I was lucky to visit Michigan twice in May.  Once to see my family.  My step-father lives in the same house in suburban Detroit where I grew up.  Nostalgia.  And, then my brother and partner live a bit north--he returned to Michigan after many years away. 
The second time, I travelled with a friend and stayed as a guest in her family's summer cottage.  Up north.  I took my paints, and the the piling was the best of the the sketches that I tried.  I had not painted plein air in ages.  (Who am I kidding, I'm barely painting...).  The second is a small abstract where I was trying to use up the paints.  

If you are wondering, no I'm not going to be a collage artist.  But, it was a fun experiment, and provided a puzzle fix for my brain.  How do you solve for a piece of art that is not working?  Or, more fundamentally, how do you know when a piece of art is not working?  These are good questions,  and I am not sure that I am always able to articulate the answer.  For most of the cards above, I do know that the fundamental compositions were off.   Did collage solve the problem?  I do like the cat.  

Why has it been more than a year since I've sent around a newsletter?  Well.  I just left my job.  Friday, April 29th was my last day at Crowdbotics.  Fabulous group of people, but I needed a break.  I am very lucky to be able to do this.  Ultimately, I would say you can not ignore or work through non-work stressors--they will catch up with you in the end.  

Puzzles:  Do I play wordl?  You bet.  Also, Spelling Bee.  Soduko.  Love a crossword.  Happy to do a jigsaw puzzle.  Am always available for a good game of Scrabble!  

Continuing on with the same palette.  If you're wondering, I'd just driven to Columbus, OH to pick up a kid, and this his how the fields look, lines converging at one place.  I like this much better than the bouquet.  It's more soothing.  
In other news, I can not figure out how to constrain this to the the first paragraph.  It is carrying the entire post into my newsletter.  

In March, my husband I celebrated our 28 year wedding anniversary.  Yay!  Let's see:  4 dogs, 5 states, 2 cats, and 2 kids.  Whew!  The celebration included a bouquet, and I pulled one rose and stuck it in a vase for a painting. 

I mentioned in a recent post that I had cleaned out my palette and added a tiny number of colors?  Well, I've also added back phthalo blue red scale (one of my all time favorites) and quin (oh, dear, quin one of the reds--either quin qink or quin red-- a mistake not to write it down at the time.).  
Worse, I am not liking either the lunar violet or mayan blue.  They are too...hmm...dark for my palette.  Maybe.  I will not quite give up yet.  I didn't like my first iteration (below), so today I decided to try and make it more interesting to look at by adding caran d'ache crayon.  Still not sure.  

I made a tactical error when I laid this out--can you guess what it is?  That's correct, there's no way to crop the page so that I'm not sacrificing other pieces, like the one I did last week, which you can see in the upper left-hand corner.  Dang it.  What a boneheaded thing to do.  
It was fun to paint, though.  Love pears.  Especially love that their shapes are very forgiving.  My husband was commenting that we still have as much fruit as when both kids were here.  Maaayyyybbbeee.  I do like fruit!
It is March 1, and the daffodils are starting to take a careful look.  It's a good thing, too, since the temps are supposed to be well below freezing tonight.  I also saw some crocuses when I was out for a run last weekend.  I'm so slow, that I have enough time to survey every square foot of foliage I pass.  
This is the same palette as last week.  Check here if you're interested :) ....

Today, I spent some time cleaning out my palette.  I had to resort to a wire brush, and the paint was still very, hmm, attached.  When I was done, I pulled out some paint that I bought at Daniel Smith in 2019.  It was from a visit to "the store" in Seattle; my son was with me and having a 16-yo tantrum and would not get out of the car.  I think we had to park illegally, so it was a hasty visit and there was no rhyme of reason to what I bought.  I've also thrown in cobalt teal blue, which I've really wanted to paint with of late.  
Colors from Daniel Smith:  Indian Red, Mayan Blue, Lunar Violet, and Phthalo green turqoise.  Also, nickel azo yellow, which I had--why did I buy more?  No idea.  
I tried not to put out too much paint so that I don't end up quite as locked in.  We'll see.  

Sigh. I am javing issues trying to vet this going o my phone.

Sold yesterday, via etsy. It is always super flattering when someine takes any kind of risk to purchase art without seeing it in person first. I'm equally shicked when people tell me they read what ive written.

I have two John Pike palettes that I use, and I laid them out several years ago.  Then I found that I don't have the colors I like to use together grouped quite right.  I'm trying to clean them out without tossing the paint.   

Just in case you're interested:  Isoindine yellow, Ceruleun chromium, carbazole violet and undersea green.   I ran out of the blue (ceruleun) before I could finish.  Darn (since it would have made my series more consistent) and yay (since one slot in the palette is cleaned out).

You should not be falling over since I've posted twice (TWO TIMES!) in a few days.  Go me :). 

Square bought Weebly in 2018.  I am obviously paying attention, ha! I am willing to give selling through my website on Weebly a try.  I'll start with this small work to kick off the new year. 

Next I have to figure out how to get my newsletter with my blog posts.  How hard can it be?  (I can hear you laughing. )

I hope 2021 is shaping up to be a great year for you--my goal is to paint a little bit more.  It is good to have goals.