Garden Update
We’re not having the best luck with any of the tomatoes that aren’t cherry tomato varieties—but we’ve harvested several Japanese eggplants, some summer squash, a couple of ‘Gypsy’ mini bell peppers, and a handful of cherry tomatoes.
I’ve been stir-frying the eggplant and squash in olive oil, with some soy sauce and oyster sauce. Delicious (in my humble opinion)!
I chopped the peppers and used half in my latest big batch of “Wendy’s chili”. Also delicious. The rest of the peppers are in the freezer, waiting for the next time I make chili. (It won’t be long. Chili is one of my go-to freezer meals. So easy to use, and I could probably eat it just about every day without getting too bored.)
A Couple of Random Photos
Donald and I played Scrabble (the 8-tile version) last week, and at one point this was what I had available. I guess I’m easily amused, but I liked it. I think an eelhound would be one that catches eels and brings them to shore (or the boat), but maybe it could be a dog that’s just an exceptionally skilled and slippery swimmer.
Now that I look it up online, I see that it’s actually an established fantasy creature in some game or other, but I like my version better.
Speaking of hounds/hunds, here’s a photo of Frodo and Luna.
The story behind this is that Frodo has what we call his “air conditioner spot”. When the A/C is running and this door is closed, there’s a strong draft of air flowing through the gap at the bottom. Frodo loves this, so you’ll often find him lying here on a summer day. If he’s lying somewhere else and the A/C kicks on, he notices and (usually) immediately gets up and moves to “his spot”.
Well, this time, Luna must’ve felt the need for a refreshing breeze, too, because she wandered over between Frodo and the door and settled herself down, blocking the flow of cool air.
I thought it was funny (easily amused, remember?) and took a photo.
Sunflower Doodles
Something gave me the idea that I should paint/doodle flowers with faces. I’ve done it before, but this time I went bigger with the flowers.
I started without any strong plan except to paint daisy/sunflower-type flowers and add the faces in later. So I painted the flowers roughly, let it dry, then went over everything but the centers of the flowers with brown ink doodles.
At this point, I was “supposed” to doodle faces, but I just didn’t want to do it. The page sat there waiting for days while I procrastinated. Finally, I decided it wasn’t going to happen, so I filled in the centers lots of circles instead. (Sorry if it sets off anyone’s trypophobia.)
Not one of my favorites, but probably still better than if I’d tried to make faces when I didn’t want to. I wonder if the centers would have looked better with more uniformly shaped/sized “seeds”.
Simple Tree Doodles
I’ve done things similar to this before, but this specific page was inspired by this YouTube video.
Choose two or three shades. This time, I kept it very simple, as demonstrated in the video. Paint your tree shapes. Allow to dry. Go back over top with a black pen/marker to add textures, patterns, mark-making, etc. to the trees, as well as trunks connecting them to the ground.
I think I used a Uniball Vision Needle pen to add the details on this one. It’s a micro-tipped pen, with a 0.5mm roller-ball nib. That fine tip is perfect for making detailed lines, but not as easy to use for something like this, where I needed thicker, bolder lines. It still worked, but I wanted to try it again with a different type of pen.
I chose some slightly different greens for the second try, and I used a Zebra Zensations medium tip brush pen, but any thicker-nibbed black marker/pen would do, including a Sharpie.
I do think it was easier to get a thick, smooth line this time around.
Planning Ahead?
I watched this video about making birthday cards ahead of when you need them and decided it was worth trying. Sometimes I need a card and have to rush to get one done, so it does make sense to have a selection ready to grab as needed. My plan is to just make a couple of cards every so often when the mood strikes. Eventually I should have a good stash of them ready to go at a moment’s notice.
This one started with watercolor shapes, including some neon colors. Let them dry, then add watercolor details over some of them… Then I added even more details to the “wrapping paper” with some fine-tipped acrylic paint pens.
I also added confetti all over the page with the pens. I think it may have ended up looking too chaotic, but it’s just a card, so it’s fine! I might make another similar one without the confetti and see which I prefer.
The final touch is to add ribbons, bows, gift tags, etc. in black pen/marker. I also used a fine-tipped pen to add finer detail (outlines of the packages and confetti shapes).
I prefer the inspiration card in the link above, but mine is okay, too—just different and more on the heavy-handed side.
I decided to make another card inspired by the video—just a birthday cake with tall candles and a cake stand.
I had intended to make the candles lean a little more, but as it turned out, one is visibly leaning and the rest look more or less straight. Eh, it’s fine, but if I do this again, I might try harder to paint leaning candles.
Again, the base layer is watercolor. For the cake, I used the wet-into-wet technique to create a softer look. I somehow managed to put my hand into the wet paint and mar the white background, so I decided to hide that by adding pink and blue “organic dots” (i.e. imperfect circles) around the cake.
Another layer of darker watercolor went onto the cake after the base was dry, then I added details with a fude nib fountain pen, using the “Smoky Mauve” ink. I do like that color. Softer and more subtle than stark black and good for places where you don’t want a brown ink.
Again, I think I like the original better, but mine’s okay, too.
I’ll try to remember to keep making cards, every so often, so there will probably be more in the coming months.
Paisley, Please.
I don’t remember what I was looking for, but something led me to an image search of watercolor paisley. There were some nice patterned fabrics on the theme, which inspired me to try to doodle my own.
I started the first page with orange waterproof ink in a fude nib pen. (It’s “Honey Pot” in the Diamine Forever Ink line.) The doodle got kind of messy in spots, but it’s fine.
When it was time to paint, I didn’t want anything too dark that would overwhelm the orange ink, so I went for a 60s/70s-ish soft and warm palette of light orange, warm golden yellow, and a toned-down avocado/olive green. I was thinking of vintage sheets when I painted this.
As you can see, I didn’t try to paint perfectly, just roughly outlining the paisley shapes and letting a little white peek through in spots. It’s faster this way, and I like the effect, too. I added more layers of orange/yellow to emphasize the details of the flowers inside the paisley shapes.
That was fun, so I decided to try paisley again, but going the other direction. That meant painting rough paisley shapes first, then adding lines later.
I chose a couple of greens and kept the paisleys themselves very simple, with minimal detail inside—mostly flowers, circles/dots, and a few soft lines emphasizing the paisley shapes.
After that, I added “filler” in lighter, more watered-down greens. Lots of small, organic shapes that would lend themselves well to flower and leaf doodles.
When it dried, I went over the whole page with added detail in a green ink. I also added a few touches of white gel pen here and there. The ink made a huge difference in this one! I felt very “meh” about it with just the paint, but the ink made it something I’m actually happy with.
I might be done with the paisley for now, but it was a fun and easy “theme”, so maybe I’ll try it again sometime.
What's Your Bag?
This idea—purses—came from one of my jotted lists of prompts. The challenge is to fill the page with bags of all sorts. To address the small blank spaces between the purses, I added coin purses, zippered pouches, and then lots of keys with fancy keychains/fobs.
I used the orange ink again. It’s waterproof, so perfect for using with watercolor.
As before, I didn’t want anything too dark on top of this orange ink, because it could easily hide all the detail I spent so long adding. I felt like earth tones were the way to go on this page, so I mixed some soft golden brown, reddish brown, and a warm grey, then I painted in a quick and simple style. With so much detail already there, I didn’t think it made sense to try to add more contrast with the paint. Otherwise, I could have gone over with darker bits of paint here and there.
It’s not pefect, but like it!
That’s all for now!
