More Year of the Doodle Art Play

I'm still loving my Year of the Doodle planner/art journal.    I love the small size for each day, the beginning backgrounds, and the prompts.  Well, most of the prompts- sometimes I ignore them and do my own thing.

I turned the splotches of color into  little  birds, adding a few more with watercolor pencils so I'd have a whole flock.

I continue playing with doodling.   I'm reading Danny Gregory's The Creative License and appeciating his reminder to draw what you see, not what you think you see.    It is interesting that when you really look at something, it is often not quite the way you see it in your mind .

It's no secret that I love Vivian Swift's art and blog.  In a recent post she explained how she paints teacups, making the tea in the cup lighter at the far rim  as that's the way it is when you look at it.  Sure enough - again, what you think it is isn't always how it really it.   I'm trying to really look at things as I try to draw and , who knew, it makes my drawing more realistic.

The picture on the right started out as the watercolored squares - so fun to turn them into faces!

As if this book isn't fun enough, our Montana grand  loves working in hers.  I love anything that helps me stay connected to this far-away sweetie.

Earth Works by Nancy R. Hugo - A Review

I love to read gardening books during the winter;  they remind me of gardens of summers past and give me hope for gardens of summers future.   I don't read how-to gardening books, but rather books about gardens written by gardeners about the good, the bad and the ugly experiences in their gardens. 

Old books about gardens are the best - another winter read was  Garden Open Today by Beverly Nichols ,  published in 1963.  How else would I know that in the 1960s  the Fire Department  (at least in charming old England) would come and hose out the gunk from your garden water feature?   Pretty sure even in England this charming service is no longer available.   Mr. Nichols thinks that every garden should have a "water feature"- maybe our back 40 swamp can be re-branded !

Back to  Earth Works by Nancy Hugo - what a delight!    The book is a month-by-month treasure of gardening insights, opinions, and just great writing.    She starts by recommending old gardening books, beginning with my favorite,  Onward and Upward in the Garden by Katherine White that I talked about here.

I like people with opinions and this book is full of them.  On hollyhocks: " Grow the single- flowered ones, not the doubles.  A double-flowered hollyhock is like a 7-foot man who's changed his hairstyle to attract attention".    For July :  "What most gardeners want in July are flowers that need no attention.  They want flowers they can smile at on the way to the air-conditioned car".  Her go-to flower for July is Echinacea, one of my all-time favorites. 

From our back garden - sans water feature!

It's not all snappy comments - I learned that toads don't drink water, they absorb it through their skin. And that the American lawn is the largest crop in the world, using more fertilizer than all of India and Africa do.  Any one who has seen our lawns knows we are most definitely NOT contributing to that scary stat!    I also got a recommendation for a plant for our problematic front slope,  Fire Pink,  that apparently isn't fussy about its growing conditions.   It does have the downside of being red  (I have opinions, and one of them is that most red flowers are hideous), but since I can't really see the slope from the house, I may give them a whirl.

I'm going to go though Ms Hugo's list of "must-reads', looking for her  sure-sign of a great one - a dried pressed flower between the pages.

DIY Beach Art

I've been staring at a blank wall while I drink my morning coffee.  The Captain brings coffee to me in bed - surely one of life's special luxuries!  I haven't been able to find anything to hang between the windows until I saw beach-y scenes painted on pallet boards all over Pinterest.   

I've had my eye on an old pallet leaning against the neighbor's garage that I thought I could use, but then on a recent trip to Hobby Lobby*,  I found these:

The Captain hooked the two together to make the perfect size for my beach.

Here are the paints I used.  I watered them down to just make a wash of color and mixed things up as I went along.  The goal isn't full coverage, just a wash so the wood underneath shows through.

A watery mix of tan and white made the sand at the bottom.

And then washes of light-to-dark blue for water.

A very light blue for the sky with some pounces of diluted white to suggest clouds, a bit of brown along the edges and my beach art was done.

This is my new morning coffee view,  and I love it.

* I don't usually go to Hobby Lobby because, as Snoopy's brother Spike said about his girlfriend, "We have religious differences".   I like religion and shopping widely separated  and employees not subject to employer's idea of what kind of health care should be covered - not the case for either at HL.