About Creating Art: Still Life

Happily

New & Old

 

The Bigger Picture

Inspired by the My Modern Met website article on photographer of the year + brain storming Reflection Monday April 2023 + hunger + too lazy to go outdoors to take photographs = a series of digital still life pictures of my dinner rolls before the meal placed on my art drawings from the series I began in 2015.

This is how creating art sometimes works. All of your environments, physical, mental, emotional blend in a harmony that nutures our creativity. Aside from the personal experince, there is no greater inspiration to me than viewing art.

Selection, Preparation & Placement

The dinner roll has a good texture, shape, and statement. It needs to be heated until the color is vibrant. An unheated roll doesn't have enough color personality. 

Where to pose the roll is a matter of looking around for the vibe I want. The 2015 drawing is perfect.

Next time, I'll be trying out wheat dinner rolls. 

Reflection Monday April 2023

Viewing Art

or a Landscape

 anywhere

can be a profound experience. 

Old & New
 digital photo, M.Flannery 2023

Creating art is even better.

A Summer Excursion: New York City

At Seaside, c. 1892 oil
William Merritt Chase

The painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. 

There is an Amtrak train service for Vermont to New York City on the Ethan Allen Express. For the 7.5 hour (one way) trip, departures don't accommodate a day trip (the last time I looked). It would be an overnight stay and return the next day. Taking in a Broadway show, and a museum tour would be a wonderful small summer excursion.

Using the Amtrak website is a bit of a hassle for me.  The schedule doesn't include ticket prices. A ticket price search shows me cost that includes a confusing bus transfer. I'd call a travel agent.

April 2023

Mallard Ducks On Lake Champlain

It was cold and windy with very flat light yesterday. A grayish beige haze was the tone on the last day of March 2023.

I felt a pall of misery, a damp bone chilling apathy in Mother Nature's attitude. Blah! Stay indoors.

I went out anyway.

I was compelled to check if geese were at the wildlife refuge. A get it over with task. 

Canada geese. I saw them in the fields, near a field puddle, hugging the shore or in somebody's yard. There was no large migrating flock at Dead Creek that I saw (or heard). 

At Fort St Frederic, Upstate New York, I walked out to take better photos of a large number of what I believe are cormants on Lake Champlain. Black and white, I think cormants. The light was a misery for pictures, (and my mood as well). Nearly all photos are fuzzy.

Cormants On Lake Champlain

Another geese checking trip out and about is not planned. A different focus on Spring this year has yet to be decided. New places and, a new angle are pulling at my ponder this skills.

I woke this morning thinking April Fool's Day is perfect to announce I will stop posting here. Nah.

Misery is a mood, not a rule. 

Next week will be the first post for the new feature here that's all about pumpkins. 

 

The Old Broken Chandelier

Vintage Pot Metal Broken Chandelier

The Dilema Object:

Can it serve any purpose? Yes

Cost of repair worth it? No

Save some, scrap the rest? No

Armature for a mobile? Yes

Decoration close up

The main piece has holes to attach 4 arms. One arm is broken off. Pot metal indicates to me a low value as well as lousy glue piece back on. Even using liquid weld glue (messy), I have yet seen pot metal form a good bond. 

There is a nice chain, about a yard long to hang it from the ceiling. The electrical wire would weave through it. There is no ceiling medallion. I suspect it may have been hung from an old church.

Purchased over 20 years ago, it is one of a few spring purge items not being donated or going to the transfer station. Broken metal pieces are the awww puppies of the metal world to me. Would I buy such a piece again at a yard sale? You betcha.

I can easily remove the remaining arms and attach new pieces for a mobile. Channel an inner Aleander Caldwell.

Sway Happily This Week-end!

Dance

Mix an original smoothie

Create a watercress salad

Browse flower seeds online

Decorate an old pair of jeans

Make a paper mobile

Sing to a lampshade

Have an ice cream parfait

Read about Earth's soil composition

Ponder Fodder, Streaming TV & Blogging

Old Hedgerow Weeds & Sunshine, 2012

 

Ponder Fodder 

A new system to learn. A craft to understand. A morning to decide what to do or not to do. Those aren't questions. They are ponder fodder. 

The sun is shining. I can see the trees are moving. Wind. Clouds. Blue sky. I have on my sloppy work pants and thread worn chambray shirt. I suspect my first thoughts of the day are to finish the Spring cleaning. I created messes pulling things out. Sorting to put them away in a donation box or elsewhere isn't like pulling out an awful splinter. 

It is emotionally worse.

Streaming Television

I have discovered that not all channels allow watching the live programs being aired unless you have a TV provider. I am not sure how Wifi versus TV signal works.  The news and weather reports are available on some of the major networks, but not the regular programming. There are shows where the program will be available to watch after it airs initially.

