Kate and Fritz in their boat The Great Sea. I think this is the top of Mt. Wright.




This was the first of the 2 evening in Sandy Cove.

And this, Alum Root, was at the base of Mt Wright.... first time I've ever seen it.

Our community was very saddened by the loss of 2 fine young men in a plane crash in August. My heart goes out to their family and loved ones.