Category — Life

The final two weeks were quite some time ago, so I thought I would finally post the last items so I have a complete set. Here is a photo from the very last class.

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The following are some photos from my trip yesterday to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. Lots of flowers plus some of the dog and some of Robert. I love Spring in North Carolina. Actually, I love Spring everywhere…

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I am now half way through the winter figure drawing session at the Durham Arts Center so I thought I would post some of the sketches from the last two sessions. Still very much enjoying myself. I acquired some new pencils with some birthday gift money I received and I had fun working with those. I am also finding that I enjoy working with two types of charcoal: willow and compressed. It’s an easy way to get different values as you might notice in the session four sketches.

Before I move on to the sketches, here are some daffodils from my back yard the other day. They seem to come up around my birthday every year, which is a nice treat. However they always seem to get a cold shock and  whither quickly. I like the focus in this photo on just one flower thanks to my amazing 50mm prime lens I got for xmas.

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I brought my camera on the Buckquarter Creek Trail last week. My intention was to find the two trees my mom and I saw in October that she wanted a photo of. I could not find them. All I have to say is: you try going into the woods and finding the same trees twice!

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The other week I felt inspired to paint some pistachios. Not sure if I’m done with the painting yet, but it’s been a while, so I thought I would post my progress. If I work on them some more, I will probably post the revision. But I didn’t really intend this 5×7 to be a drawn out process. Pistachios have an amazing range of color and at the time, the sun was hitting them in an interesting way. [Read more →]

Took a visit to New Orleans last week. Spent most of my time in the French Quarter, but also visited the Audubon Park and Audubon Zoo.

My only regret on this trip is that I noticed that there was an “endangered amphibians” exhibit at the zoo right before it closed which I wish I had seen. I love painting frogs. Ah well…there is plenty of other great reference photos for painting from this trip…including a couple neat frogs who lived in the reptile exhibit.

In the Quarter

Street Musicians

It has been longer than I intended between the time I mentioned that I would post my favorite landscape photo, and the time I actually did! Without further ado, here it is. The Seldovia Harbor during sunset. (click the photo to view it bigger if you are on my blog)

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I originally gave Phoenix an old comforter to sleep on since we have hard wood floors, however it looked really sloppy and I got fed up. A few days ago I caved and bought her a real dog bed. It lives right next to my desk all day. She naps by me all the time: on her new bed if I’m at my desk or on my favorite chair if I am reading or on my laptop. I took this picture last night because she was so cute. Sometimes Robert and I wonder what it would be like to be that adorable…it must hurt a little.

Phoenix on her new bed.