Brushes and Layers

I'm finally getting around to learning about brushes and layers in Photoshop. Sure, I experimented all last winter making fatbook pages with photographic images and design elements that I mostly cribbed off the web but I have been studying the sites of various illustrators and trying to figure out how they do some of the things they do. I am so danged curious; I think I have to unravel every puzzle. So anyway, I met Kathy, a local artist who scans in her own drawings and then plays with them, she made me curious, and I found a few web tutorials (free of course) and this is my first project. I already had the quickly drawn image scanned into my computer (something I did months ago in preparation for a painting) and then I used brushes to make textures and chose colors and added text and a duplicate image a little offset and so on. Dang, FUN!

If any of you are more experienced at this than I am I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction to improve my skills. Do I just keep playing? Keep looking at the work of artists who are more experienced than myself? (I have a feeling that is the answer.) In October I plan to take Photoshop at Mac Camp but other than that I am all self-taught.

Only a few more days to prepare for Art in the Pearl. I completed 2 new paintings this week but I am still tweaking on them so it is too early to share. Instead I will give you pictures from the garden. The first is of a yellow watermelon that is finally ripe. These guys are smallish and very sweet and juicy.

Next come a couple of roses. The coral one is "Touch of Class" and has the most beautiful buds and shape of blossom. Unfortunately she lacks a powerful scent but we forgive her for that. She is long stemmed and high steppin'.

Next is the buttery, apple spice scented David Austin rose named "Graham Thomas". This rose grows to phenomenal size and is covered with blooms from May to late fall. Really an awesome rose.

We got our act together for a change and put some corn up for the winter. We scalded it first out on the deck on our Y2K outdoor burners, blanched it in ice water, then cut it off the cobs for the freezer. I didn't count the bags but there were a couple dozen at least and we still have another wave of corn getting ripe.

The last photo is of a honey bee's butt that squirmed its way into a blue salvia blossom. It struggled for quite awhile to get back out; that's how I was able to shoot a good picture. What a life; wallowing in sweet nectar all day and flitting from flower to flower. The busy, happy bee.

Time for me to get to work too. September is the month that always makes me think of getting down to brass tacks again; waking up earlier and reining in the lazy summer routine. It is my version of "back to school" (I always loved school) as I set new goals for myself and work to broaden my experience.

Blackberry Time

Summer is full on us here beside the Willamette River in Oregon. Quite near our house is a wonderful park where the Molalla River flows into the Willamette. Our entire family loves this park; it is the perfect place to bring a picnic lunch as there are many picnic tables under big, old shade trees and lots of parking near them. John and I got up early this morning to walk the park trails and pick blackberries. At this spot we saw a green heron (their legs are the unbelievable color of pale copper green) and a turtle sunning herself on a log in the river.

These are the blackberry bushes lining the trail in the park. The berries are just coming on now but soon there will be the smell of blackberries cooking in the sun all through the park. We make cobbler out of the berries every year. I will be taking them to some gatherings soon so will try to remember to post the recipe with pictures. (I know, I still owe you the Rhubarb Crunch recipe. One of these days when the world slows down a bit.)

In one place the trail winds along the Willamette. I think everyone with a boat and a pair of water skis was out on the river today.

Here they are. We tried to decide if we like them better than raspberries and couldn't make up our minds. John likes them better. I'd hate to choose.

Beautiful hot, dry summer. A golden field containing Queen Anne's Lace. On the other side of this meadow is a third river in this drainage; the wonderfully named Pudding River.

A couple of my favorite bloggers have illness in their families this week and I am so sorry about that. I can't stop thinking about them and about how I have grown close to them by visiting them daily on the net. One woman I do know from Artfest. She is an angel who rescues forsaken dogs and her husband is ill. The other I know only from what she has shared in her writing. Please join me in sending these dear ones supportive thoughts of healing and strength. We can only feel humble and small when illness strikes. Take care of your health now and make the most of every moment.

The August Garden

The summer is speeding by. This is the month that I make a new calendar for the coming year; it is a tradition that has gone on for quite some time. I have a coil binder that I use to bind the pages together after I have rubber stamped on the numbers and letters and painted the borders to my satisfaction. For some reason it gives me immense pleasure to touch these pages of the life that is coming and to give thanks for the time that may be allotted to me. I used one of my new fuchsia coils across the top and it looks wonderful. My only "date" so far is Artfest in March which I have optimistically penciled in.

