Easter with the Red Hats

The week before Easter, my red hat group, The Red Hat Mamas, celebrated friendship, food, and frivolity at Chris Barney's home.


................. showing off our Easter Bonnet creations before the judging.




Lois was the Grand Prize Winner.
Karen (or should I say Carmen Miranda) in the background won second place. She actually had potted plants intertwined with bunnies, umbrellas, and little chicks adorning her hat. She shared the plants with us for our spring planting.

I think Judy (in the foreground would have gotten 3rd place if we had awarded one.) She had the Easter bucket theme going. Miriam and I were the subdued ones in the group. I have an edge over the other gals, as my Easter bonnet is serving a dual purpose as a beautiful spring wreath decoration.

Chris had beautiful decorations all thru her home, and I couldn't resist sharing this one of the bunny, the jelly beans the the little bee buzzing around... reminded me of my alter ego "joBee", and also reminded me that I haven't been painting lately - beyond my "see color" class.


Next blog.... I'll share what we're doing in class.

luv/joBee

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Wow! It's been a long time

I can't believe it was February when I last blogged. I guess not a lot of activity you'd be excited about.

Spring is TRYING to pop in, with some success. The swallows have arrived and are nesting. We have seen the juncos and the morning larks and other migratory birds.




The robins and the quail winter here, so they pop their heads in all year round. These were taken a few days before Christmas.








Feb 4 our Art Class with COS (College of the Syskiyous) spring semester started.

Our instructor Nancy Kilmer

lead us off with "drawing from the right side of the brain" exercises in preparation for "seeing light and color" palette knife technique.



This process of "seeing" starts with painting blocks. We are being taught to distinguish: the color the block actually is in bright light, in shadow, and cast shadow. It's the Henry Hensche method of seeing light and color.

This is a challenging process, mainly because the first color you paint is NOT the color you actually see. It's a base (under color) upon which you build layers. I have been working on mastering this process for a long time. It seems to get clearer as time goes on. We'll see. We will be painting en plein air (outdoors) as the season progresses.

I'll keep you posted.

luv/joB

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My last project - work in progress

I know, I know.... the question? What were you working on in class? so here it is....

I stopped short of finishing this little 5x7 painting....

I started with a pinkish sienna and umber background, and then layered the snow over the top. The bench started taking on the appearance of a couch and that's about when the class ended for the session in mid December. Actually the last class never happened, cause we had a power outage that night, and the roads were too treacherous to travel . I plan to correct this and finish the painting, but for now, I have already put my acrylic paints away and plan to use the oils and alkyds going forward for this next session.

I've had a hard time getting a good photo of this little painting... It's blurry and I'm not sure how to fix that short of taking it outside.... which by the way...

this is what is happening outside at this moment. 2:36 pm, PST, Feb 10, 2008.


Maybe I should go out and paint en plein air.... Right!

It's 32 degrees right now. A bit too cool for this fair weather artist.

And it is a gray winter day.... which we haven't had many of lately, it's been springtime here.... our humming birds are just flitting and fluttering along here at the feeder. They don't care about the snow.

Enjoy your day.

luv/joB

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Happy February

It's been a slow start to the new year.... not much happening. Winter doldrums I guess.

The weather has been mild. It's 20 degrees when we rise in the morning, and it usually gets to between 45 and 55 degrees by midday. And soon we are shaded in and the temp starts to drop. The ducks love these days as you can see from the duck action at the pond.





George went out to throw a couple casts and he spotted this fox in Shirley's trap. He is cute, but these foxes cause a lot of problems here in the park, not to mention bothering those ducks in the pond.






The spring session of our Art class starts this week. Looking forward to that. We almost didn't get enough locals signed up to have it.... always a problem in an area that has so few of us. So here's what we look like painting at the community hall.




Wendy in the orange sweater. She's a skilled water cololrist.






Ron working on those daisies.

This is Rebecca painting upside down, which is a process to paint WHAT YOU SEE and not how you THINK a thing is SUPPOSED to look.





Daisy working on her creation.









Robin working on those mushrooms. Can't see what Rita has going there.




Kathryn sketching a still life and David working on petals and leaves.



Sam, analyzing his fish. Sam paints bee hive boxes. We see them along Hwy 96.... very colorful as you can see here.



My good buddy Karen adding some pizazz to a landscape scene.

Nancy our instructor is the blond facing this way.



So this is the gang, using oil, acrylic, and water color.... which must drive Nancy crazy, trying to teach all those mediums, as well as different skill levels. We are all at different places in our painting experience.

We'll be using palette knife and oils this session. This is always fun.

I'll take pictures and bring them to you.

luv/joB

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Merry Christmas

On December 22, we headed to the Bay Area in this beautiful snow storm....



....with Lilly Lu and our neighbors Enid and Cliff overseeing the park in our absence.









It snowed a good part of the trip down Highway 5.













And then we stopped at Rolling Hills for our standard brunch at their buffet. During the holidays they set up this artsy ginger bread house.




This was the first time we had to wait in line to get seated for the buffet. A lot of "left over" new year's eve celebrator, we guessed.

We thought we might see our neighbor Karen there, but it wasn't to be.

We headed to Napa to visit with Nigel and meet Julie.
It's been a long time since we've seen Nigel, and have only heard about Julie. It was a great visit. They fed us a really nice dinner and then we headed to San Jose.



Dec 23, we visited with George's cousin Karen and her daughter Traci and family. It is always so great spending time with family.

Traci, Mitchell, & Russ Evans.


At lunch, George, Mitchell, and Karen.

And then were were ready for Christmas Eve.


Jenni and Michael with Shanna taking photos in the foreground

The Train running around the track under the tree with the villages.





Stan and Shanna on Christmas Eve.





Shanna on Christmas morning. I guess you can see she was moving rather quickly with her unwrapping.

I think this is really due to a setting on my camera, but it made for an interesting picture.

This year, the neighborhood did not put out the paper bags with candles in them as in years past. Christmas Eve was a very windy night and we assume that is the reason. The bags, ceremoniously, showed up on New Years Eve; so the disappointment was short lived.

It was a quiet holiday. We were happy to be able to spend time with friends and family. Branch wasn't able to join us, so that was a big bummer! We really missed him.

We visited with friends after Christmas and headed back to the river January 1. It was a smooth, uneventful trip... great day to travel.









This blog entry went from the snows of Klamath River to the oranges of Santa Cruz, California.

Back to the river and working off those Christmas cookies and fudge.

We stopped at Winco in Redding and loaded up on fruit and veggies. We're off to a healthy 2009.

Happy New Year to all!

luv/jo
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Snowing, Snowing

It's been snowing and very cold. Today the thermometer didn't get to 30 and we had lazy falling snow flakes for a short time this afternoon.

This is snow on the hood of the 4-runner.... jelly roll anyone?














I



I headed up river to the levy to take a picture of one of my favorite spots.


Winter


Remember this photo from "Autumn on the Klamath River?










Both taken from pretty much the same spot.

I'll do this again in the spring.....

A couple die hard fishermen. They'd been out for a few hours, and had caught one small fish. They came in at the park. Guess that was enough fun for one day.










See you soon.
luv/jo
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First Klamath River Snowfall in the Morning Light of December 15

Lilly Lu







One of my favorite spots in the Park






Cute little birdhouse hanging from snowy limb.



Look at all that mistletoe in big oak.








Beautiful morning in the Park.

/joB

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