A Collaborative Work on Canvas by William and Yaya, 2016

Our grandson, William, made this abstract painting that I've had hanging in my art space.   I look at it a lot, and lately I began to see a bird in his painting- the purple and orange wings and the branch-like swoosh at the bottom.  Today I brought our bird to life!

I made a copy and played with it before tackling (and maybe ruining) the original.  I added a little additional line to the purple wing, continued  the red outline, and added birdie-essentials like legs, an eye and beak, and voila, our birdie appeared.

This isn't our first collaboration.  Here we are making a shirt for the 4th of July.

And here he is, working on another masterpiece.

This fat budgie makes me smile every time I look at it!

I Won a Piece of Toast !

I rarely ever win anything, but holy guacamole, I won this beautiful watercolor by the talented watercolor miniaturist, author and funny blog writer, Vivian Swift.   To celebrate finishing her new book , Gardens of Awe and Folly, (due out in March and available for pre-order on Amazon and probably other sites as well), Vivian held a lottery for this beauty.   Her husband , Top Cat, picked my winning number !!

Then one happy day this envelope arrived in my mailbox.

And inside, my lovely Toast.   "Toast" ?   What's up with that?   Ms Swift calls her miniatures Triscuits (there was a bit of nasty business with the folks at Nabisco over the name, but after some saber -rattling and general silliness on their part, all is settled).   Since my painting is bigger than a Triscuit, it is of course, a piece of toast.

Vivian's blog is a wonderful mixture of laugh-out-loud funny stories from her life and serious information about how she paints - what paints and brushes she uses, how to fix the occasional oops,  and drawing tutorials.  I actually drew a cat - a recognizable cat- from her tutorial and crowed about it here.   There's more - adventures with her cat family, thrifting, and the annual winter champagne-o-meter method for measuring snowfall.  If you haven't checked out her blog, you must!

Anyway, back to my painting, done for the garden book (but not used).  Lucky me.

Remember that all this detail is in a picture that measures 5 x 4 inches! Look at that brick walkway and all the detail in the grass.  Pretty sure she may have used masking fluid on the grass  - something I never heard of until she explained it in one of her posts.

See that great handwriting along the sides?  One of the wonderful thing about Vivian's books (and one that is time-consuming), is that she hand sets all the type in a font based on her handwriting.  This is from her book, Le Road Trip, gushed about in a previous post here.  Gorgeous detailed watercolors of various architectural elements AND handwritten font - swoon!

Even more impressive are the details in one of her tiny Triscuits - this one from a post about Marrakesh.

My toast is in a perfect spot above my dresser .

Thank you so much, Ms Vivian Swift - you're the best!