More spring rain

I don't know about your neck of the woods, but here in Wisconsin it's starting to feel like spring will never come.  It's day after day of rainy/snowy/gloomy weather.  Yuck!  Poor Amelia wants to wear her spring jacket, but I keep telling her to put her winter one on.  I have hardly done anything in my garden.    Really though, I shouldn't be complaining, considering what the people in the south are having to go through.  What a mess between so many tornadoes and flooding.  Pretty scary weather.  

I did get the commission/job that I talked about in my previous post.  I turned in my finished piece yesterday.  I hope they like it.  It is for a local event this summer.  It was a wonderful learning experience to say the least, but I'm glad to be finished.  After working on the commission over the last few weeks, I have so many ideas and things that I want to work on of my own.  I did the little birdies above yesterday.  It's a small piece for me, on a 8x10 piece of watercolor paper.   I was so happy to be finished with my previous painting, I wanted to do a piece that required very little thinking and a lot of just going with the flow.  It has lots of nice spring colors that I'm not finding outside my window yet. 

Weekends

Not very spring like pictures are they?  We woke up Saturday with snow on the ground.  Fischer said "it looks like we skipped summer and went to fall".  It never even warmed up enough on Saturday to melt all the snow.  Over the weekend Amelia kept saying "I want the snow to go away".  Even though none of us were too happy to see all that white stuff, the kids still seemed to enjoy themselves with snowman making.  They made 2 for our yard and then we went to their cousins house and there they made a whole snowman family.




It seems when I start to get stressed out, posting on my blog seems to be the first thing that goes.   I guess it's not on the top of my priority list.  I wish I could change that and become more regular with my posting.  This past week I was working on my first possible commission for a local event.  I had to turn in my sketches this past Friday and will find out whether I got it or not.   Needless to say, this past week I felt like I was on the edge of freaking out with the stress of it all.  I'm used to just doing my own thing and painting or drawing when I feel like, and not having certain requirements for my work.  It reminded me of art school and the whole brainstorming process, but much more stressful.  I'm not sure if I'm cut out for this type of work.  I found it hard  to be creative with a really short deadline, house hold duties, a kitchen studio and  3 year old talking in my ear almost non stop.  If I do something like this again, I'll have to figure out how to handle the stress better for me and my family.



Here's a piece that I started last weekend.  No requirements, no deadline, I'm doing it just because I want to.  I think I like it that way best. 



These pictures of Amelia were taken the previous weekend where temperatures reached 81!  What a difference from one weekend to the next.  

Side tracked

Last Friday I picked up a book from our library called the Three "Only" Things, by   Robert Moss.  I learned about it on Jessica Swift's blog during this post.  The book is about tapping into the power of dreams, coincidence and imagination.  I've always been fascinated with dreams and if a night goes by where I don't remember any dreams I feel almost as if it was a wasted nights sleep.  He talks about how we can solve problems in our sleep and to look for the deeper meaning within them.    He recommends keeping a dream journal.  I've tried to keep dream journals in the past, but it never lasts long, so I started again.  As soon as I picked up this book on Friday, reading it  was all I could think about.  It was such a fascinating book.   Fortunately I finished it on Tuesday, but now I'm waiting for another book of his to come in at the library called Conscious Dreaming.



I tend to get very obsessed with good books and find I can't do anything else or get anything done.  Sometimes if I'm reading a really good novel and I can't put it down, I have to make deals with myself to get things done.  For instance, I'll tell myself that if I get the dishes done, then I can read a few pages, or when I get the bathrooms cleaned then I can finish the chapter.  It can get kind of annoying actually and kind of consumes my energy.  Needless to say, I haven't read a lot of books lately for that reason, but there are times when I just need to get lost in a good book.





Since reading this book though, my brain feels completely blocked creatively.  I haven't painted since last Thursday.  I've sat down to draw and with the intention to paint but when I start, nothing feels right and nothing inspires.  I even had a few ideas that I wanted to do for paintings prior to reading this book, but I can't get interested in them.  I think this book got me thinking so much and in a different way that all my energy was going towards it.  I'm anxiously waiting for the next book, but at the same time it would be nice to do a little painting or drawing.   I feel like my "block" is  related to the amazing power of our subconscious and it needs to work through and process what I read.  I started writing this post this morning and am finally finishing it up tonight and I'm starting to feel that "block" starting to loosen up a bit.  Yeah!

Cheerily, cheer up

I think Mother Nature decided to play a bit of an April Fool's joke on us here in Wisconsin.  I opened the blinds this morning and was shocked to see a totally white landscape spread out before me.  Fortunately it melted as the day went along, but what a dreary and damp day.  I had to keep reminding myself that yes, it is spring and it will warm up.
There was one day a few weeks ago that Amelia kept saying "cheer up, cheerily, cheer up", through out the day.   She had learned this little saying for the robins last year when we would listen to our bird CD, but it had been a long time since we had listened to it.  A few days later after she had been saying this , we saw our first robin.  It's kind of a strange little coincidence wouldn't you say?
I've always wondered why the state bird of Wisconsin is the robin, it's not the prettiest bird out there and it leaves us  for the winter.  Why not the bold little chickadee or the vibrant cardinal or even the noisy blue jay? They all brave  the tough Wisconsin winters, unlike the robin who heads for warmer weather.   This spring more than ever, I've come to realize the significance of the robin.  Everyone both young and old always looks forward to seeing their first robin of the spring, because it always means the same thing, that spring is here.  I love that their song is described as  "cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily", because that is what we do when we see our first robin of the spring.

