Blogger: Blogger Dashboard

Blogger: Blogger Dashboard

Garden and Hibiscus Update

I want to take you around my garden for a walk. Come see a few of the goodies that are growing. First a stop at the Plumeria plant that is in the second season waiting to bloom, the Plumeria has such beautiful foilage. I can't wait to see the flower and smell it's beautiful frangrance.

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to the right of the Plumeria are some yellow and orange daisy plants, and lavender in the front. Below is a top view of the Plumeria, I have to repot the Plumeria this weekend so it has more room to grow.

Below is my Russian Sage surrounded by mint, lemon sage and oregano with latrice shoots in back. The Latrice have beautiful purple flowers stalks!!

A cucumber flower!! mmmm... soon it will be a cucumber salad everyday for a month or two, followed by canning cucumber pickles!!!

Blueberries!! This is a four year old plant that gives us about a quart of berries. I planted three more berry plants this year because I love blueberry pancakes in the winter!!!

Lastly, I am happy to report that I am almost finished with my Yellow Hibiscus and it won't be long till I have it hung in my bedroom or hallway. I want to paint a series of Hibiscus and Plumeria flowers. I love the way I feel when I look at these flowers, maybe it's the "Déjà vu" of Hawaiin Island scents and trade winds. These flowers always make me feel cheerful and energetic!!!

I will take you around on more garden walks when the weather co-operates soon! Until then happy picking!!!

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Hibiscus Fever

I want to do series of tropical flowers on a large scale. I drafted out a Hibiscus on a 12 x 12 gallery wrapped canvas with acrylics. Then I will refine the flower and leaves with oils. I hope to finish this by Monday July 4th!! Wish me luck!!! Have a great weekend out there. I hear the sun is going to shine!!!

Blogpost Update

Hi everyone, I was able to figure out how to get the "followers" and "comment" issues resolved!!!!! I had to do a google upgrade to "Google Chrome". Don't be alarmed when the directions state this will replace your homepage. You can always reset your home page. It's pretty easy. Just go to google chrome and upgrade!! Then sign in your account and type a comment, put the title of your page as the id and hit enter. Voila!! All the great functions of Blogger will return like magic!!! Give it a try.
Good Luck, Georgina

PAINT BOX: Sunday in the Garden with Art

PAINT BOX: Sunday in the Garden with Art: "sunday was a glorious day at the south shore botanical garden. 'Women Artists of Kauai' had a show and sale at the garden and the weather co..."

June Painting Notes

My daughter posted a picture of her canoe and I thought it would make a great painting to give her for her birthday. I'm in the process of glazing in the shadows and working on getting the color right on the trees. I have to redo the water on the lower left and reglazing the reflection. What do you think? Maybe I'm glazing and using too much oil!!!

My art instructor loves events of the Civil war. He makes statues of both Confederate and Union Soldiers and gives us a history lesson on the era while we paint. During the last session he became obsessed with painting Abraham Lincoln.  A town in CT had a Lincoln painting stolen that was painted by John Denison Crocker in honor of Lincoln's March 1860 visit to Norwich. The frame stood empty in City Hall until the town decided to have an art contest to see if the painting of Lincoln could be reproduced by a lucky artists to again hang in City Hall. The grand prize was $8,000. Marc entered the contest and was one of the 10 or so lucky artists who made it to the finals, but through some controvesy and disappointment of many artist who submitted their paintings in anticipation, didn't win.

To get a more compelling story you can read about this at  Artist's re-creation of Lincoln painting earns $8,000 prize . Any way...point being Marc started painting a collection of other Civil War soldiers and Lincoln.

                                 Marc's copy of John Denison Crockers 1860 painting of Lincoln

                                  Marc's traditional portrait of Lincoln painted after the Crocker one above

Marc working on Geneal Sherman

Oh and this is so cute! A new student on her third week who never "painted" before wanted to paint a pug! I think she is closet painter!! What a great job she did! She only paints in acyrlic and can't be swayed yet to paint with oil. We'll see if we can pursuade her before the end of the term!!

June happenings!

Carnival 2011

I thought I would share our family's Sunday before Lent event held every year for as long as I can remember since meeting my husband. My husband's family called it Carnival! It is celebrated on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday to mark the beginning of Lent.  We have the traditional  lasagna dinner with italian pastries on that day.

Cream Puffs

Chocolate Eclairs

I carry on this tradition now for our family but  have changed it a little by adding the "Mardi gra" effect with masks and beads for decorations, mainly for the grandchildren to enjoy and have something other than the religious values to remember.

Our granddaughter Sarah has a birthday in March and since the lenten season started later this year  we decided to include Sarahs birthday into the days feastivites adding to "Mardi gra" theme. Our oldest daughter made a "Mardi gra" cake for Sarah! 

The fondit is also homemade, I secretly think she may be the next cake boss!!  I'm so proud of her!.

Thank you for enjoying this event with us!

