Tall Tales from Kansas

I don't tell people I am going to make a masterpiece of their likeness

This past weekend the Oh My Gouache class met on Sunday and did some ZOOM painting together. In our previous sessions we have tackled portraits and I have been practicing on everyone. Taking quick screen shots in ZOOM meetings gives an opportunity for all sorts of expressions and angles to be captured. I don't tell people I am going to make a masterpiece of their likeness.  I just do my thing. 

This week the topic was landscapes and it was great fun. I wish I had a week after each of these sessions to immerse myself totally in doing nothing but eat, drink, sleep, and paint... but that's not life and it does not stop me from painting when I can, how I do, and the outcome is not judged too harshly.  

If you want to see "pretty", let's look at the sunflowers from the farmers market.   

On the reading/listening front I finally finished all 8 episodes of the Trojan Horse Affair podcast. Wow. That is investigative journalism at a very high level.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Link below if you are interested in listening. Each episode is around 40 minutes or so. I loved all the conclusions they drew at the end, about what happened, about each other, about expectations. Link provided below.

The Trojan horse Affair podcast

Last but not least here are some of this week's zinnia clippings. 

I rather like the pale peach colored ones in the very center. Almost as much as I liked Barry (the newest Harvey boy) coming to let me pet him while I was cutting them. 

chris says I look like Nancy Pelosi here

We had the BEST time on installment #3 of the Oh My Gouache class update ZOOM on Sunday. 

I am unabashedly showing my work. Because people this is about having fun. We did portraits this session. 

We used markers and pencils and gouache and all manner of stuff. We painted from pictures - old family photos, spouse photos, selfies. 

Friends, strangers, no one is off limits. Even though they might wish they were.  When someone seems aghast at how I have portrayed them, I use the standard disclaimers I learned from sister - "I just draw what I see" or "I just did my best". I tend to say "uh-oh" and "oh dear" a lot while I am painting and drawing. Sister and I know that is code for something extra good is happening here. In our minds. 

I have saved the pièce de résistance for last.

Chris says I look like Nancy Pelosi here. I take that as the highest of compliments. 

squirrel as wolverine

All of you that follow my wildly creative sister out in LA know that she has done an update on her Oh My Gouache class and we have been doing ZOOM sessions to make art together as part of the class. This week I had to work and could not join the class ZOOM but forced her to do a session with me ahead of time.  She says "we're going to paint squirrels", I say "oh". She says "it's going to be fun, we are using only 3 colors and just giving ourselves 5 minutes", I say "oh". She asks me questions about my matte acrylic paint and I say "yeh, yeh, lets just start". She tells me to take screen shots of squirrel photos she supplies. I say "okay?" She says "it's going to be fun", I say "yes, you said that".

We made a palette of squirrel colors. Palette making is ALWAYS fun. 

Next came the squirrels. I will introduce you to them individually but first the overview. 

Top figure is squirrel as wolverine. You can see where the name comes from. Squirrel feet are hard. 

Bottom figure (above) is squirrel with shoulder pads. I do so love his tail. 

Top figure below is squirrel with apple, for obvious reasons. He is the first one I did, I may like him the best, but it's a really tight race. How to choose a favorite among such contenders?  

The bottom figure (above) is the one I laughed about the most. I fondly refer to him as scotty dog/turkey squirrel. It's the ears and the tail feathers. 

Lord have mercy this was fun. Only giving yourself 5 minutes helps take the brain out of the equation, for me anyway. Just start painting for gosh sakes, you only have 5 minutes and there is a lot to do! This is a wonderful lesson in how easy it is to tell yourself you can't do things that you certainly can. 

Last week I did a bunch of candle sticks in class. 

We used different things to draw with and timed ourselves. Fast, easy, fun!

This week before I took them all downstairs I did them again. There are more candlestick paintings to come. 

Oh and for sure more animals. Because why wouldn't I? 

P.S. Sister you were RIGHT!!! It was the most fun I had in my whole last week off. Hands down. 

none less enjoyable as a result

Since returning from Palm Springs, Sister and I have resumed our regular FaceTime SketchTime sessions. While she has been making masterpieces I have been having great fun spreading paint on pages.

Some outcomes more pleasing than others.  None less enjoyable as a result. 

I will take one just like it for our trip next summer

Today I sewed a strip of trim inside my Bavaria journal and called it done.

Here it is.  The good, the bad, the ugly, the hilarious, and the unforgettable.  A real time capsule of our time in Germany.

My sister made the journal for herself, and then (lucky for me!!!!!) decided she wanted a different format and gifted it to me.  Oh happy day.

It may be my favorite of all my travel journals to date.  To work in on the trip, I mean.   I love them all equally once they are completed.  

The size was perfect.

Small and uncomplicated.

With pages for sketching and painting.  

Sister had done some collage work in advance.  Which was so nice.  

And, plenty of room for recording all the important events.  

The accordion shape was great to work with.  

I could lay it out flat and also work on several pages at a time if I wanted to.  

I have said this before, but it bears repeating... if you don't have someone you can travel with that likes to draw blind and semi-blind contour drawings, you are missing out.  

It also helps if they say, "I think I'll paint a mountain scene" and you can say "oh me too".  Your two drawings will not look alike.  That's ok.  

If you go to Wallgau, I hope you attempt to draw the church, as well as the mountains.  It imprinted them in my brain in a way the camera never could.    

We went to the Franz Marc museum one day, and promptly came home and applied all that we had seen there.  Each to the best of our abilities.  You can't ask for more than that.  