Making the Cut

I've been working on this robin painting for the last few days.  I really didn't have much of a plan for it but I had started painting in a color palette that I usually don't use,  kind of a gold and a seafoam green type color, I wanted to try something different.  Well slowly the green turned to mostly aqua and the gold turned to a nice light yellow and I added some nice red, and some daffodils.  Over the course of the day I started to like the piece less and less, and then started painting over things, pasting things, but the little robin seemed to be getting lost.  At first I thought I should try to salvage it and started painting yellow all over the place and for some unknown reason I  tried some pink which really pushed me over and I grabbed my scissors and cut the little guy out.



Whew, what a relief! I felt so much better after I got him out of there.  Poor guy. 



He looks so much happier in his new little home where he's telling me to "cheer up, cheerily, cheer up," for all is not lost. 

Garden Plans

It's time to think about gardening!  (Actually I should have started at least a month ago.)  I received my Seed Savers Exchange catalog months ago, but finally figured out what I need to order out of it today.   Seed Savers Exchange is located in Decorah, Iowa which is only a few hours away from me.  They sell heirloom vegetables, herbs, flowers,  and many of them are also organic.  The cover is stunning with so many shades of purple and splashes of yellow.  After seeing the inspiring cover back in December or January, you would think that I would have tore open the pages and figured out my garden right then and there, but no, the catalog got tucked away on a little shelf.





I feel like I'm a little behind with my garden plans, but I have such a hard time getting excited about gardening in the middle of winter.  This will be my 3rd year for a garden.  I remember the first year going through this catalog and feeling so overwhelmed and excited, with just too many things that I wanted to grow.  I think it took me hours just to figure out what to order.  With a couple years of gardening under my belt, the ordering was actually a snap.  



With the seeds I had leftover from last year, Amelia and I planted a few trays for starts.  These little trays are great and come with a little plastic cover, kind of like a mini greenhouse.  I feel like I'm behind on all of this, but looking back at my notes from last year I didn't start my seeds until April 10th.   Someday I hope to have a small greenhouse for starts, but also to try and extend the season for some cold hardy crops.  Last winter an Amish friend had spinach all winter, what a treat that was.
Next comes trying to figure out where to plant everything, which I'm still trying to figure all that out, what grows best where, and what to plant next to each other, because not all plants like each other and don't grow well when planted together,  I guess it's called companion planting.   I just received our new Mother Earth News yesterday and it's  loaded with gardening info, companion planting (just what I was looking for!), heirloom veggies, food security and more.  On their website they have new this year, the Vegetable Garden Planner which helps you design your garden, where and how much to plant, plant spacing,  crop rotation, and more.  I might have to try the free 30-day trial.  I have a pretty good size garden for living in town and need to learn how to use it to its full potential so we get lots of yummy food for as long as we can. This year I'll even have some little helpers who say they want to garden with me this year!

Back in January

I thought I'd share just a few paintings that I did back in January, they are definitely not my favorite.   I wasn't feeling very inspired at the time.  I don't mind the butterfly painting, but the jellyfish one was rather disappointing.  I had an idea in my head and it didn't turn out anywhere near what I imagined.   Isn't that frustrating when that happens?  It almost feels like a waste of my time, but I know that's part of the whole process of growing and learning as an artist, but it's still disappointing to spend a lot of time on something and not like it in the end.  It's crazy how I find one week where I'm over flowing with ideas and inspiration and then the next week I can barely find the motivation/inspiration to get anything started. I think I need to keep track of when my inspiration flows, is it hormonal? is it the moon? is it stress?   lack of Vitamin D ! because I find at the same time I'm when I'm having a hard time coming up with new ideas to paint, I'm also really unmotivated to cook and nothing sounds good to eat.   Hmmm...
The little squirrel I did  on a day where I was totally uninspired but I still felt like painting,  talk about frustrating!  That day I saw a squirrel sitting on the fence and walla, there  was my idea!   A very simple painting that satisfied my urge to paint that day.

Adventuring

Oooh, it was a chilly weekend.  We saw a lot of sunshine, but not the warmth to go with it.   Despite the cold weather we made sure to get outside.   One of Fischer's favorite things to do is to go on an "adventure."  We went looking for rocks, diamonds, gold and fossils, we were hoping for watercress, but it was a little early and too small.  We found bones, nests, lots of cracking ice puddles, tons of mud and plenty of "shiny" rocks.  Hope you found a little "adventure" this weekend too!

Spring is on the horizon

I went to post this picture last night and realized I hadn't painted legs on the poor little birdie!  I thought about still posting it and seeing if anyone would notice, but it just bothered me too much not to have legs.  I love seeing pussy willows in the spring, it reminds me of driving with my grandparents and looking for them along the roadside.  I haven't seen any around here yet except for at the store which I believe are forced into early opening.  We saw our first robin last week and the calendar reads spring, but the thermometer says otherwise and the ground is covered with freshly fallen snow.  Amelia woke up yesterday and asked "Mama, why did it snow?"  What a good  question, I was wondering the same thing!  We are all ready for spring, even our 3 year old who is just learning the changes of seasons. Luckily though, the  sun is shining today and there are signs of melting, we know the snow won't last for long.  This little painting reminds me that spring is on the horizon!

Dragonflies

I'm having visions of warm sunshine,  flowers, and dragonflies.  Soon, very soon!