Happy final day of 2011!

This has been a long year for a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. Personally, we lost two of our pet friends, gained another, and my husband had a lot of health challenges this year. I've been scrambling to catch up with bills and taxes, which seems like a big hill. But we're looking forward to 2012.

I don't have any art to post, but here is a link to a drawing and painting video by Nina from Sweden. I love her work and I love this video:

Nina's drawing video

Goodbye 2011, Hello 2012!

A couple of visual blogs

Photo by Margaret Oomen, ResurrectionFern (Click to enlarge and see the snails)

While it is fun to read blogs, sometimes I just want to relax with a few words and some beautiful photos.

Margaret Oomen, in the Toronto area, takes gorgeous photos of the natural area around her home and the east coast of Canada. She also creates various beautiful hand-made items. Her blog is called ResurrectionFern.

Another blog containing lots of homey photos and snippets of homelife is called Habit and has several contributers.

Both of these blogs are updated often and are a quick stop to reflect and enjoy the beauty of the world.

As for my own photos, I think I lost my digital point and shoot camera. Plus, the preview pane was broken, so it was a little awkward to change menu settings. In the meantime, I'll have to make do with my Windows phone camera.

Sketch of Honey the dog.

Wild Arts Festival

Encaustic: Rue de Pic

The Audubon Society of Portland puts on the Wild Arts Festival every year - this was the 31st.  This year, the event was November 19 and 20, 2011.  I created a painting for the 6x6 show.  The art piece needed to have a bird as the subject. Art Media, now Blick Art, donated a 6x6 canvas. Each artist created a work of art and it is sold for $40. The artist received acknowledgement, free tickets to the events and some nice coupons. 

I painted a watercolor picture on water color paper and then affixed it to the canvas and added the encaustic to it.  Using heavy staples and a dark colored encaustic on the sides definitely give it a bit of an industrial look.  As usual, I enjoyed the combination of water color painting, language play (pic = woodpecker in French, and the Latin for Flickr is up in the left corner), real postage stamps and encaustic paint.

The show is fun - lots of people and art. Bob and I showed up Sunday afternoon and I was pleased to see my work was gone.  Phew - I didn't have to buy it myself!  I picked up some art cards of herons - inspiration for painting another favorite bird.

I barely made the deadline for the show.  I've been pretty lax and felt a bit rusty, but I managed to get something together!