Went for a walk through the beautiful garden this morning and shot some pictures to share. The bumblebees were bumbling, the hummingbirds diving and the crow calling to me to let me know that we are all ALIVE and blessed. These are the best of the treasures.

Stupice tomatoes. They have a short growing season and are the first we harvest. They are Italian I think and pronounced stoo-pee-chee.

This is a tall perennial sunflower named rudebeckia. It is tough, generous and a large presence at the back of the flower border.

The buttercup is my favorite squash. We make a wonderful soup in the fall with this squash. I can hardly wait. It is the deep, orange color of pumpkin when cooked.

You probably have sunflowers too but they are always a welcome sight in the summertime. You will only ever need to plant them once and the birds will thank you each fall by planting them again for the following year. We never harvest the seeds. They are just for the birds.

My dear friend and relative Christine from Denver gave me the wine colored hollyhock seeds one year when we visited her there. They have come up as volunteers ever since. Thank you Chris, we think of you every time we admire these beauties.

Gosh, the peas are making out with the sunflowers. Everything is in love with everything else. It is okay. Don't let nature's promiscuity frighten you.

Onions drying on the deck. Before this the slats held an enormous crop of garlic. Nice harvest, Mr. Farmer.
These are the right-side-up peppers but we also have some that are growing upside-down, with the peppers pointed up like ... like ... upside down peppers. The upside down ones are called chilis de agua. The farmer knows the names of all the chilis. He crosses them and grows new ones all the time. He grows many many many varieties.

We love to disagree about blue flowers. I was enchanted by them at first sight but the mister says they are not natural looking. I have 4 bushes of them now. Dont ever try to disagree with me. I'll go all j-cat and plant hydrangeas everywhere.

We are still swamped with strawberries. These small, long guys are my favorites. Extreme flavor and sweetness. I almost got a tummy ache this morning trying to eat them all.

Gladiolas that the birds planted. Truly. They came up from seed one year where none had been before. Now we have a big stand of them. They remind me of proper old ladies that go to church. Very formal and stiff they are.

The queen of the weed kingdom, showing off again. She is such a ham.

I couldn't resist a verdant overview. Cucumbers and chayotes in the foreground, corn in the middle ground and douglas firs in the background.

The corn is ripe now. Time for the dish with the peppers, onion, butter and sweet corn. Soo-weet Iowa corn as Liz likes to say.

Echinacea blooming sweetly. Such hot, improbable colors. Nature's all dressed up today.

We have canna lilies that remind us of the Yucatan where we first saw them.

This is a shot of John's clever composting system. He made a cage of inexpensive pig wire and layers leaves collected in fall with the scraps from the kitchen.

The bees adore the flowers on the artichokes. So do I. This is my favorite purple I think.

Another artichoke blossom. I recently read that eating artichokes was like trying to make a meal out of licking postage stamps. That was pretty funny but I thoroughly disagree. I love to make a meal out of licking lemon juice and butter off of artichoke leaves. And then the heart! Oh, that's heaven.

The trees are loaded with apples again. Maybe we'll have enough to have a cider pressing party this fall.

This is an artichoke that didn't produce a choke to eat this year but it is pretty anyway. Sort of like a bromiliad with the red center.

Put it altogether and you have dinner ... here we have succulent beans, blanched and then tossed with sage, parsley and lots of garlic and olive oil in a frying pan for the finish. The cucumber salad has lemon basil, onion, tomato and rice vinegar. Yum.

Reverse paintings

These little guys are painted on the reverse side of archival acrylic (mylar) sheet. The one of the vase was then placed over a sheet of paste paper that I made which gives it an undertexture that doesn't show up very well in the photo. I was experimenting with drawing slowly and intuitively in waterproof ink directly on the mylar. Then I painted acrylic over the drawing and flipped the mylar. So the colors are very vivid. You need to enlarge this first one to see the paste paper detail. I love a small vase with a sassy attitude.

The second one is of a subject I love; woman cuddling kitty who knows how to get everything in the world out of its smitten owner. Humans are pretty smart but cats really have the inside line on how to get their needs met. I call this one "Catbird Seat". It is a reverse painting on mylar also but with only a white back board.

Have done a couple dozen of these little paintings in the last 2 days. I just sit quietly at my drawing table and put my head down and float away. The ideas come often only after the pen starts moving. The first line suggests the second and so on. It is a free and zany way to work and you always discover things you did not previously know. I dont always work this way but on the little sketches I often do. OK, back to the studio.

