Watercolor Inks Practice Piece-Updated & Rain's Art Date

   Happy Midweek Friends,

     Of course it is still very hot and humid here, which keeps us indoors most of the day.

     Along with a little house work decided to try painting another mountain scene mostly with inks.  I am really liking the black walnut ink I made to also use for painting now, also grabbed a few of the watercolor inks, and a little watercolor paints

    This time I did the sky area last instead of first, I am not real pleased with it so far-once dry will work on lightening it more. I used the blue watercolor ink and even watered down was pretty dark.

    I started with the mountains and then really watered down the black walnut ink to cover the bottom of the page. Used inks for the grasses and little dots of flowers, also the tree is watercolor inks and black walnut. I did mix a little watercolor paint into the black walnut  ink to color the tree trunk. I also used watercolor green for the leaves

   I don't think it's finished but this time will let it sit a bit instead of jumping right in like I usually do haha Not sure what it needs yet perhaps more trees?

  Honest opinions and painting advice always welcome for this very newbie "painter"

I am using watercolor papers torn from a spiral. I was using painters tape to tape down my piece but it tore the paper so that did not work out. Now I just use a large clip on one end. When finished will weight it down.

   I really do not like this dark blue sky at all and looking at these photos, for some reason the grasses look lighter in the middle, perhaps the camera did that

Ok I am finished now, friend Barbara suggests less is more in the back of my mind-smiles.

    I added a little melting snow-or mist to the mountains, added in a few more grasses-in person the middle green is the same shade as the others

Updated:  I have been working on this watercolor practice-learning piece off and on most of the day today. One suggestion for improving the composition was to add something to the left side.  So a few hours later I messed around and added another tree-however I didn't have anymore of the same watercolor inks mixed up and ooops the tree turned out way too dark, and I didn't get a nice shaped tree for this one either--but I decided to go ahead and share for Rain's Art Day   I also worked on lightening up the sky a bit too.

    I am a work in progress with painting, so I am putting this piece out there any suggestions always welcome for improvement  I will say I really enjoyed working with the my handmade black walnut ink and winsor newton's watercolor inks for this piece.

Playing with Acrylics

  Happy Wednesday,
    Wow we had a really big storm move through early this morning, Larry got caught in it on his back from town.

Similiar to that other storm I shared. I looked up the weather and our area was getting 50 mile an hour winds.  Hopefully this will cool us down a bit and rid us of the high humidity.

  The last couple of days I played with my acrylic paints. I  worked on waves-not so good, and worked on depth so so.
  I want to thank all of you that visit and comment. I don't have anyone else to share these with, and I appreciated the feedback. So any tips for improvement are always welcome here.
   I continue to monitor comments as I still get some pretty bad spam on occasion, and last week I got a very hateful message on how horrible my painting is and I should stick with knitting-Wow glad I monitored  and I don't knit so that's that.

Thanks for stopping by

Watercolor Painting

  I had one of those nights that I didn't sleep real well, so was in "space zone" this morning.
   I decided to grab my watercolor pencils along with the water brushes I bought-I really love those, and try one more go with that sunrise photo I had painted in acrylics twice.

   I also bought watercolor papers to use instead of my mixed media papers.  I am thinking watercolors might be my painting "calling"  I ordered some watercolor paints to try and also because I signed up for the class Eileen suggested. That class looks fun, it was super discounted so could afford to buy the watercolor paints.  Our Wal mart only has the kids paints and those are pretty bad.

  I still can't mix up the right purplish color for the water especially-but I enjoyed  this painting. I did forget to use chalk instead of pencil for marking out a couple lines-none of my erasers took that off.  This is still just for practice and learning

I am joining in with Paint Party Friday

Just for Fun-Watercolor Pencil Painting--OK Now It's Finished

I took a photo of this pretty sunrise last fall and it is one I wanted to use for inspiration for a painting.

I began mixing colors in acrylics and just could not get those yellows and oranges right at all-so I brought out the watercolor pencils and ended up with more of an interpretation instead of getting the colors matched up.

This will go into my chocolate spiral art journal

I may decide to go over it a bit more tomorrow

Update: just went over it to soften it up a bit  I will submit this to Paint Party Friday coming up this week.

T Stands for Tuesday-Hot Days & Creative Muse, Paintings, TIOT

Happy Tuesday, and wow we are almost half way through June already. This also brings us to T with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth. You are most welcome to join us  just show a drink related photo in your post.

   We have had very summer like days for awhile now-hot and humid. So my tomato plants and pepper plants are growing nicely and the herbs have really grown.  We also needed to break down and turn the air conditioner on-the humidity gets really bad in this area of Missouri so there is no getting around not using it. Our age with some health issues also makes it necessary.
    I never grew up with air conditioning-my parents refused to have it. When we were kids and it got too hot they would take us to a movie or we would walk around in the malls getting built back then. Actually Larry and I only had a small air conditioner in the bedroom and didn't have all air conditioning in the house til we retired to the woods house. That was quite a treat for us.
    I still feel a little guilty spending the money on it, but I think I always hear my farm girl Mom telling us kids to just sit in front of the fan for awhile haha.

   Sorry didn't mean to go about that-my hands just typing 😀

  I made a batch of keto cookies that we both really liked. She named them "oatmeal" cookies because she ground up coconut and almond slices to the texture of oatmeal. Only change I made was to use coconut oil for the butter so they ended up more cakey which I like any way. oh and I didn't use her add ins but used a handful of yellow raisins.  Here is the recipe  she uses swerve sweetener, I got started using lakanto sweetener that also has monk fruit in it, I really like it so far.

I have a new painting on my wall-it needs to get framed yet, you may have seen it on Barbara's page-I fell in love with it so she gifted it to me
   Thank you soooo much again Barbara.

