Why send a card when you can paint a painting? I have been doing some painting exercises all week and decided it was time to paint something pretty. I hope you like it; he does.
One my favorite times of day to ride a bike is right at dawn. Everything takes on a reddish glow, there is hardly any traffic and the air is sweet. The road belongs to the cyclist and the day is filled with possibility. The reference photo for this painting was taken by my talented husband while he was riding his bike.
This is a 10″ x 14″ watercolor on Arches cold press paper.
For the second year in a row, I have participated in the Brooklyn Art Museum’s sketchbook project. Last year, I simply used my sketchbook as a visual journal, adding a little autobiographical information and sketching what I saw; my cats, my family, places I visited, and then filled up the blank spaces with other things like postcards and some of my small paintings.
After being able to see what others did, I realized that while a theme is good, a story is even better. So I wrote a story. Or maybe a nature journal.
My book is a fully illustrated nature book. On each page you will see things that I discovered as a child. I was actually surprised at how many different things I could trace back to the first few years of my life, plants, insects, animals.
I believe that children are natural scientists. Whatever environment they are home in is what they will study. I was fortunate in that my mother routinely let me outside to play. I do believe the happiest hours of my childhood were while I was watching ants, or birds, or tasting various plants. A lot of this play was solitary, but my little sister was often my sidekick as we pulled plantain shoots apart or blew dandelion seeds into the air.
This whole book will be eventually digitized at which time I will share the link with you. But in the meantime, I’ll share a couple pages for a preview.
So do you remember plants and bugs from your childhood? I am very curious to hear.