Knee High By the 4th of July

I actually took the garden shots on the 3rd of July but what-the-hey, the corn is reaching for the ceiling in this hot, dry weather. The farmer will harvest garlic today, saving the most primo heads for next year's seed crop. The first shot is the corn patch to show that we have attained the knee high by the 4th of July goal and then some.


The second photo is of the garlic patch. We are huge believers in the healing and health-giving properties of garlic. Plus if you dont use huge amounts you just aren't much of a cook, in my opinion. It is a natural anti-bacterial. I credit my fortunate good health to massive quantities of garlic. It is one of John's favorite things to share with his friends.


While I was out in the garden I had to stop and admire the beautiful flowers on the lowly potato plants. John is growing Yellow Fins and a fingerling variety called Yellow Rose Fin this year. He tries new ones all the time. We love our 'taters.


We are flush with berries. I got a shot of blueberries for the folks that live in other climates and hemispheres to enjoy. Almost everyone around here (Oregon) has their own to admire.


The fruit ladder is still out. I thought it was pretty.


And finally a shot of the peas, doing their best to climb to the moon up in the left corner of the picture. This was taken at dusk. These are sugar peas that climb up a trellis and are best eaten raw. They are sweet and tender, even when overly mature. I like them better than candy. (But not better than Rhubarb Crunch which I made for our guests on the 4th).


I took 88 shots on the 4th of the big party here but this is one of the best of the two grand-puppies looking angelic. Right after I took this they hurled themselves on each other and rolled around the yard playing. It was a terrific party and everyone helped with the work; the handsome grandson oversaw the ice cream making, the ever agreeable son-in-law did the barbeque duties, the women brought various picnic dishes to share and farmer John cut the big, cold watermelon. The sun smiled down on all.

Garden Update: Why I Moved to Oregon

In 1971 I made my first trip to Oregon in October. It poured rain for a solid week and was cold and gray the entire time. It was a sharp contrast to my home in Arizona. I returned to my life there (working full time at Motorola assembling widgets for the space program) and didn't think much about Oregon until June when I returned for another vacation. This time the weather was sunny and the garden of my friend was like Eden. We sat under her apple tree doing crafts on a picnic table and in the evenings we gathered herbs and greens from her garden for our evening meal. My friend was a maker of wine and a canner of fruit and a baker of bread - we were hippies! And oh my God if I didn't fly back to Arizona and put my house on the market and quit my job that I had held for nearly 8 years and move directly to Oregon. This is why. Raspberries.

And strawberries. (They are a weed that comes up everywhere that I am growing roses and under the peach tree and the fig tree. Hard to believe, I know but the birds eat them and scatter the seeds and they are very prolific.) We don't spray so we get volunteers. It is nature's reward to those who live in harmony with the earth. I picked these on Sunday afternoon, sliced and sugared them and by Sunday evening we had shortcake.


Our friend gave us a pot with a cutting of pinot noir grape. The magic gardener man put the pot in the shade of a rhododendron bush where it took root and grew up through the branches. This is our second year to have pinot grapes. I've made wine out of our other grapes but not these yet. Oregon is famous for her pinot wine.

Next come the onion blossoms. Aren't they beautiful? And so good in a spring salad.


The raspberries started ripening this week. These are growing through a soil sifter that John left leaning against the trellis.


Graham Thomas rose from the famous David Austin. Given to me by friends as a thank you gift for paintings I donated to the Doernbecker auction a few years ago. It is enormous and lusty.


Walking onions. They fall over when the heads are mature and the little babies tumble out on the ground where they take root. These two seem to be kissing.


Foxglove always seems like an ancient and dangerous flower. It came to us courtesy of the same birds that plant the strawberries. Must not be poisonous to them.


Another David Austin from the same source. This one is "Heritage" - extremely fragrant and has that twirling-quadrant form that I first saw in Paris in the garden of the Chartes Cathedral. I just love this one. The color and texture reminds me of a baby's skin.


My trusty man Hermanito taking a break out on the deck. He is old and sometimes grumpy with arthritis but most of the time a darling who asks for nothing more than constant attention. What a sweetheart.

That's the end of the Garden tour. I'll try not to do this too often but how can I resist when it is all so awesome and changes so fast? As I sit here I wish I had included my moss rose and the beans Kay and I planted the last time she was here. She soaked too many for herself so she brought a bunch of them to me and I poked them in and now I have bush beans coming up in my flower bed. My little green babies.