A Bit of This and That

Today I'm going to start with the art and end with wiener dogs, with a bit of nature in between.

So, one habit I have is to get excited when my friends show off their new art supplies and what they can do with them, which causes me to order the same art supplies and try to replicate what they did, often with dire results.  Often I give up after one or two butchered attempts and the new supplies wind up in the Closet of Forgotten Obsessions.

Sometimes I persevere, though, until I get at least one result that I like.  Take toned paper.  Toned paper is, as one might surmise, not white.  It can come in many colors, but most often the best results are produced on tan, gray, or black paper.  One of my friends had some toned paper.  It looked like fun.  So guess what I bought some months ago?

And this time, I've had some success, and it has yet to find its way from the Dining Table That Is Now an Art Desk into the Closet of Forgotten Obsessions.  You may recall the tan toned paper that I used for this lovely bookshop drawing:

I did a couple other things on this paper that I liked, and then I did several things that failed miserably, and I was close to giving up when, while ordering other stuff online, I noticed a pad of gray toned paper and thought, oh well, why not?  Maybe gray will work better...you never know.

So I got the gray toned paper and played around with a picture of a seashell and wound up with this:

Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.  The idea is to use white ink for highlights, black ink for shadows, and leave the color of the paper for the middle values.  I haven't quite got the hang of it all, but for now, the toned paper is staying on the Dining Table That Is Now an Art Desk.  Yay.

Then I returned to something that is much easier for me to use -- watercolor.  I love watercolor because I've been using it for decades and I know how to mix the colors I want (most of the time), and I know what it will do when I blend wet-in-wet (mostly most of the time), and I know what will happen if I try dry brush or lifting out techniques (some of the time).  And knowledge is power!  I think.

Anyway, we had our usual two Zoom group art practice sessions, where we choose a photo and all draw/paint it and at the end of 90 minutes or so we Share Our Work.  The session pic was of a shrine thing in Bali somewhere (we get these from Instagram or Pinterest et al and they're not always labeled well).

I drew the shrine and rocks first in brown ink with a lot of detail which was subsequently lost with the watercolor washes but oh well, it made me happy and took up some time.  Then I did wet-in-wet for the sky, with some lifting-out for the clouds.  Then all it needed was some washes of color for the water, building, rocks, and beach.  DONE!

Our next session's pic was more complex -- a hillside in Tuscany.  It had clouds, a misty background, a bit of fog in the middle ground, pesky cypress trees and a house in the foreground.  And green.  Lots and lots of green.  I did not use any ink, just did a quick pencil sketch and then went straight to watercolor, using a LOT of wet-in-wet and lifting out.  There's a technique I use that's hard to explain, but I'll try.  It involves putting plain water across a section, say, the middle ground hillside, then brushing a medium value green onto it, then using a paper towel to dab out where the misty foggy lighter areas should be, quickly, and then using a smaller brush to dab in bits of darker green where the trees are while that initial color is still damp and hoping it blends okay.  Let it dry, then add details as needed.  Seemed to work well for this piece.

Okay, I've gone on long enough about art and its challenges.  On to nature!

Things are starting to bloom at my house.  Here is the dogwood in the front yard:

And the lilac:

In the back yard garden, after fretting over a late snow/frost, I was pleased to see some of the newly planted perennials surviving, like this columbine:

The penstemmon, delphinium, lungwort, and lavender all survived the record-breaking Spring cold snap.  Whew.  Now I am waiting to see what the other plants do.  Presumably, there will be Black-eyed Susans sometime this summer, and roses, and liatris, and clematis, and phlox, and more lavender and oh gosh, just lots of things.  Wait and see!

The natural world beyond my home was also splendid this past week.  Here is a view from one of our usual walks along the Columbia River:

We had a bonus Great Blue Heron sighting:

And another sign that Spring really is here now -- a migratory Yellow-rumped Warbler:

And now, finally, what you've been waiting for:  wiener dogs!

We had a lovely Spring day for the weekly Dachshund Club walk, and while Pippin's girlfriend Madison was not there (she was visiting Seattle), there were plenty of other dogs to keep him entertained.

There was even a Truman lookalike!  The dog at the top is NOT Truman. He's at the bottom:

Pippin was momentarily confused and went to give the Faux Truman a kiss:

The Real Truman was worn out by it all, and this is how he spent that afternoon:

Such a sweet boy.

That's all (and that was plenty!) for this past week.  

Have a lovely time out there, everyone!