If you are considering going the live streaming route instead of regular television viewing, then there is a learning curve. At this point, I am comfortable learning as I go. I am seeing though; the lane ahead might have to include some television.

Blogging

I've been surfing blogs again to see how things are going at the level this blog is on, personal low end serendipity style. Thus far, I am finding more good blogs that have stop without a word about what happened. The Blogger, Blogs I Follow feature will show the last time a blog posted. Many of those dormant will either be online or deleted. 

Standing out are the variety of clever fun blog names folks have, and, the unbelievable amount of blogs that are online. 

It may seem like blogging is doing well when in reality, there might be fewer of us that are actively blogging. Google doesn't sort those statistics that I have found.

Link to interesting article about blogging

Finances Online dot com 2023 Article

New Feature in April

Bi-weekly pumpkin posts with links to recipes, crafts, art and photographs

It feels only right to promote pumpkins more.

In summary today, using the Raleway main font with Handlee titles, life goes on into Spring. I haven't been out and about to take photographs or produced artwork to blog about. I have been thinking, but nothing profound has overwhelmed me enough to write up a post on it. I've been reading blogs more than watching television, regular or streaming. 

Have a wonderful day

A Floor Grate, TV & Tiny Sprouts

Floor Grate/Register

The heavy iron floor grate is not an object to put in a drawer. Bought at a yard sale over 20 years ago, I've kept it on the floor under a chair. I grew up in places with floor grates aka registers, mostly the louver adjustable style.

This last week of March arrives on time when you think about it. Spring cleaning will be finished here by April first.

Are you tethered to your TV? 

Watching streaming television on my computer is fantastic! I chose how and mainly when I watch programs. I now have a grasp on how well I manage my time. Badly is the before. Good is the After. At first, I felt lonely. Now I feel happily liberated.

Try streaming shows for a few days to see how you feel about your television relationship.

Rose Campion Sprouts 2023

The tiny seedlings are amazing! The rose campion seeds are the tiniest I've seen. Best sown in fall, they are an attractive plant that blooms every 2 years. The other tray is lavender balsam. Thus far, there are no balsam sprouts.

Cranking Up the Good Old Creativity

Journal Sketch

A quick sloppyish sketch reminds me of how much fun creating art can be. During Spring cleaning, blank books given to me as a gifts, surface with a sparkle of happiness.

I expect an abundance of April showers this year. Rainy weather is inspirational to me, a time to be crafty creative with glue, scissors, and paint. Many of the stamped, painted, textured journal pages I see on blogs are small abstract artworks. Time for me to give artistic journal pages a try.

Raindrops Splashing

Being crafty can turn a rainy week-end into days to remember. 

In preparation for inclement Spring weather, a pair of rubber boots that don't leak was number one because all my other boots have leaks. My go to ballet flats soak up water like a sponge. Thus, it is likely I might be seen wearing shorts and unflattering rubber pull on ankle boots this summer. (I am grateful aging changes includes not being as picky about how I look fashion wise.) 

What are your fashion plans for Spring? Are you prepared? Do you wear rain boots?

For Week-end 12

Dove, bric-a-brac
Made in Taiwan

May your week-end be full

of Spring enthusiasm!

Make flowers from junk mail 

Go for a walk with a friend 

Draw rabbits and foxes

Assemble salad in a jar

Have your salad outdoors

Browse nautical tee shirts online

Visit an antique store

Sing to a lemon

Read about joinery history

A Chance To Be a Plant

A Different Seedling

Bird seed?

In Spring it begins, the waiting to see what bulbs haven't been dug up by a squirrel or skunk. This year, a surprise appears early in a seedling tray as a leaf that doesn't match any seed I sowed. It isn't a bulb. The seed is roundish.

On the table where the trays are, I sometimes scoop out the bird seed from the bag. I suspect the seed bounced into a tray. I transplanted it into a frosting container. It deserves a chance to be the plant it was meant to be.

The Others

Have you taken the chance to be who you are meant to be?

March 2023: Day 81 of Week 12

My, 2009
9" x 22" ink & watercolor drawing

 A bonus of Spring cleaning is the rediscovery of things one might have forgotten. Memories can resurface as well.

However, the above doodle drawing produces no memory of what was going on in 2009. I might have been watching television, sitting outdoors, waiting for laundry to finish or drawing for the love of it.

Doodling has a quiet comfortably alone vibe. It is relaxing, mind cleansing and a mental stretching that opens think muscle. Anyone can doodle. Think of it as visual meditation.

Do you regularly doodle? Zentangle? Draw?