I do dearly love this little town of ours and get so excited when it's filled to the brim with people having a great time!  The decorated lamp posts added so much charm, don't you think!  And on the way home I took pictures of the Halloween decorations in our neighbor's yard! 

Six lessons with Karlyn Holman and her on-line class and I'm happy to be painting again!  I've learned so much and she is so incredibly generous with her lessons.  She taught us how to make our own stencils, create our own paper for use in collage/abstract paintings, how to make our own stamps!  The fun never ends!  I'm having the most fun with the abstract paintings done on canvas - that's right - canvas with watercolor!  I'm doing a show next weekend and will get a feel for how people like them - I hope as much as me and I'll keep making them!!!  Either way, I need to get back to the lessons - still have 2 more to do before the next batch arrive 10/22.  Here are my results so far.  What do you think?

And it's time for a break.  Karlyn Holman's on-line 12 month course begins 7/20/17 and I am so excited!  Ready for some new ideas and lots of fine tuning to get me to the next level.  3 paintings sold at Rosemont, which is wonderful, and also meant I had to replace them and quickly fill my 8 painting quota for next hanging - so I did these two.  I'm not happy with either one and hope I don't have to use them, but if I do, they are there - and hopefully will have some much better ones with Karlyn's fine teaching!  Here they are, for better or for worse....

So very honored to be juried into this show with so many amazingly talented artists!  And, much to my delight and total surprise, I won First Prize!  Could have blown me away with a feather!  Henry Kidd was the Juror and gave such an excellent presentation and very constructive, positive critiques!  Anyway, here are photos from the show - and close up of my proud winner, "God Bless the USA"

Love, love love these gardens!  Summer gardens just as lovely as the Spring gardens - immaculate and perfectly maintained indeed!  Enjoy the show!!

I had a very good time trying to capture the beauty of these flowers at the Sarah P Duke Gardens.  Such a gorgeous place.  Planning on going again this summer to see a whole brand new set of flowers - they completely change out for Spring and Summer - AMAZING!!!

I have had such fun painting glass and trying to catch the reflections of the sunlight dancing thru them.  I have some shiny acrylic painted tables in the beach bar of large fish.  These paintings were done from photos taken of these glass vases on these tables with the funky reflections picking up just parts of the fish.  I really like how they came out.  What do you think?

Just a perfect day in the beautiful gardens with these fabulous women.  Enjoy!!

Finally!!!  Gabby and I have a routine going and I have my life back!!!  Yay!!!  There is a juried art show coming up at MacCallum More Museum and Gardens that I will submit these two paintings to, in hopes of becoming part of the art show.  Both are done on Arches 140 lb hot press paper - I have better success with shadows on fabric using the hot press vs the cold press. 

For those of you kind enough to follow my blog, I'd like to offer my sincere apologies for not posting for so long.  I have a great excuse.....WE GOT A PUPPY!!!  I am over the moon in love with this little sweetheart.  Her name is Gabby.  (Short for Gabriel, because if Jim goes first, she will be the angel who saves me).  She is 1/2 lab, 1/4 Chow and 1/4 Walker.  She was born 11/13/2016 - a Scorpio, don't ya know!  When we got her she barely weighed 5 pounds, now she is a whopping 18 1/2 pounds and her feet are still much larger than the rest of her body proportionately!  She is fully house trained.  She sleeps with us (has us trained) and honestly sleeps through the night and doesn't mind us getting up several times and turning the TV off and on - just happy to be in bed with us!  She walks relatively good on leash.  Working on "healing" and got her a "Gentle Leader" collar that is supposed to solve that problem - if only she would wear it more than 10 steps!  We'll get there! 

We walk 5-8 miles a day.  She takes long nap in her soft crate in the morning and the afternoon while I paint.  It's not that I haven't been painting, just having trouble painting anything of any kind of sell-able quality!  Not her fault - just distracted.

Here are some pics of this little Angel!

Strathmore GEMINI 150 lb cold press paper!  Recommended to me by my friend Deborah Hanes-Nelson and forever grateful.  It is made from 100% cotton, so you can lift paint easily, blend colors in layers, much tougher than all my other papers combined!  Happy Dance!  Happy Dance!  Happy Dance!!!  Here are my first two paintings using this paper:

Ha ha!  We had a glorious day at Rosemont Winery not too long ago and were allowed to go into the vineyards and take pictures.  I still have several more that I want to paint from and am learning new techniques along the way - many thanks to Deb Hanes-Nelson!  The first two paintings are done on Fabriano Artistico 140 lb cold press.  The last one is done on Fabriano Artistico 300 lb cold press - it works similarly to hot press in that it's smooth surface doesn't allow for much lifting or movement once the paint dries before the next layer.  I'm learning to like it.  Which is your favorite, and why???

