Virtual Vacation

Didn't get to take a real vacation this summer ... so I took a virtual vacation of New Orleans. Going through photos, postcards and maps, I painted some watercolours while remembering a trip there some time ago.

Oriental Tags

Shipping tags from office supply store with: Japanese papers and postage stamps; rubber stamps.

Paint-Out #3: Kelley's Garden

Pen and ink with watercolour. Kelley has terrific Southwestern art (his own works) in his house and some cool cacti in his garden, too.

Paint-Out #1: Experimental Farm

It's officially Summer -- last week we went on our first Monday Evening Paint-Out of the season. Location was the gardens off Prince of Wales Drive at the Experimental Farm. I painted a dianthus in pen and ink with watercolour (4"x6" Aquabee Super Deluxe Sketchbook).

Decluttering Success!

My home office, which I use for both work and hobbies, was getting out of control, so about 10 days ago I decided to completely re-arrange the furniture and de-clutter.

My plan was to: (1st) re-arrange the furniture; (2nd) immediately make 1/2 of the room look super neat (as inspiration to see how great the whole room could look) and stash my stuff in the other 1/2 of the room while I sorted it; (3rd) work my around the room making the super-neat zone larger and the stuff/stash/junk zone smaller. It seems to be working!!

Here's a picture I took last night. I wish I had taken a "before" picture, too ... think I was too scared to :)

Now my stuff/stash/junk zone is down to about 2 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft ... not visible in the photo ... I don't mind it, though, because it's localised and, so far, getting smaller every day.

The entire room is 12 x 15 ... considerably larger than it looks in the photo (I took it from the doorway, but it's distorted because of the close range ... there's actually about 5 feet between the two pieces of furniture in the foreground.)

I think the key was to make one half look really great right away ... it really motivated me to sort through the stuff I'd piled on the other side ... I was surprised how quickly it went. I am so pumped ... also so relaxed because now my home office looks/feels so pleasant to be in!

Algerian Fruit

These paintings, done in pen and ink with watercolour, are based on Algerian postage stamps from 1950. I'm a stamp collector and I've always liked this set of stamps. There's a third stamp, which pictures dates, in this Algerian fruit set and I think I'll do a painting based on it soon.

Still Life 2010-2