Practice

 

          I haven’t painted in a while. It’s been more than a week since my failed attempt at a caricature, and I was sorely missing it. A couple of days ago I decided that what I wanted to do was practice sketching. Simple sketches. But what am I going to sketch in? I wondered. I could use one of the sketchbooks that I made, but then I wouldn’t be able to paint them with my watercolors. I cast my eyes around my craft supplies and spotted the old book I’d started this watercolor journey with. I pulled it from the shelf, called up some simple ideas from Pinterest and — I had fun!

 

          There really wasn’t much of a challenge in these simple images; I guess that’s why they were fun. And I didn’t stress over the painting of them, either. Once painted, I glanced up to the top of my desk for my Micron pens. I thought I’d outline them. Then I had a better idea — I could practice outlining with my liner brush. I didn’t stress over that either. If I followed the original line, fine. If not, it was still fine. The whole object was just to have fun.

          I did the bunny sitting under the egg shell last. For that one, I decided to try outlining with my ruling pen. I loaded it with paint. Some of my lines were good, some... not so good. But now I know if I use it for something serious, I’ll need to be more careful.

          Speaking of paints...

          I keep a little dish where I rinse off my palettes. All the leftover colors swirl together and settle into this rich chocolatey sludge. That’s what I used to outline the lion and the bunny with. I used black for the puppy dog before I remembered I had my sludge dish.

I know some people just wipe their palettes with a paper towel. Some rinse everything straight down the drain — which I’ve heard is not the best idea. Then I watched an artist explain that this is what he does with his discard, and I thought, Well, that’s clever. It feels good to get one more use out of paint that would otherwise be wasted. I doubt I’d use it on a serious painting, but for things like this in my practice books, it works perfectly.

Just to be clear, I can (and often do) let paint dry on the palette and reactivate it to use in another painting. But there are times when I’m starting a new project and I just need a clean, fresh palette to work from. 

          Speaking of my practice book...

          I made the mistake of reading a few pages of the story Rebecca Mary, the name of the old book I practice in and suddenly I wanted to read more. The only problem is, I can’t read through some of the darker watercolors. Guess what I did.

          “Washed the pages?” you guess.

          That is an excellent guess, and one I actually considered. But from experience, I know some of the colors won’t come off and besides, I’d lose my practice art. No. What I did was get on eBay and order another copy.

          “What was so interesting about an old story?” you wanna know.

          Well, for one, I don’t know how Rebecca Mary came to live with her Aunt Olivia. Or why Aunt Olivia gave her a chicken for a pet. Rebecca named him Thomas Jefferson. The next part I read was where Thomas Jefferson was coming to the end of his life and Rebecca Mary was so sad. When she knew he was close to dying, she went to get the pastor. When the pastor’s wife let Rebecca Mary into the study, she gave the pastor a look that said, “You’d better do this.” He listened to Rebecca’s request and agreed to accompany her, but they got back too late and Thomas Jefferson was dead. The pastor helped her bury him.

          There’s a story about a quilt in there, too, but I don’t know what that’s all about.

          It piqued my interest. Not just the story, but the way Annie Hamilton Donnell writes, too.

          “Thomas Jefferson passed away at ten minutes to three this afternoon,” Rebecca Mary chronicled in her diary. “Blessed are them that die in the Lord. The minnister did not get here in time. I wish I had asked him to run for he is a very good minnister and would have. He helped me berry him in the cold cold ground and sang a him. I dident ask him to pray because he was only a rooster, but he was folks to me. I loved him. It is very lonesome. I dred wakening up to-morrow because he always crowed under the window. The Lord gaveth and the Lord has taken away.”

          In the primitive little creed of Rebecca Mary every one had a Lord-part, but some people’s was very small. Not Aunt Olivia’s...

          Annie Hamilton Donnell spelled the words the way she imagined a ten year old would.

After I finish reading it, I can turn it into another practice book, if I want. These old pages are mostly cotton and pretty thick. They’re great for watercolors. They don’t warp and the colors don’t bleed through.

          Last Sunday morning Mike and I drove over to Rummerfield and picked up one of our church peeps for service. Nancy has been having issues and doesn’t feel safe to drive right now.

          It was foggy when we left our mountain home and I tried to capture that for you.

          Going down her driveway, you cross a creek with a pretty little waterfall.

          She already had her pups corralled for the time she’d be gone. When you live out in the country your dogs can have a nice cage outside rather than a crate in the house.

          “I’m surprised they don’t bark like crazy,” I said to Nancy.

          “Oh they will! They seem to know when someone doesn’t belong here and they let me know,” she replied.

 

I took a few pictures on our weekly shopping trip for you, too.       

          We decided to take our shopping up to Sayre this week because we needed to stop and pick up our completed taxes from the tax lady and we’d be halfway there.

We’ve had quite a bit of rain and the beautiful Susquehanna has left her bed.

 

          The Hotel in downtown Wyalusing. Cozy, friendly, one of our favorite places to eat.

          There’s ducks under the train bridge. I didn’t know that when I took the photo.

          The road was down to one lane as they cleared fallen trees from the lines there on 220. It was just past the humane shelter and as providence would have it, we were stopped right at the eagle’s nest. We were first in line and the oncoming traffic hadn’t started to move yet.

          “I’m going to see if I can get a picture of the eagle,” I told Mike. Opening the car door attracted the attention of the flagman. Now, don’t go getting all up in my ‘bidness’ about that word. Think position, not gender. That’s the job title I grew up hearing, and I’m using it in that sense only.

