Point Made

One of my latest efforts. Sketch: The Lady Is Blue Gouache 9 X 12 Reporting: I enjoyed a pleasant evening with my friend Michelle Mooney. I took her out for dinner to celebrate her birthday and to thank her for the many first-rate haircuts she's given me. We were surprised at the number of people who dined alfresco in the balmy night air. Whatever we've done to please Mother Nature, she had deemed acceptable by giving us a shot of summer just when late fall weather was wrapping her fingers around our throat. If I have one complaint about the friendly confines of The County Claire, it's the noise level that makes it difficult to converse. The rumble is an acoustical problem with the customers speaking in normal conversational tones. This is without audible TV showing some game or background music selected by a dance DJ.  I know! We should have eaten outside, where the only noise is the occasional 14 bus snorting by.   Maybe It's Me Since my two soccer teams are not doing...

  Still Life, In these flowers. Gouache 9 x 12 Sentinels Gouache 9 x 12 For those of you who may wonder, gouache is a translucent watercolor medium. I became frustrated with watercolor because the process is the reverse of my thinking. Working from light to dark is just hard for me to visualize. I understand I'm not alone. Because of my experience, I have nothing but admiration for people that do it well. I became much more comfortable once I moved to oil painting.  A tried-and-true method of learning to paint is to copy other artists. I became fascinated with the work of Carol Rhode Curly . Now the point of copying other artists is not to reproduce their paintings, but to have their work inspire your version of the subject. Curly is a mixed media artist who incorporated things into her work like found objects and fabric. Essentially, she works with chalk pastels. I was frustrated because of my inability to get the look I wanted to emulate from her work until I tried qouache. ...

There is a difference. I don't know about the rest of you, but for some reason, when I think of a dog, it's male, and if it's a cat, it's female. So maybe that is why this cartoon is not so funny but true. I finished another piece this week. Well, I say finished. I might muck around with it a bit more because I could improve it. Technically, there are some problems with it, but more importantly, the piece is going in the direction I'm trying to get my work to go. The goal is to establish a representative style without trying to reach photorealism. As I've mentioned, as a lifelong photographer, this is a tough standard to re-collaborate. Swinging On A Star Guache 9 x 12 Sadly, I note the passing of a friend. Unfortunately, over the past couple of years, we've parted ways. However, that does not wipe out the more significant number of years Helen Nagler and her husband Len and I were friends.  The group was stitched together. It contained families who had thei...

 Today, I'm having one of those reminders that tell us to enjoy every moment because you never know. When I'm worried about the delivery person from Amazon Fresh dumping my order in the airlock instead of waiting for me to let them in and walking my items up to my apartment, a friend of mine is diagnosed with breast cancer. Yeah, I agree; I don't have a problem. I may have an inconvenience, but my friend has a problem. The doctors found small but not aggressive growth. This means the less invasive lumpectomy is a feasible solution. Further testing will determine the options.  The problem with this kind of thing is waiting. First, there's the discovery of the lump. Then the biopsy is scheduled and completed. A week passes before she gets the diagnosis. Now there is ten-day wait for further testing. In my conversation with her, I sense her genuinely optimistic outlook. I wonder if I could be that brave. It's selfish to profit from other people's suffering, but I c...