“right now” staying focused on the present, mindful and in the moment, an image from the week, with no words or a few words, that acknowledges the “right now.” Inspired by Ann.
|
||
 ©2012 Carolyn A Pappas, Elba Mountainside. Watercolor and colored pencil, 4 x 6 inches. Another small painting from Google Street View in Elba, this time experimenting with my new Derwent Coloursoft colored pencils. I like the soft feel of these pencils and they come in a lot of natural looking colors, but I have trouble distinguishing different colors from one another. I tend to draw with a ton of different colors strewn all over the table, but that won’t work with these pencils. The color swatches at the end of the pencil don’t seem very accurate, and the leads don’t look like the actual color on the paper. Being organized and having a scrap paper on hand for tests is critical for me, because I had a few accidents when I started using the wrong color. My only other (small) gripe is that the pencils are too large to fit in my electric sharpener. Luckily, I have a manual one that works. Otherwise, I LOVE these pencils.  ©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Ogunquit Horizon. Watercolor, 10 x 13.5 cm. Things I’m excited about:
I painted the above image on a watercolor greeting card. It was a scene from my trip to Maine in 2010.  ©2012 Carolyn A Pappas, Feeding the Green River. Pen and watercolor wash, 13.5 x 10 cm. This little piece depicts one of the many waterfalls that empty into the Green River. After Hurricane Irene, my husband and I drove around to survey the damage and I snapped a photo that I used as a reference. The river and the streams were flowing a lot faster than normal, which made for a beautiful scene. I just sent this off to Moss, Norway for the second Twitter Art Exhibit, organized by David Sandum. You may remember that I submitted a painting for the first Twitter Art Exhibit as well, back in 2010. This time, the money raised is going towards the Women’s Crisis Center in Moss. I met David on Twitter a few years ago and he’s a nice guy and great artist. I highly recommend following him if you use Twitter. There’s still time to participate in the exhibit as the deadline is March 30th.  ©2012 Carolyn A Pappas, Silent Night. Ink and watercolor, 4 x 6 inches. Now that I don’t have a studio with everything set up already, it’s getting tough for me to paint in watercolor in between all the baby stuff that I do every few hours. But yesterday, Cate took an extra long nap and I got to do a little painting. I did this for the January Virtual Paintout challenge in Summit County, Colorado. It was a good opportunity to paint a snow scene. I’m thinking I might use this painting for my Christmas card next year. The reference image was cloudy and gray, but I turned it into a night scene. I also took liberties with the trees as you can see.
Hurricane (tropical storm) Irene proved to be a real non-event for my family other than our power going out for one hour. There was a gentle, steady rain with almost no wind. I’ve seen the lake more choppy on a sunny day in fact. It was generally just a gray, yucky day. Thankfully, I baked up some tasty whole wheat blueberry-oat scones that morning.  ©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, 8-28-11 Sketchbook (Hurricane Irene). Watercolor in large watercolor moleskine. Unfortunately, my friends in Franklin County didn’t fare so well. I was so sad to hear about the covered bridge on the Green River and the flooding in Shelburne Falls, including the idyllic Bridge of Flowers. Below is a watercolor I made last year of the Deerfield River as seen from the Bridge of Flowers. It is so sad to think of it as such a destructive force. I still have some reference photos of the bridge itself from that trip and I’ve been thinking of making a painting to remember it like it used to be. I’m sure they will fix it all up at some point, but it will be a long time and will take a lot of money.  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, Deerfield River. Watercolor, 5 x 7 inches.  ©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Lakeside Ruins. Lexington Gray ink on pink textured paper, apx. 5 x 5 inches. I based this drawing on a blurry photo I took at dusk. It was more of a pen test than anything else, really. This drawing is of a certain place on the shore where geese like to gather. There is a crumbling stone wall and the remnants of an old foundation next to a grassy area. My favorite part about it is the silhouette of the trees against the sky. I might do another version of this some time, except drawing the water differently. I tried out my new pen on a different sort of paper here. The paper is highly textured, which I wouldn’t ordinarily use for ink, but I thought the pale pink would go nicely with my gray ink. There was a bit of feathering but this paper is very absorbent so I did not have to worry about the ink not drying. When writing or drawing on a paper like this, the most important thing to keep an eye out for is little bits of paper getting stuck in the nib and causing ink spatters or dragging. One thing I was pleased with was that I thought this pen was nearly out of ink but I was able to make this whole drawing (with hundreds of tiny strokes) and have yet to refill the pen.  ©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, New Zealand Hills. Watercolor, 6 x 9 inches. After taking a break from the Virtual Paintout for five months, I decided to give it another go. This month, the location is New Zealand, which is a great place for finding beautiful landscape scenery. I’m really happy with how this painting turned out because it seemed so easy for me to paint, which is rarely the case. I almost completely forgot about the time and just had fun painting.  ©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Imaginary Landscapes. Watercolor in 8 x 5.5 inch sketchbook. Although I dislike when bloggers constantly apologize and make excuses, I do feel bad for not posting sooner. I haven’t been sick, per se, but I’ve certainly been feeling “sickly” for the past month or so. Even though I still have pretty much no energy, I decided that it was time that I try to get back into my normal routine again. I took out my watercolors today, and had more fun than I remember in a long time. |
||
|
Copyright ©2012 Carolyn A Pappas - All Rights Reserved |
||
The concept of posting photos on Fridays is nothing new, but 
