Happy New Year!! 2010..Lots of new hope!

This New Year is full of expectations and hopes.

Tonight we will be joining my daughter's family and celebrating the new year at 9PM with New York. That is our midnight! It works out great, the older grandkids are in on the secret and the younger ones think they stayed up till midnight... and we get to celebrate AND go to bed early! Have to go out and get some hats, poppers and streamers and sparkling cider (our champagne!)

Update on the Slice of America trip: We have possibly picked up 2 more "wagons" to our wagontrain for the Grand Canyon part of the trip. Only one more reservation to make to complete the 30 nights of the trip.
The itinerary is now in stone, the menus and grocery lists are in progress. Packing lists and how to fit it all into the cars are in progress.

We will be painting a map on the van (with removable car paint, of course)and the kids will be adding our progress as we go. The stencil of the map is ready to go, but still have to get the paint at Kreagen's.

Great programs on "how the earth was made" have been taped and will be videos for the kids on the trip. The film on asteroids was filmed at the meteor crater where we will be visiting. The iron ore that came from that asteroid is spattered over a huge area and is magnetic. We are hoping to be able to find some and will be able to know by the changes on the compasses we are bringing.

We will be trying a lot of new campfire recepies and that should be exciting. We will either put on weight or starve! The starving part is very unlikely since we will alway have backup food.

The kids will be doing some different projects too, as well as posting their daily observations. That should be interesting.

140 to go! Rosehips!

The rose hips are so pretty in the winter. I need to prune the roses pretty soon so thought I would paint them first.

By the way these paintings are on canvas 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches.

141 to go...Narcissis are blooming!

They always mean spring to me so when they are blooming two days before the year 2010 it is like a glimpse of spring to come. And the days are getting longer too!

Rainstorm approaching - 142 to go!

Today a rainstorm is trying to work its way into the Bay Area. It has be working at it all day long... but no rain. I should have gone painting.

Well, I instead I decided to paint the sky and clouds from my studio window. I was working on the subtle value and temp changes.

Memories of Murphys' colors

I did this little study the morning we were leaving. The fall colors were so beautiful. Now this scene is quite possibly a white winter wonderland with the storm that just came through yesterday.

Pre Christmas and only 6 months to go!!

Only six months to go before we leave on our month long Slice of America trip.

The kids are getting excited and are learning about the places we will see. And we are now working on the menus. We don't want to spend a lot of time in grocery stores so we figure if we have our menus figured out and grocery lists ready to go we can just send an "assult team" in and get out before they know what hit them. In the meantime, the rest of the crew will be watching the kids at a nearby park. We are also planning to hit quite a few Subway Sandwiches for variety and ease.

I've been busy getting wetboxes ready for the trip so I can put them in my "holding" area and know they are done and I don't have to worry about them. I still have canvases yet to tone but that will be done after Christmas.

I made the wetboxes within "Priority Mail" boxes from the US Postal Service so when each one is full I can just mail them home and I won't have to worry about keeping them safe while traveling. They are nice and sturdy and I think they will work out perfectly. For me, I made 2 for 11x14s and 6 for 6x8s and for my sister I made one for 9x12s and one for 6x8s. Needless to say, after making all those I am glad to have that out of the way.

Yes, I have been painting some during this holiday time....but mostly copy work to study values. Because they are copies I will not post them. It is a very valuable study though. The masters learned by copying and art students in Paris still take advantage of it at the Louvre.

Have a wonderful holiday season and Merry Christmas to all!

The Slice of America Trip - June 2010

Thought I would let everyone know how the trip planning is going. Well, we have 3 adults and 4 children ready, willing and able to travel...And we have one more adult, and possibly a 5th child, joining us in Sioux Falls, SD. And my sister has just decided to join us in Yellowstone for 5 days of adventure and painting!!

We have planned out our route, and itinerary, and had lots of fun doing it! We have all our reservations made except those it is still too soon to make. We will be going from California to the Grand Canyon to Sioux City, Iowa, where we have relatives, then head back west by way of places like Mt Rushmore, Yellowstone and Mt Saint Helen, then south down to home in California. Let me tell you, the internet is wonderful for a project like this. We have found that Mapquest, Google and Rand Mcnally all have different travel times and miles between places, so we have averaged them.

We are starting to study about geology and and history of the places we visit so we can all share our information with each other and get a lot more out of what we will see.

We are starting to make our lists and check them twice. Next step figuring out the food, menus, grocery lists!

I am ordering canvases for painting on the way!! ...and doing things like figuring how to use wifi along the way!! A great project for winter days!

Thanksgiving is Past, Getting Caught Up

Halloween is over, Workshops done, Thanksgiving is past, and I am getting caught up with everything. This has been such a busy Fall. Mostly when I have had a chance I have just been going over notes from the workshops I have just taken. It takes awhile to have new things sink in and actually come out in painting. In the mean time, the paintings don't look like much until it all actually clicks.... so frustrating sometimes, trying to apply a new way of doing something and the old way keeps getting in the way.

I haven't gotten a chance to get out and paint since our encounter with about 150 students coming in waves asking all kinds of questions. Great to see they are so interested in painting but not helpful when you are trying to concentrate!!

We are going to paint Nov. 11 if the weather cooperates....may be windy and rainy. Haven't decided yet where we are going to paint.

That evening I will be at Ardenwood for one of our Christmas open house evenings. It is a free flow tour which means guests can go through the house at their own pace with docents stationed in every room. The house is all decked out in Christmas again, a Christmas tree in every room. Join us if you can!