Watercolors by Mimi Torchia Boothby

My sister rediscovered the pleasures of gardening this season. With her hardworking husband, they have turned a suburban yard into a thriving little farmette. My sister is brilliant, she has lots of good ideas. In fact, this painting is taken from a reference photo of her augmenting the soil with coffee grinds she got for free from Starbucks. She drove all over town and ended with hundreds of pounds of the stuff.

Well this is a First for me! I’ve been nominated for a sunshine award by fellow blogger Alison Schuchs The Sunshine Award is a blogger award for creativity and positively, and its an honor to receive it!

The rules for accepting the award are:
Put the logo on your blog or within your post.
Pass the award onto 12 bloggers.
Link the nominees within your post.
Let the nominees know they received this award.
Link to the person from whom you received this award.

Here is my list of favorite blogs (in no particular order)

Donald Boothby – my husband philosophizes
Kent Peterson – the heart of cycling in Seattle
Michelle Fabio – Someone who is really walking her talk
Catherine Smith – lover of life
Amber Campbell – Best News Source for my neighborhood
Seanna Jordan – painter of bright happy pet portraits
Srishti Wilhelm – a very talented young painter
Ellen Hill -Spirituality and Much creativity
Jacquie Phelan – Bike riding role model for all women
Susan Faye – happy cat paintings
Susan Bell – philosopher
Cheryl Gebhart – artist
Donna Cunningham’s astrology Blog

It seems that by using wet on wet, Lucia looks more like the Lucy we all knew. She still looks a little too old, but the face is finally hers, at least seems like it to me. I tried to use colors that looked ancient, after all, this is from a 90 year old photograph of a young girl just a few years after she had moved to the USA.

I painted Megan again. This time I used a new technique, placing wet paint on wet paper. I wanted to preserve the softness of her skin and to show how she glows. It looks like I’m getting a little closer.

Now that I am relaxed and in my studio, I decided to try and paint Tom again. I am really surprised at the difference it makes.. I’ve been having fun painting all these redheads.

Sometimes you meet someone you just have to paint. And they’re willing.
Here’s Megan

This painting is a result of my mother’s day present. My two sons in a tree

We had an hour in the sun, so I sketched him a little bit, then pulled out the old paint box. This is the result. Tom was sitting on my wonderful red porch, half in the sun and half in the shade. Where the sun hit his hair, it glowed, otherwise, it looks dark. I will follow up this painting with a studio painting from the photos I took during this sitting.