UFO #1

I started  this painting in the fall class of 2010. We took many photo's of an organic nature for a composition that we could agree on as a group. We prepped a double thickness 10 x 24 bainbridge board with liquitex past gel, once that dried the  shells and the marble vases were drafted in with an HB pencil, then an acrylic wash of adobe tan was laid over the entire piece. After the abobe tan dried I painted in with acrylic with the blues, grays, diazanine purple, van dyke browns, flesh tint, buff titanium, oranges and alizarin crimson lest not forget the whites and greens over the sketched in shells and vases and background.

The oil overlay was added working the curtain, table cloth, marble vases and shells from right to left with the same colors only in the oil paints. I am stuck on the shell at the left of the picture, and I am still adding glazes over the marble and large shell to create depth. I will keep working on this a little at time until I get it right! 

 I'm on a mission over the next couple of weeks to actually try to finish the half dozen or so UFO's hanging around in the basement. Last night I finally finished my dream beach scene after lets say.... three or four years!  Now that I've taken  art classes on a regular basis, I feel a little more confident mixing colors and actually can make a cloud look like a cloud. Although these clouds are kind of bumpy because the paint aged from when I plastered it on three or four years ago, and couldn't be scraped off or painted out.  I framed this and have it hung in the guest room called my Island room! It's 16 x 20 and with the frame it looks great over the bed.

                                                    I think I'll this call "Dreams of Kehei"

Now on to the next UFO now that I'm on a roll!  

What's been keeping me busy?

My winter art class is over, and I have completed four still life oils! I framed all of them wih black plein aire frames and hung them in my dining room and foyer. I think I like painting more than I love to sew. (I can hear my stash calling me to come play with them for a while too) Now that I have learned the technique to create compositions, I see more paintings coming in the near future. I would love to paint some jalopeno's for my daughters kitchen. What do you think?

Two peppers


Sweet and Sour

Red Hot Aubergine

Bittersweet

Long Cold Winter!!

It's been awhile since my last post, I have been busy between vacations, holidays, Monday night class, Thursday night grandchildren and Friday through Sunday recovering from grandchildren and just plain trying to stay warm! It has been a tough winter with over 3 to 4 feet of snow and ice and battling the air temp between -8 to 20* since the beginning of January 2011!! I have to get on a roll again. Over the January break from classes I accepted consignment to shorten 15 mens long shirt sleeve cuffs along with 4 womens wool suit jackets.  Have to admit I was good! Approached them like piecework ripping pinning, color coding threads, gave a quick shot of steam to set the seam, folded and completed within a week (to my surprise) and an extra $202!! Sorry didn't have time to take pictures I always think I should have taken pictures after the fact, why is that????

Here's a 9x12 oil of the Kalalau Mtn Ridge in Kauai. .I think I need to tweak it a little bit more and blend the clouds in lightening up the blue.  What do you think?

Summer is finally here!

It is spring and summer finally! I have been busy cleaning closet and putting away the wools and sweaters! I don't know which is worse, putting away the winter stuff or finding room for the summer stuff! The weather changed so quickly and last evening it was 94 degrees. We didn't even have the time to put up the air conditioners yet! Thank goodness it's a long weekend and we can find the time to do it all. Today it's a little cooler at 74*.

We have been working in the garden and last night I picked two quarts of strawberries.

They are yummie. I'm adding some pictures of the garden. We just planted our summer crop of tomatoes, peppers, cucumers, green squash, radishes, lettuce, egglplant, green beans, parsley and basil.

My herb garden is also doing well. There is thyme, oregano, chives, tarragon, sage, chervil and fennel.

 

The spring flowers poppies. bearded iris and dutch iris are bloom and everything is looking like summer!

This weekend we will put in the seasonal plants, geraniums, pansies, sunflowers, marigolds etc. I wish everyone a safe Memorial Day and enjoy your celebrations!

Saturday is Tag Sale Day

Up and out early to bring the unwanted household and garage items half way across town for a huge family tag sale. I was practically giving the stuff away because I didn't want to carry it back. I was able to sell two 3 yard  pieces of artic fleece for $4.00 each! I still have six left. In addition to normal stuff we all collect over the years I also had a lot of craft items...sewing, yarn, christmas panel cutouts and three years of Sew News, Threads and Sew Stylish magazines.  I didn't end up unloading them, I think it was because the Tag Salers were not looking for the crafty item in the beggining of summer. However I did sell the Rachel Ray magazine collection for $3.00 and ended up with $75 for the day. What I didn't sell and didn't want to hold to anymore went to the local Good Will. Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and say goodbye to stuff that was just hanging around.

