Three Is A Magic Number

When I do a series of timed paintings, I typically take an 8 inch square block and divide it into 4 equal parts for 4 different timed paintings. Every time it seems as though versions #1 and 4th are lacking. The 2nd version has some good stuff going on. The 3rd attempt is always the best one. Why is three the magic number?  I have no idea.

In a different realm, if I am part of juggling pattern with other club passers, it never fails that after a particularly good run of a new or complicated patterns the next several tries will fail right away.

My guess is that there is some scientific explanation  for all of this based upon how people's brains work.

#348 - Timed Pear Painting #3 - 4" x 4" - paper

I finished this one several days ago. The shadow is goofy, but besides that I like it. My attempt to use paint strokes to build the shape worked much better than usual, especially for a timed painting, I also liked the colors I mixed, since this was different pear from the last timed painting I posted. That previous pear was part of Saturday's dinner. By the way, the last painting I posted was version #2.

Last night, I finished painting #4 and also just played around with mixing pear colors and playing around with painting a pear without drawing it out first. None of this was particularly successful, but it still felt great to do.

Today, I went to a meeting of nonprofit financial types and worked on some quick, basic sketches of people, in margins of the handout when I got bored. Here are the two of them. While the poses are similar, it was two different people.

A Non-Painting, Painter

That's what I've been, but it's not what I want to be.

#348 - 10 Minute Pear - 4" x 4" - paper

Even if it's only one 10-minute painting per day, I need to make this a priority, again, and see about painting on more days than I don't.

It's hard to express how good it felt to mix up some colors and make some brush strokes, even though I was feeling awkward about it all.

There Is A Reason

There is a reason why my house can be on the chaotic and slightly messy side. This morning I could have started the day by doing a little house cleaning or by blowing bubbles for one of my cats. Yup, you guessed it.  Bubbles won out.

Also, anything you can do becomes even more fun when you try to get good photos. I had a small tube of bubbles. I had to blow the bubbles, set them down in a mug so they wouldn't spill since it would have taken too much time to put the stopper back in the top, pick up my tablet, and shoot the pictures. The tablet helped, since it took a live snip/video and I could go in and select the specific shot that I wanted to keep.

I like the look of anticipation in this one.

The amount of ease and stretch in this one amazes me. Cats are such masters of movement.

Playing with bubbles with a cat is very different than with a dog. When I was a kid, I used to blow bubbles for Henry, my golden retriever, irish setter, who-know-what-else mix. He would chase them and pop them with his mouth. He would do this so many times that he would have white froth around his mouth from all of the soap.

Lots And Lots And Lots Of Knitting

Soon, very soon, this blog will return to its focus on drawing and painting. I'm really itching to get back to that. In the meantime, I have been knitting, knitting, and knitting.

Last week, I was away on a trip involving my biological roots. I left on Wednesday afternoon and spent time in town 1 to visit the place where my biological mother grew up. I did things like go by the home she grew up, find out what I could at the historical society, and spent time at the public library trying to find pictures in old high school yearbooks. I found more pictures of my bio-mom's older sister and brother, who both died tragically prior to reach adulthood, than of my bio-mom, but was really glad to find any pictures.

I stopped in town 2 on the way to town 3. In town 2, I went to the cemetery where all of my bio-mom's immediate family is buried. There is a Jewish custom of leaving a stone at a grave site.  I don't know where it originates. I left both a rock that I gathered from my trip to Ely on the family marker, since the family lived in the Iron Range of Minnesota prior to moving to town 1. I also brought some tufts of grass from the family home and divided that among the individual stones.

I  arrived in town 3 on Friday afternoon. The purpose was to meet my 1/2 sister on my bio-paternal side and to meet her 4 children.  1 new sister plus 3 new nieces plus 1 new nephew = 5 new relatives and I decided to knit each person a hat. It was a good trip and I enjoyed meeting everyone.

I tried to get each person's favorite colors, but not everyone provided this info. If they didn't, I just did what I wanted.  This idea to knit hats occurred to me 6 weeks before the trip and it helped me process and deal with the emotions surrounding this trip. 

Here are the hats.  They were all knit with either Nashua's Julia, Classic Elite's Color by Kristin yarn or Classic Elite's Tapestry yarn.  These are my favorite yarns.  They are very similar to each other and I decided to go with yarn in my stash.

I liked how all of them turned out. I especially like this last one and am making another one in different colors for me.