We had an Outdoor Fairy Garden Class at the Southern Botanical Gardens.  Class was taught by Carol Nelson and myself - and we decorated the woodland trail that is part of the 15 acre Garden.  We had lots of folks come - and 18 of them got to take home a wooden door and wooden windows along with the frames they made out of Sculpey clay - ready to be baked and then painted.  I think the Fairy population is going to increase in South Boston, too.  Here are some pics for you to enjoy:

 I discovered a new artist teacher/friend on Facebook of all places!   Deborah Hanes Nelson - check her out!  She has been such an enormous help to me in working with grapes and colors!  I just can't thank her enough.  Here is my new painting after taking her advice:

This was done on 140 lb Arches hot press paper and Schmenke paints.  I like this paint and paper for florals....I'm struggling with another one of peaches using the same paper, paint and process and am going to do another one of the same using  140 lb. Artistico Fabriano cold press paper and a different process.  If I am brave I will post the difference - the peaches are flat as pancakes.  Maybe they are peach pancakes?  :-)  For now, here are the flowers!

We headed up north to visit family again.  The weather was perfect - very little humidity and mild temperatures - yay!  The food was fabulous and we ate way too much of it.  Mostly we were surrounded by love and laughter and enjoyed every second!  I took thousands of pictures - trying to capture the perfect wave on the ocean!  I'm just posting a couple of them.  Grab a cup of coffee and sit back a spell....

I love this little art group I belong to!  We switch out paintings twice a year, and when they sell, we gladly bring a replacement.  We have so much talent and these ladies are such fun to be with and so easy to hang with - literally!  :-)  The folks at the winery could not be better to us, either!  Anyway, here are some pictures of our latest show - about 80 pieces all total - each centered on 64" height and the width of each wall.  It's not easy - but it turns out really nice!

Artistically I don't believe I do a good job on painting people and am always striving to get better.  I love our 4th of July Parade, and loved capturing these people eating ice cream in front of "The Cottage Barn", where they bought it!  We love to see our streets full of people shopping and enjoying themselves!!!

since I've painted "still life" settings.  I've been inspired by Karen Shelton's show at the Prizery.  I bought this bowl at the auction at the Virginia Avenue Mall and love how the light hits it!  I like this one so much that I did another set up with the same bowl, same scarf and this time peaches!  I will post when I finish!!!

A dear friend asked me to paint an abstract in muted earth tones for an anniversary gift for her daughter and son-in-law.  I created these two.  The first one I did second layer in green, third layer in orange, and then went nuts on the background with rusty brown and black "webbing spray".  The second one I used an off-white on all layers.  I like the depth of the second one, but the colors of the first one.  I'll let you know which one she chooses!

Next to Christmas, Lakefest is my most favorite day - and apparently 80,000 others feel the same way!  Here are some photos from today's BIG event here in Clarksville, VA:

We had SO MUCH FUN!!!!  We went to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, and on the way home we stopped at The Biltmore Estate!  We loved every minute of every day and every night.  Grab a beverage and sit back and enjoy....this is going to take awhile!!!

The nicest part about my decision to not do big solo artshows anymore, is that I have the time to just play once in awhile - try some new ideas floating around in my head - and not have the pressure to produce quality work for a show!  (I still sell art at The Galleria on the Lake, am one of the artists at Rosemont Winery and participate in local art crawls) 

Anyway, this first painting I tore small pieces of masking tape and made an "S" curve with them and then painted black acrylic over them with the thought of the darkest dark next to the lightest light!  Then I poured red, yellow and blue paint over it and laid down every texture creating tool I could think of - surgical webbing, saran wrap, wax paper, bubble wrap, salt, and I think that was all!  After it dried I lived up the masking tape and it was a little two stark as pure white, so I used some rice paper painted with the ROYGBV colors!   I felt I needed to break it up further, so I did some white lines with acrylic paint.  I love the texture in this:

In this second painting, I tore some old paintings and glued them on trying to create a stream with a rocky cliff, some trees at the top and a sky!  I then laid down one of my big stencils I bought from Karlyn Holman and sanded in lots of colors with water color pencils.  It's fun, but not a keeper:

Beautiful friends, beautiful flowers, what more could a girl want!  Excellent day!!!!

Ready!  Set!!  Go!!!  My first art show with this group as an official member!  I'm so very pleased to be apart of this amazing group.  Great diversity of artistic styles, mediums - and the people themselves are delightful!  It took us awhile to hang these paintings as there are many and the 2 floors are quite large!  It was really, really fun and I look forward to getting to know everyone better!