A Firey Sunrise

  I was up early enough to catch a fiery sunrise.  

My life this week has been rather mundane. The most exciting thing that happened was a trip to the eye doctor, and that wasn’t all that exciting! But the trip home was! 

It was dark and wet and we came upon an accident scene.

As we were flagged past, there was a semi on the shoulder of the road with all kinds of damage down the driver’s side. It looked to me like it slid on its side but he could’ve done the damage going off the road for all I know. 

But one thing I do know for sure is that driving past in the dark is not conducive to making pictures. Did that stop me from trying?

NO!

See!

“What did the eye doctor say?” I know you’re curious.

He said I have excellent vision.

       “If I pulled 100 people in from the floor, (we were in Walmart Vision Center) your vision is better than 99% of them. In fact, most people wouldn’t even complain about the little bit your vision is lacking,” he said. “But just because the tests all say your vision is good doesn’t mean it does what you want it to do,” he explained.

And it doesn’t. When I’m detailing something, anything, I need a little help. So, I wear cheaters. Here’s the thing. My insurance will pay for a pair of glasses for me, I like to wear glasses (I know, I’m weird), so I might just as well get a pair of glasses. It took me a few minutes to make him understand that I wanted clear lenses with bifocals.

“If you’re going to do that, why not put this little bit of help in the lens?” he asked. 

He wrote out the prescription for me but it was late and we wanted to go home. I’ll order the glasses another day.

I finished Papa’s box. I know it looks... I don’t know... strange, messed up, something, but it truly doesn’t look that way. It’s the light. I used a liquid glass to protect and shine and that makes picture taking next to impossible. At least to get a decent shot. The letters are deep blue, to match the inside felt, with gold highlights and depending on how the light hits it you see either blue or gold. 

The only other thing I did this week was more practice watercolor sketches. Some of these are fifteen-minute works of art...

... and others took more than an hour as I followed along with a tutorial. 

Regardless of which kind I’m doing, I’m not as careful as I would be if I was working on a commission or a gift. I expect my Christmas cards to be better than my practice pieces.

When I saw Christmas sheep, I thought of my beautiful friend Jody. She loves sheep and at one time had a whole herd of them.

I painted sheep.

It was something like a half-hour tutorial. 

“The easiest way to do sheep faces is to make two U’s,” she said and demonstrated. Then she got a kick out of making U’s on ewes.

I wasn’t happy with how my sheep were coming out and I guess it shows because I made one of my ewe’s U’s upside down! I made a frown — very unconsciously. But once it was down, I was stuck with it. 

I thought Jody might get a kick out of these awful sheep and I sent her a picture.

She laughed.

And added a thought bubble above the sad sheep. “Get that bird off my head!”

I guess if I had to mess up and put a frowny mouth on one of them, I picked the right one!

Another person I thought of while scrolling through Christmas themes was California Susan. She loves Paris and I found the Eiffel Tower in snow. I had to try it.

This is another one of those hour-long tutorials. Part of my problem is Michelle, the lady doing the tutorials is working on a much larger canvas and she’s working in acrylics. The techniques are different for watercolor. Silver lining? It gives me experience in problem solving. I actually enjoy the challenge.

Michelle is fabulous! She uses markers to show you how to draw. That’s fine and dandy if I’m using the same size canvas! When she says, “Find the center and come down three inches,” I’d be off my paper! So, I gotta eyeball how far she comes down and guess. I think I could’ve done a little better on the tower but that’s why this is called practice! Another aspect in working with a much smaller canvas — or paper in my case — is I can’t achieve the amount of detail she often has in hers.

All of the hour-long ones I’ve done were done by following video tutorials by Michelle The Painter. The thing I like best is the way she teaches you free-draw by using markers and explaining every step of the way. I showed you one last week that was one of Michelle’s, too. The cute snowman with the cardinal on his carrot nose. She did a background on hers but I didn’t want one, so I skipped it. And it’s my painting so I get to do it the way I want to do it.

Videographers, such as Michelle, make money on their tutorials either from sponsors, or by the sale of their own products, like brushes or paints, or by getting people to subscribe. They call their subscribers, Patreons. 