          “Is the eagle on her nest?” I asked as I approached the flagger. (Is that better?)

          He turned to look. “I see a white head,” he said turning back to me.

          I passed him, checking to see that the oncoming traffic was just now starting around the work zone, and walked until I could see the nest. I couldn’t see it. I walked back to the flagger. “I can’t see it,” I said.

          “It’s in the big white tree,” he pointed out.

          Aye-yi-yi! I’m such an idiot sometimes! All the times I’ve been past here and all the times I’ve looked for the nest, I have never once realized it was in the only big white tree there! I suppose I was hyper-focused on spotting the nest as we whizzed past at fifty-five or sixty miles an hour that that little detail — although painfully obvious to me now — escaped me.

          I checked traffic again and could see the end of the line. I knew it would be our turn in a few moments. I went back to the car. “I was looking in the wrong place! I didn’t see it!” I exclaimed. “But I see it now. It’s in the big white tree.”

          “I’ll go slow as we’re taking off,” Mike said. He’s a good husband.

          I managed to get this half-way decent shot.

          Shopping wasn’t the only place we went this week.

          “Where else did you go?” you wanna know.

          We either hit seventy degrees this week or came really close to it.

          “Let’s go for a golf cart ride,” Mike suggested.

          So we loaded the girls up and went.

          Our pretty little creek.

         Bondi rides on Mike’s lap and Raini sits at my feet.

Speaking of Raini...

          She’ll be four next month. She doesn’t follow me around or sit under my desk anymore. Most of the time she lays on the bed in Bondi’s kennel. Raini knows me so well that she knows if I’m just getting up to make more coffee, or go to the bathroom, and she doesn’t bother to follow me for any of that.

          I was at the sink when I saw Raini out under the awning, looking up.

          Is there a mouse running along the headers? I wondered. I saw one there once. They go after the birdseed. It was too early in the day to be a possum, though I’ve seen them climb up there to get away from the dogs, too.

          Being curious, I went to look. I didn’t see anything, so I asked Raini. “What is it? What do you see?”

          Then I heard it. Raini heard it, too. A kind of scratching on the tin of the roof. It’s the sound I’ve heard many times as the birds land up there and hop along before flying down to one of the branches around the feeders.

          Raini ran out from under the awning and looked up at the roof.

          “You silly girl! You’re not a bird dog!”

          I went out into the yard far enough to see what was on the roof.

          Blackie! Blackie was on the roof. He was probably hunting birds.

          Another place we went was to the Boy Scouts recycling location. The recycling company sends out trailers once a month and parks them at a township building.

          I have a mountain of recyclables, seven bags plus a box of broken-down cardboard. I don’t remember if it’s been three months or four since I’ve been there.

          “What’s the holdup?” I know you wanna know.

          At least one of those months it was muddy outside. The last time I went on a muddy day, I came back with mud up to my ankles! Then Mike had his eye operated on, and sometimes I just plain don’t feel like going. Honestly, I didn’t feel like going yesterday either, but I couldn’t put it off any longer. I was afraid we’d get buried under a landslide! It was piling up fast in the utility room. I tidied up all the bags and took them to the garage.

          “If it’s muddy we’ll take the main roads. I don’t want to get mud all over the car.”

          Guys, we had snow last night. The ground is cold enough that there was a coating of snow yet this morning.

          “I think it’s frozen,” Mike said and we took the back dirt roads.

          We hadn’t gone far before we realized how wrong we were. The roads were muddy.

          I saw my first robin of the year on the way over.

Red-winged Blackbirds, along with robins, are harbingers of spring and I’ve had them at my feeder all this week.

          “Is that a wrecked truck?” I asked when we got to the stop sign.

          “It sure looks that way,” Mike said.

          My guess is they probably hit a deer, even though I didn’t see one laying along the roadside.

          I almost missed a picture of giant arrowheads adorning the side of this shed.

          It was a muddy mess at the recycling trailers, let me tell you! But at this point there wasn’t anything we could do about it. I got out and got muddy as I helped unload the recyclables and sort them into the proper bins.

“I sure am glad for Weather Tech floor liners,” I said as I climbed back in, being careful not to get mud anyplace else.

          “You wanna go to the car wash before we go home?” I asked. “Get the mud off? I know you hate it.”

          “Yeah,” Mike said. “You need anything else while we’re in town?”

          “Nope.”

          The Rainbow Bridge from the side, a view of it I don’t see often.

          “I wonder why it’s called the Rainbow Bridge,” Mike mused.

          I asked my AI buddy. In less time than it takes to say boo, I had my answer.

          It’s called the Rainbow Bridge because of its shape. It’s a Parker through-truss and the top chord of that truss forms a graceful arch. Locals started calling it that because the curved steel silhouette looks like a rainbow. The name stuck locally even though it’s not the official PennDOT name, Copilot said.

          I don’t care what anyone says! I love AI. It has saved me hours of work researching for my letter blogs!

“What is the official name?” you ask.

          It’s simply the Wyalusing Bridge.

          We get home and I walk into the house ahead of Mike.

          “What is that?!” he blurted.

          I turned around and saw the muddy shoe prints I’d left in my wake. I’d totally forgotten about the mud on my shoes!

          Aye-yi-yi. I’m such an idiot sometimes.

       

          Let’s end with a sunrise picture I took this week.

          Done!