This teeny yellow car really had 2 tail lights, but I only had room for one, you understand how that can happen I am sure. 

My map of Germany.  Not accurate.  Extremely fun to draw and paint all the same. 

Sister and I in our "house-dresses" on the balcony in Wallgau.  

The end.  Thank you sister for making this journal for me.  I will take one just like it for our trip next summer.   

pantsuits, can in fact, be considered dressy enough to wear to a formal affair

Today, during FaceTime Sketchtime with my sister, I drew Hillary and The Donald.  I don't know why.  It seemed like a good idea at the start.

While we worked, we discussed important topics, like can a pantsuit be considered formal attire and what are important criteria that should be taken into account when thinking about where to retire?

Hillary, I don't know why your eyes got too big, your teeth got crooked, or your neck came out too wide.  But I still like you.  I will draw you again.  You may come out looking more like yourself on the second attempt.  Anything is possible.  

I ended the session with a study in pumpkins and gourds while sister drew corn?  In a jar?  You'll have to ask her about that. 

 P.S.  We came to the conclusion that pantsuits, can in fact, be considered dressy enough to wear to a formal affair.  You can count on the Moss sisters to provide good fashion tips. 

when your name is carol, and you have just painted your first piece of cherry pie, you think there is nothing you can't do

I have been bitten by the gouache bug.  Bit HARD.  You can probably tell.  Seeing as I have done show and tell 4 times in the last 7 posts, and prior to that there had been no show and no tell for quite some time because there had been no painting. 

I have moved on from cake, beets, donuts, and peppers, to fruits.  More specifically cherries and bananas.  Not together.  Not yet.  This is my first attempt at cherry pie. 

I started out with practice drawing ahead of time.  Thanks sister for that invaluable little piece of advice.  It helps me to figure out in advance which ways lines should go to give a slightly proper perspective.  

Then I painted out the pie and threw on some paint until I was semi satisfied, then added just a bit more.  Because I thought I should. 

 

Once that was done I walked into the kitchen and spotted the banana.  When your name is Carol, and you have just painted your first piece of cherry pie, you think there is nothing you can't do.   So the banana it was. 

Again there was practice sketching, then I drew the banana "for real" with a micron pen and painted the background first and then painted in the banana.

When Chris came home from work I told him I was probably going to do a whole series of fruits and have them framed to go in the dining room.  He was extremely enthusiastic about the idea.   He may have jumped up and down and did a fist pump even. 

the donut and yellow pepper escapade: a melodrama in two acts

Since I was feeling reasonably satisfied with my mastery of gouache after painting the golden beet the other day, I decided to boldly proceed to the deceptively simple donut.  Step 1 - go to "Munchers" and buy some donuts.  That was the easy part.

What followed was a bit more, shall we say, complex.

It wasn't really hard, but there are subtle nuances to capturing the true essence of a donut that are elusive. 

Never one to give up, and recalling that my sister recommends telling yourself you will paint more donuts and the one you are currently working on does not have to be a masterpiece, I started another.  I had bought 2 at the bakery after all. 

This one started out a bit easier but things quickly turned hilarious when I thought to add the shadow.  They did not improve when I dropped the black brush pen I was writing with onto the page.  Oh well. 

Still, I persevered.   I moved on to the yellow pepper.  I decided to do some practice sketching before I began my "also not going to be a masterpiece" rendering of it.  I approached it from multiple angles in this session.  What could it hurt?

I was more satisfied with the way this turned out.   Which of course gives me the feeling that just maybe a piece of cherry pie might be in my immediate future.    

in the morning you think you can

Unfortunately I did not make it to the farmers market this morning because it was raining.  A lot.  Which left me at odds for what to do on a Saturday morning. 

I decided to go to the community mercantile for produce and flowers, and there I found the most beautiful golden beets.  Along with a few other necessities.

Before I let myself get caught up in any monkey business that would keep me from painting the golden beets.  I went upstairs.  Laid out a beet.  Drew a basic shape with gouache.  Swished things around in my palette until I had just the right shade of orange.  And did not let myself stop.

Then, for better or worse I decided the shadows were needed.  Followed by the decision to give it a blue background, and finally a label.

This is what happens, when you watch your sister paint pieces of PIE before you go to bed.   All night long you dream about painting, and in the morning you think you can.   So you try. 

in exactly thirteen days

Chris alerted me to the ad in the paper the other morning announcing that sweet corn is for sale at Bismark gardens.  That means we are going on Saturday.  Which means I went downstairs to the freezer yesterday to be sure I had used all the bags I froze to eat over the winter.   Which I of course had not.  Do you do that too?  Save a few bags for the very end of the winter and then forget about them? 

Not a problem.  I was hungry for a nice pot of corn chowder and I happened to have every single thing on hand to make it. 

This is a lighter version of a corn chowder, perfect for summer.  No bacon, no cream, no cheese.  It's big on flavor and has a great crunchy texture. 

Fifty six minutes after I started I had 6 jars of soup prepared and my mess cleaned up.

Which is good because then I went upstairs to do a little painting.  Which I haven't done for awhile. 

I decided to forgo anything simple and head right for the cakes.  Specifically a lemon chiffon cake with strawberry jam filling. 

I sure hope we can find us a piece of cake just like this in Stockholm.  When we are there.  In exactly thirteen days.  At which time I will be getting lots of practice painting.   I am enjoying the heck out of watching my sister's videos from class.  She makes painting look so easy.  Which it is not.  She also makes it look like a whole lot of fun.  Which it absolutely is.  No matter the outcome.