Michelle has so many free tutorials that I could paint her stuff for a long time and not run out of things to paint. Nonetheless, I decided to become a Patreon member. She offers three levels of support, each with its own perks, and I took the lowest, cheapest level. At two dollars and eighty-six cents a month (I paid a year in advance), she’s not going to get rich from me.

“Why subscribe when she has so much free stuff?” I know you wanna know.

There are videographers out there who only dangle a carrot in front of your nose. “If you want to see the full video tutorial, join my Patreon channel,” they say.

      I’ve never been tempted to join any one of them.

      Michelle is very generous with her free content and I wanted to show my appreciation. Now I have access to tutorials that aren’t available for free. There are some really cute things there to paint, too, like Santa on a train, as well as more serious stuff, like a buck in the middle of a snowy forest, or a fall landscape of a tractor in the middle of a field.

       I may not renew next year. That’s too far away to see.

       And another reason I decided to join is because my craft fund has a few extra bucks in it right now, thanks to my last watercolor commission, and I wanted to spread the wealth.

       Painting other people’s art is something I’m only doing for fun. I want to paint from my own photos — and I’ve done a few of those. I’m thinking that one of these days I’ll start painting on a larger scale. But for now, it’s just fun to knock out a small size in a short amount of time. And I still learn something every time I pick up my brush.

       Oh, that reminds, me — and makes me laugh. I’ve got... I don’t know, four or five containers full of paint brushes sitting around my craft room.

      “Peg! That’s not a craft room — it’s your kitchen!”

      Okay! Okay!

       Despite having all of these brushes sitting around in tins and jars on my desk and on the shelves in my kitchen/craft room, I ordered more brushes this week. I ordered a set of liner brushes. I do like my details, and they’re hard to get unless you have a good detail brush. And believe it or not, brushes do wear out. They’ll get paint up in the ferrule and the bristles will splay out, never to be together again.

       Tiger, for whatever reason, loves paint water. At least twice this week he helped himself to a drink from my paint jar. There was one day I had just a clean water sitting there and he wouldn’t touch it.

       Weird.

Look at the turkeys that came through our yard!

My friend Jody, who had the sheep, has a couple ponds on her farm. We’ve been in a drought situation for several weeks. This week she sent me a photo of an eagle in a tree overlooking the pond.

       “The water level in our lower pond is so low it uncovered a dead fawn. Can't tell how long it had been there since it was in water and I don't care to get close enough to see why it might have died. Yesterday a bald eagle must have noticed it, too. I saw the eagle as it flew by our dining room window. Maybe it will return.”

        It did and she was able to snap this photo.

        Eagles can be opportunist feeders, which means they will take advantage of a free meal when they find one. 

       We had snow! Not even enough to measure here at our mountain home. Other places, not even ten miles from us, got eight, ten, twelve inches of the lovely white stuff, and unfortunately, some of them have been without power for the past three days.

“How’s Lamar?” I know you’ve been wondering how he’s doing after fracturing six ribs.

Lamar was just starting to feel better with less pain when he went in for a follow-up x-ray to see how he was healing. They don’t read the x-rays right away and when they do, they send the results to your doctor. We were all concerned when the doctor called the next day. He’d set up an appointment at the hospital for Lamar the very next day. 

       “Something must be wrong,” Miss Rosie said. “They never get you in that fast.”

       “And he didn’t say what it was?” I asked.

       “No, just that we need to be at the hospital at 2:30.”

        What they found was the lining between the lungs and the ribs was full of fluid. It’s called a hemothorax. They drained off 700 ml, which equals a bottle of wine. The doctor told him that without that cushion of fluid, he’s going to be in a lot more pain... and he was! They’re sending the fluid away for testing to see if it was a mixture of blood and fluid or all blood. If it’s all blood, he has to see a thoracic surgeon, because if blood is allowed to stay in there and it dries, it makes a crust like the skin of a grapefruit that will make him short of breath for the rest of his life. We’re waiting on those test results. Otherwise, Lamar goes back in two weeks for another x-ray to see if the fluid has returned.

        Let’s call this one done!