My Buddy

Spanky

Sept 1992 - May 2010

My buddy for 18 years. 

Tuesday Night Art - Abstract #2

Monday Night Art - Abstract #1

I'm a big fan of abstract paintings, but never had the confidence to get the look I wanted in my own work. Yesterday, I visited one of the well known high-end decorating stores. I saw an abstract that I really liked, but it was way out of my price range. So, I thought I'd just play around and see what I came up with, because I wanted some new art for the condo.

Tonight after work, I was feeling ambitious - surprising for a Monday evening! So I dug around in the garage to see what supplies I had. I still have a few tubes of acrylic paint, although a very limited palette. I also found a 16 x 20 canvas wrapped board, which luckily fit in one of my many watercolor frames. I decided to use the abstract I saw in the store as a jumping off point, but certainly didn't intend on copying it. I used the colors I had and went at it with a plastic palette knife. I enjoyed using the knife, but when I tried using a brush it just didn't work at all, so went back with the knife and completed this in about 30 minutes. I'm quite pleased with the results.

Now I am feeling like heading to the art supply store and getting a larger board or stretched canvas and a few more tubes of paint.........  Strike while the inspiration hits!

Glacier Ridge Metro Park Iris

The group met at Glacier Ridge Metro park on Saturday to paint. It was a lovely day, lots of sun and a nice temperature, although after 3 hours with no shade, I'd had too much sun. I'm such a delicate flower, hahahaha.....

The area is mostly meadows, so I painted close up of one of the wetland areas. Although its not evident in the photo, there were iris growing along the edge.  I did refine this painting a bit more today, but couldn't get a good photo, so will leave you with the one I took in direct sunlight yesterday.

Nothing much, you?

Nothing much happening on the painting front here....Nope, haven't painted the last two Saturdays. Last week, it was nasty weather and a marathon that kept me from meeting the group. No, I didn't run a marathon - haha fat chance - but the painting venue was in the middle of the race route, and I didn't want to deal with that, let alone the rain..... Today was really nasty here too - high winds, temp in the low 50's and rain. Several of the group soldiered on and painted....but I stayed home.

I'm busy getting ready to move. We finally got all the paperwork from the buyer on the approval of their mortgage. FHA loans sure take a long time..... My condo loan is conventional, and it only took less than 2 weeks. This whole process has taken a long time, but the time frame sure helped both me and the buyers, so I am grateful for that.

I asked to see the condo last week, as I was getting ready for a garage sale yesterday, and wanted to view the condo again to decide on whether to keep some stuff or put it in the sale. Next week, I do the walk-thru with the builder on the condo before they add the finishing touches. I'm really happy with this condo - its just great! Can't wait to get in there and put my touches on it. We're set to close on June 11th - both on the house sale ( 9am) then at 11am for the condo, then I'll have the keys!!! YEAH. That will give me half of Friday to move the stuff I want to carry, and I'll schedule the movers to come on Saturday morning to move the heavy stuff.

Did a garage sale yesterday with my good friend Barbara to get rid of STUFF. We opened up the 'store' at 8:30am and by 10am, most of the stuff was gone! We stayed open until the posted time of 2pm, but there wasn't much traffic in the final hour. We have a nice amount of cash in our pockets. I'd planned on opening again today, but we decided to just donate the stuff that was left since there wasn't much interesting stuff left.

The house is starting to look plain - with a lot of my decorations already taken down. Now that we had the garage sale, I can really start packing. I think I might have half the amount of stuff I had when I moved in here 5 years ago. I have continued to clear out stuff over those years, as I realized a lot of the stuff stored away was not important to me.