It feels like things can just never quite get to the point that I’m in a “blogging mood”. Either I’m waiting for something to “get over with” so that (I think) I’ll feel more relaxed (events, medical things, doctor’s appointments—both mine and family members’—nothing too big or bad, but it still mildly stresses me out because that’s just how I am)—or I think, “I’ll just wait until I finish XYZ (work, house work, etc.) and then I’ll feel more free to get back into blogging”—or I’m just not in the mood. When the free time presents itself, I want to play Tiny Glade or read an online forum or veg out in front of YouTube videos about painting or cute dogs or someone traveling around in a van or whatever. Or I just want to doodle or paint for a few minutes, instead.
I think I may just have to accept that I’m an infrequent blogger, by default. I may have periods of greater activity, but on the whole, this is how I operate. And of course that’s okay, because this is just another hobby and shouldn’t come at the expense of enjoyment of other hobbies (or work).
Taking Advantage of Nice Weather
Donald and I were going to be in Fairhope early last week, so we took the opportunity to check out a (new-ish) trail area. It’s called Flying Creek Nature Preserve and has a network or crisscrossing trails through the woods. It looks a lot like our woods here at home (unsurprisingly, since it’s not that far away), but their woods are a lot more open (less brush) and much hillier, with gullies.
I didn’t manage to get any good photos, but here’s a not-good photo instead:
We need to find some time to go to some of the other local trails in the area before the hot weather creeps back in. (It happens earlier than you expect, down here on the Gulf Coast.)
I’ve also bought some seeds that I need to get planted, sometime… I want to try to grow a few vegetables this year. It’s been a while since we had a vegetable garden, so I’m out of practice. I’ve only bought yellow summer squash and okra so far, but we’re also considering getting some tomato and pepper plants.
Then there are a couple of types of flowers I’m hoping to grow from seed this year—another thing I haven’t done in a long while.
Busy Shelves
On a few occasions, I do still doodle and paint. One of those times, I just wanted to draw a bunch of random stuff, so I decided to go with a few shelves stuffed with… stuff. We have a dollhouse, books, potted plants, and a few other odds and ends.
Afterwards, I painted it with whatever was already on my mixing palette, which may not have been a great idea… I don’t know if I love the reds here, but I guess it’s okay. At least it was fun to do.
Note to Self: It's Not Autumn
Another day, I didn’t know what I was going to draw, just that I wanted to use the pen with the brown ink in it. Leaves appeared. I painted them in autumn colors… It’s kind of boring, even to me, but again, it gave me something to do to unwind when I needed it.
One thing I do like is the effect of the roughly drawn “frame”. I might try to remember to use that more often.
Can't Get Enough JARS
I guess we all have shapes or objects we are drawn to or love doodling. One of mine, lately, is glass jars, jugs, and other containers.
I had a page where I’d swatched out some watercolors to see how they looked. After it dried, I went back with a Zebra Zensations Brush Pen (thick and thin pen) and doodled containers with flowers inside. (Or I guess they could be flowers etched on the outside, which would make more sense, really.)
Not much to it, but fun to do.
Simple Birthday Card
I needed a birthday card quickly, so I took a premade blank card with a textured front (which you can barely see here), then added stylized candles with double-sided tape.
The candles are scraps of paper from my collage stash (mostly things I made when cleaning my brush or palette), doodled over in acrylic pen. Cutting out the flames was the most tedious part.
I think they might actually have looked better without the acrylic pen doodles, but it’s fine for a card that would be looked at once and probably tossed.
Something Different
I’m not sure what you’d call this style. Maybe they’re primitive or folk art style. Just simplified floral shapes, with colors allowed to flow into one another (when I am fast enough with the second color to get that to happen).
This is loosely based on something I saw online, but the original version was larger in scale and done in greens. I didn’t have as much room here, and I wanted to use a wider range of colors.
The inspiration piece had a background color added around the florals shapes, so I tried that, too—but I think that in this case, I might like it better without. I guess it’s fine either way.
There are things I’d improve or change, but I did enjoy this, and I kind of like the style. It reminds me of batik fabric in some spots.
I decided to try it again with slightly different colors, leaving the background white, this time:
And then I did something kind of similar a third time, but for this one, I started with some watercolor pencil, quickly decided it wasn’t working, then filled in the rest of the page with watercolor and a little gouache (to try to cover up some spots I wasn’t happy with). There are a few places I don’t like, but other areas are okay.
As a whole, this was my least favorite of the three.
Then there’s this, done a while after the ones above and not quite the same thing, but somewhat similar…
I just wanted to paint, but had no idea what I’d do. Started painting flowers, then added some green star “foliage”/background and ink outlines.
This paint is some of that Japanese-style watercolor, which is more opaque and seems to fall somewhere between Western-style watercolor and gouache.
Going Green
I wanted to try out some new green ink. It’s fairly light, so I tried to keep my base layer of watercolor similarly soft in tone.
Potted plants felt like a good first subject for the green ink. I kept them simple and loose (by my standards):
Next came the ink:
I like it!
(Potted plants are still one of my favorite things to paint and doodle. It combines containers and foliage/organic shapes. Perfect!)
One More Green Doodle
I painted four very simple rows of house shapes, then went over them with the green ink.
Yep, this was fun, too! I do run out of ideas for ways to vary up houses… I guess I get in a rut. Next time, I should try more drastic variations—which would be easier on a slightly larger scale, probably.
Oh Yeah... Quilting!
I honestly almost forgot about these photos… I finally (and I do mean finally) sewed the last seam for this quilt top, which I believe I was calling something like “September Stars”, because the colors reminded me of late summer.
Now it joins the stack of flimsies sitting, waiting, and hoping against hope that someday, one day, in the dim and distant future they might possibly be turned into finished quilts.
On that subject, I (again, finally) played around with the quilting machine and managed to finish quilting the “Use It Up” quilt that’s been sitting in the frame for longer than I care to admit.
I had been quilting the black sections and advancing the quilt, skipping the crumb-pieced rows for later. Now I finished quilting the black rows, took the bottom edge of the backing off the front rail (so the quilt was only attached at the back rail) and began working my way back up the quilt, filling in those crumb-pieced sections with larger-scale meandering.
I won’t say it went without a hitch… The system of going back up and filling in sections seems to have worked well enough, but the quilting machine still required periodic tweaking to get the stitching to an acceptable level—but it really wasn’t that bad. I shouldn’t have waited so long to deal with it. (Isn’t that always the way?)
Here’s a quick and blurry snap of it freshly off the rails, waiting to be trimmed and bound. (I haven’t inspected the back side. I’m just hoping it looks ok enough…)
For my own future reference, what we did to get it working better:
- We cleaned the encoder wheels with q-tips and a little mild detergent and water, followed by clean water.
- I lowered the hopping foot so at its lowest point it’s only the thickness of a credit card from the plate underneath.
- I rethreaded the machine.
- I had to loosen the main tension discs at one point.
- I needed to adjust the bars up and down as the quilt progressed.
- I also tried manual mode for the first time “for real”.
The main problem seemed to be that the hopping foot was too high up. As soon as I dropped it down, most of the problems disappeared. (Most of them. I still needed to lower the tension later on. Moral of the story: If the tension seems off, just go ahead and change it.)
More Tiny Glade
Still having fun with the sandbox game/diorama builder Tiny Glade:
