Christmas Practice

I posted this before, and then had to take it down. I forgot I had blogged here about painting a picture for Karen for Christmas, and when I posted the pictures of the new Teen Scene, I sent the url to Karen so she could see the photos, and then her sister Heidi reminded me that Karen's secret Santa Pal (and her gift) would be revealed if she looked at the blog, so I deleted this post in a hurry.

Anyway, this was my initial idea of a garden painting for Karen, but then her other sister, Kirsten, said it should have to do with vegetables, so I did the painting in my next post (parsley, seed packets and a trowel) instead. But this one was good practice!

Teen Scene is here!

Our new teen area at the Burbank Central Library is open! Not officially--we'll be having an open house to show it off the second week of January--but it's all ready for teens to use. A few of them have already, although since school is out for the holidays, it's kind of a ghost town around here. Here are pictures:

The view from outside the section, with the new sign above.
That's my office, at the far end.

This sign welcomes the teens and lets others know restrictions of use for the area.

Here is a long-shot of the area--three tables down the middle,
fiction collection on the left, computers on the right.
Aren't the chair colors gorgeous?

Here's the new book list and flyer rack, at the end of the manga section.
Two of us spent an entire day installing the wall quotes above the shelves,
and then I spent another day stenciling paisleys on the ends of the
(very old) bookshelves.

Here are the computers--there are four.

Here is the lounge section. They are called "Blob" chairs.
I keyed the entire color scheme and decor based on this little
paisley area rug. You can see the wall quotes above.

This was a long time coming--it was this time LAST year

that I had just submitted the grant application to the

California State Library. It took a lot of thought and

planning, and collaboration with a lot of people,

but it's finally done!

Solvang

I had my doubts about Solvang as a destination for a painting trip--I have always thought the town was, frankly, kinda cheesy, a shameless tourist destination that is fun once and then you're done. But I really enjoyed my trip there, and especially the place where we stayed--the Solvang Gardens Boutique Country Inn. Every room was different--some were basic hotel rooms (but with posh bathrooms!), some had kitchenettes, and some were full-blown accomodations, with a sitting room, kitchen, and two bedrooms. There were gardens front and back, with fountains, roses and herbs--a feast for the eyes, nose and ears.

We spent a lovely sunny morning painting in the front garden; our instructor Cindy made a picture of this dormer window above the entryway, and I took a photo of the same view so I could do one of my own later. She did hers without the roof, just as a vignette, and I think I preferred it; I also got into trouble with the rose, below, but another thing I discovered on my trip that is if you make a mess of a painting, you can always come in with an inkpen to pull out some details and make it look more quirky than messy, so that's what I did here. Not the best painting ever, but a sketchy reminder of a lovely trip.

Speaking of cranberries...

Discovered a great cake recipe in my mom's recipe box for Thanksgiving/Christmas-time, so I thought I'd share:

CRANBERRY CAKE 3 eggs 2 cups sugar (I use raw sugar) 3/4 cup butter, softened (I use Earth Balance buttery spread from Trader Joe's) 1 tsp. almond extract 2 cups all-purpose flour (I use unbleached) 2.5 cups whole fresh cranberries (you can also use frozen, thawed, but fresh is better) 2/3 cup chopped pecans Beat eggs with sugar until slightly thickened, about 5 minutes. Add butter and almond extract, beat 2 minutes. Stir in flour just until combined. Stir in the cranberries and pecans. Spread in a greased pan (13x9 or a largish springform), bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour. (Stick a toothpick in it--if it's clean, it's done. I let it brown a bit longer.) The perfect combination of tart and sweet. Enjoy!

Los Olivos

Lunchtime in Los Olivos: On the last day of my trip, I went with the rest of the gang up to Los Olivos, where they were going to paint in the afternoon, and had a farewell lunch with them before I drove back to Los Angeles. (I had to go to work the next day, so I cut the trip a day short.) For an appetizer, Karen treated us to a big flat bowl full of all different kinds (and colors) of olives, and I thought it was so beautiful, I took a photo before we devoured them, so I could paint it when I got home (which I did, today). I was inspired by Jennifer Lawson's beautiful cranberry paintings. http://jenniferlawson.blogspot.com/2010/12/good-intentions.html Thanks, Jennifer! You reminded me to save those highlights. This one counts for EDM challenges #306 (draw a snack), #116 (draw something green) and #111 (draw a bowl).

Forgot this one

This was from our first day, at "La Arcada," a small shopping arcade off of State Street in Santa Barbara. We parked ourselves there to do vignettes of various architectural elements, and I just stuck all of mine into one piece, which wasn't really the assignment, but meant I didn't have to keep moving around. I was happy with elements of this--the shadow on the large pot, the water coming from the dolphin's mouth--but I seem to have suffered from tipsiness all day that day (even though the winery tour came later in the trip!)--my courthouse tower leaned to the right in the day's first picture, and in this one the fountain has a definite list to the left! Well, that's why it's in a sketchbook and isn't a finished work destined for framing, another valuable lesson I attempted to learn on this trip--not every painting has to be perfectly executed and shared, some are for practice, which is to say FUN. I have to work on that. It sounds like two mutually exclusive things--work at having fun--but learning to release judgment is a big deal. Someday...?

Vineyard painting

On the first day of our stay in Solvang, we went on a wine tasting / painting "crawl," to three wineries in the Santa Ynez Valley. We didn't have a lot of time to paint at each location, so after messing up a painting at the first place, I re-thought my methods, and at the second winery I decided to do a finished sketch to come back and paint later, and took a photo or two to remind me of colors. Since I was using my Droid as a camera, the colors weren't the greatest on this one (though some of my pictures came out better), but it was enough to remind me of the things I liked about it--the house, the stripes of the grape arbors, the perspective from far away to close up.

I also wrote the colors directly into the drawing, erasing as I painted, but on Tuesday morning back in the garden at our B&B, where I actually painted the picture, I forgot to remove a few; if you look really closely, you can find the word "purple" embedded in the mountains.

It was Theresa's suggestion to us to do the close-up of the grapes at the side of our paintings and use that as a framework, and it reminded me that painting isn't just about duplicating what you see, it's also about design and layout and the thought processes leading up to making something more. Other people on Every Day Matters have also illustrated that, with their borders  through which parts of their paintings intrude, and I love the effect. Thanks, everyone!

This is my last post for my watercolor trip (although I have some photos that I hope to use to paint more scenes from it). It was great--I would encourage others to take one. What a wonderful treat to sit outdoors all day long and capture color on paper.