august 31

08-31-15 "top mum"
08-31-15 “top mum”

digital photo

One more close-up mum photo—a still-opening bloom, but much farther along than the bud of a couple of days ago. Mums seem so ordinary until you get up close. A lesson of nature and of humanity.

august 29

08-29-15 "mum to be"
08-29-15 “mum to be”

digital photo

A brief return to some close-up photography to capture some small mums I just planted last weekend. I love the tight spiral of beautifully-colored petals (I’m so used to the green of the coneflower bud).

august 28

08-28-15 "stormy"
08-28-15 “stormy”

4×4″ acrylic

I had another large paint chip that I used for the paper on this one. Again, the color is not quite right in this image, but it’s the closest I could come. Abstract, mysterious, random, focused, evolving process.

august 27

08-27-15 "creature"
08-27-15 “creature”

5×7″ acrylic

This is the second piece in the sketchbook I occasionally use. This just evolved; I had no idea in mind, just kept painting and adding. Strange—the result, not the process. It was difficult to get the right color in the photograph, too. This image doesn’t quite capture it.

august 26

08-26-15 "broken up"
08-26-15 “broken up”

4×4″ collage

I used a large paint chip for the background support and glued on cut up strips from two souvenir travel postcards, I believe from Hong Kong (oops, hope you didn’t want to keep those, Matt!). Look, I made this for you, Matt! 😉

august 25

08-25-15 "shades of color"
08-25-15 “shades of color”

5.5×5″ acrylic on shade

I have to say, I’ve never painted on this kind of window shade before. (This is a shade sample from a major window covering company.) It has been inhabiting a desk drawer for a few years. In my cleaning-and-sorting phase, I brought a bunch of these up to my studio not knowing how I might use them. This time, I scraped acrylic paint in layers on the outstretched sample. I was going to take a second photo when it was folded back up again, but it doesn’t look that interesting when compressed (and also, it keeps unfolding back open!). So, let me know if you want your shades painted (ha!)!

august 23

08-23-15 "horse dreams"
08-23-15 “horse dreams”

digital photo

Here is my second nostalgic photo of one of my old matchbox cars with trailer. This is the same horse trailer as yesterday being pulled by what I think might be a white mustang. It wasn’t really about the models of the cars for me, I just liked making towns and villages and ranches and worlds, and driving the cars pulling things like horse and motorcycle and boat trailers.

Like every other young girl on the planet, it seems, I loved horses and really wanted my own horse. This (as well as the West family of western dolls and horses) was my way to live that in a very small way. That and very occasionally going to the stables nearby and riding a bit.

I used the “film grain” filter on this photo.

august 22

08-22-15 "walking in"
08-22-15 “walking in”

digital photo

Today and tomorrow, I am posting a couple of photos I took of some old toys of mine. Some of my favorite toys growing up (at least for awhile) were matchbox cars. Today’s is a photo of the little horse trailer with two horses that I could pull behind a couple of different cars with hitches. I used the Adobe “dark strokes” filter with this photo to make it a little more interesting and “arty.” Ah, nostalgia.