After we all cleaned up the "Family" of six (we call the "old timers") went out to dinner. We choose "Lenny and Joes" Fishtale in Madison, CT near the Hammonassett State Park. It is only 25 minutes on the interstate and they have the BEST seafood on the shoreline, you can either use take out or dine there if your lucky enough to find a table.  Of course my eyes were bigger than my stomach when I ordered a soft shell crab dinner and a side of whole bellie clams! We were lucky to find a table inside the building and waited for our order. I had #59 and while we were enjoying dinner we heard them announce #59 again! That means they served 100 orders within half hour! I was too stuffed after devouring the crab that I unable to take on  the clams. I had them wrapped for take out to enjoy the next day.  After we were finished we went outside and strolled around to get the food to go down.  Lenny's has an ice cream stand  and a carousel.  And of course we were unable to  resist the ice cream!

The Magical Charity Carousel is a joint charitable venture of the Madison and Westbrook Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tales $ll the proceeds from the carousel goes to the local community food bank and charities. Since 1998 $605,000.00 has been over 11 Seasons! Check out their T-Shirt page. You may see someone from your state who's been there!  http://ljfishtale.com/page/2683-Home

Since it was almost eight pm and the state park closes at sunset we decided to drive back and stop in Branford and walk around the green. It was a perfect ending to long day.   

Painting Class 4/26/10

This is where I go on Monday evenings, over the last six months it has rained three times and snowed once! But somehow we ladies always seem to show up. I think it's mostly to share our talents and work off the stress of the day. This is one of the girls working on a new project. The canvas is blocked her painting with acrylic first and then with oil. This will be a beautiful daffodil when she finishes!

Here we have an out of the box idea..the Tetons with Carousel Horses!

Here is one of the TA's working on a minitature painting, see the magnifining glass she uses as an aid to see those tiny strokes! On the back right is my painting of tomato's and my landscape trying on a frame for fit.  I still need to give it a coat of poly acrylic to seal it before securing it in the frame. I will post that when I get that done.

Here is a cute little painting of a birds nest with an egg. Isn't this cute! This is done with water based oil. I kind of like the look of the water based oil compared to the pure oil I use. It was pretty exciting at class this time as the instructor gave us a lesson on how to frame our pieces. There will be a fair on June 12, on the town green and we are encouraged to have pieces ready for show and tell.

Salsa Skirts

I seen this pattern on the McCalls website and thought how cute this would be for my three granddaughters! I just had to make these skirts for them.  After reading the pattern guide and adding up the yardages required I had second thoughts since I knew this was going to cost me a pretty bundle for the three skirts.  Then I threw caution to the wind and ventured out to find the nine co-ordinating fabrics. My first stop was at Walmart and I don't usually shop for fabrics at Walmart but as luck would have it , while passing by the spring fabrics that was just put on display I found a section of color co-cordinated childrens fabrics!  I was in shock that I actually found all of the colors needed to make these cute little skirts and the best part the fabric was only 1.99 yard!  

I bought eight 1/2 yard pieces of each of the fabrics I wanted for the strips and 3/4 yard for the upper tier for three skirts. I then looked in my stash for jumbo rick-rack and found I had enough red and green for the bottom tiers but had to buy another eight packages of blues, yellows and orange. The cutting went quickly using the rotary cutter and mat method. I sewed the 1/2 yard strips together then cut each 1/2 yard into 2.5" strips then stacked and sewed the strips end to end. After ruffling and sewing the tiers together I finished the seams with the serger and sewed the rick rack on. These skirts came out so cute! You can see two of the girls have them on and they fit perfectly!   

This is my latest finished acrylic 8 1/2 x 16. I still need to overlay this with polyurethane. This is a painting of a reserve in Burnt Church, New Bruswick Canada. My mother was born there and her family still lives there . My Uncle was a Chief there until his death and now his son's my cousins serve on the council. Burnt Church is located on the northern most coast of the Atlantic and the water you see in the picture freezes in the winter and the locals can go ice fishing and drive trucks out on the frozen ice. Starting in April through July the native people have lobster traps and have fishing boats for the seasonal catch.

Aloha Wear

I made these four sleeveless shirts three days before our last trip to Kauii last September.  These tops are a much needed fashion item when on the islands! The fabric is a rayon/cotton blend and are wrinkle free! The blue shirt was a purchased sundress I wore on our last trip to the islands and decided to repurpose it and make it into a shirt instead !  

These are Hawaiian quilted totes.  I took a quick class from Poakalani in Hawaiian quiltiing at the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center on one of my trips there. It was a challenge to learn this method of quilting, it makes one appreciate the labor of love that went into all those beautiful Hawaiian quilts that are on display in the hotels and museums.  If you go today to Oahu and want to take a class Poakalani has moved their classes to the Iolani Palace Archives building every Saturday 9:30am -  12:00pm.

This is an oil on a 14 x 16 canvas and was my first paintings done in class. No acrylic was used as an underlay.  

My homework assignment was to paint in acrylic a landscape scene, I found a picture of a stream I took a couple of summers ago and laid it out on a 9x12 canvas board. Everyone liked the way I captured the scene at dusk. I still need to cover it with a varnish then frame it with a 3" gallery frame.