 This also encouraged me to try painting again with my acrylics on Sunday

I had painted from this photo I took of the sunrise awhile back, but I wanted to try it again. I had watched a couple of painting classes since then. I did not look at the first attempt til after I finished this one.  My first attempt had allot of textures which I liked, but I think I did a better job-finally- with the sky and the water on this one.

   I am quite pleased.

I also started a new journal page for AJJ A stitch in time, but I am waiting for a new stamp I ordered, I don't have any clock stamps in my stash so I browsed online and found two on ebay from the same seller that I liked-he reduced the prices and gave me free shipping. Happy about that.

 This morning my muse was still here (Monday) so I have a journal page for Try it on Tuesday that I will be sharing.  The theme is Masculine.
    I went through my collection of papers and clippings-tossed a bunch in the process, organized a little and came up with this page.
      I like it and hope it is masculine enough.

    The background is one of those wet wipes that I used while painting, I started saving those (Elizabeth gave me that idea-thanks)
   I made a collage from different magazine cut outs, the 1850 is from a folger coffee bag, the bison came from a package of ground bison, the blue strip on top is a paper scrap from my eco printing. That strip to the right under 1840 is from the bottom of an envelope that has some postal cancelling on it.

(all photos will enlarge just click on them)

I did this top page just for fun and thought it gave some visual balance too

  Saturdays and Friday evening are the busiest at the lake it seems during the warmer days.
     This sailboat was out with all those boats-not sure he was happy with that. After I took this photo there were all sorts of very large boats and those "motorcycles on water" all around him-he was really rocking.

I did get the blue merino and silk roving spun up, and am now on to the next of my Yellowstone inspired colors.  My beverage reference is a glass of hard cider from Strongbow

When I bought these rovings at Fiber U a couple years ago the price is by weight-she had to add a little bit more so that's why those are so short on the right

Months ago I ordered Outlander's second cookbook. I really enjoyed reading the first one and am happy I ordered this one as well-good recipes, and fun reading She also has references to make gluten free, vegetarian, and vegan, dairy free-which is a thoughtful addition.

I am off to whip up another keto new york cheesecake-the last one was good, I decided to bake us up another one.

   A few weeks back the Wal Mart I shop at now finally had some USA made flags in. These have longer sticks so I bought a package of them-mostly for 4th of July, but also to have a flag on the patio.

Happy T everyone.

T Stands for Tuesday & Lots of Photos (Long Post)

  Hi Everyone,
      Here in the States we are winding down our 3 day weekend with Memorial Day. Of course with Missouri being mostly open many and I mean many drove to the lakes.
    We were originally forecast to have a wash out with lots of rain and t storms but where I am we were mostly missed.
   So the two of us had "entertainment" looking out over the lake since late Thursday. There was also allot of fireworks going off too every night. I could hear them loud and clear but couldn't see most of them.
   I even saw on facebook where one of the bars on the lake made the national news-big signs saying to self distance but of course no one was doing that.

    Tuesday is upon us already where we share a drink related photo in our post, and link up with friends at Bleubeard and Elizabeth. (link in my sidebar)

    Saturday mid day was probably the busiest on the lake with boats everywhere. and I just don't understand these ocean boats being on the Lake of the Ozarks, so many this long weekend. I was making our dinner at the time and didn't grab my camera to video all the craziness.  I did get a couple videos that shows about a 1/4 of the number of boats that were here on Saturday.

  Lots of these ocean boats-all sizes here on a lake-Larry says people showing off their wealth and toys.

Lots and lots of these personal water craft "toys"   We call them motorcycles on water

This first video shows all sorts of boats, all different sizes. Towards the end of the video you will also see a very long and large boat that is used to shuttle people back and forth to the bars that are on the lake
   I also was showing with all the activity the water was splashing up over the rocks, and so much debris has drifted in around our dock.

   I made us a New York Cheesecake for the weekend-using Lakanto powdered sweetener. I also made a thin crust with gluten free graham crackers and almond meal, butter, Lakanto sweetener  This was my best bake ever sooo creamy and delicious
     If anyone would like the link to the recipe-go here  I did not bake this in a water bath per recipe, and I did add the crust. I baked at 300 degrees f for about 90 minutes. The other changes were two packages of full fat cream cheese and one package of the 1/3 less fat cream cheese, lower fat sour cream, and I used Lakanto brand sweetener instead of Swerve-both brands are really good I just prefer Lakanto now.
    If you are looking for healthy recipes-no sugar etc this site is really awesome and makes more sense to me then some of the other keto recipes I have seen.

This is our favorite jam now, comes from France not overly sweet, always thick with fruits I love it

 Off in the distance is a pirate ship-used for tourists. This little bird flew in while I was taking a photo If you enlarge the photo you  may see it in the distance.

A better look

Another ocean boat

Another painting with Valerie's photo. I wanted to do this again, and I will be painting from this image again, as this time I was learning how to use the colored pencils wet. You can see the black kinda got away from me. I do like it though

A drink reference-I found a box of the Strongbow hard cider that I had picked up over a year ago.Perfect for the weekend. I prefer this brand over Angry Orchard hard cider as it is allot lighter and less filling.  I also like that these cans are smaller in size too.

  More flowers blooming, my mints and lavender looking good after all the rains last week, and my tomato plants I grew from seed need to get planted soon.

The lavender had a set back from staying in the pot too long but looking good now-the center really died back on me. I am not going to harvest any of the blooms this time, to give the plant a boost

I am thinking of digging up some grass below and in front of where the lavender and mints are to plant some of these tomatoes One is Burpee big girl, and the other is a large heirloom tomato also for slicing.

 
This afternoon I poured this over ice-I really like it no fake sweeteners in it just Ozark spring water that's been carbonated with a splash of natural flavorings

Happy T everyone