First Blooms

The Buttercups are in bloom!!

My husband picked these flowers from the forest near our home.

The arrival of sweet, golden Buttercups must mean Spring is on its way in the Pacific Northwest. Hurrah!

I wrote this haiku to celebrate these first blooms in my art journal:

Golden petals show,

Announcing Spring’s arrival,

A forest treasure.

Next, I added quick mini collages. I enjoy experimenting with color combinations, texture and balance.

I was able to get outside and take two short walks this weekend. My hip is doing great!

I hope you are all staying well.

Cheers! 🙂

Illustrated Recipes

I’m enjoying the assignments for Carla Sonheim’s year-long class, Words and Pictures.

This assignment was especially fun because I enjoy cooking. 🙂

My hubby helped me make this recipe in the crock pot last week since I get tired standing fairly quickly with my hip. I cooked it on low for 8 hours.

We made it without the wine and just added more broth. It was really delish!

For the second recipe, I experimented with tissue paper and gelli-printed papers. Plus, a few other scraps of purchased paper:

I look forward to Spring and fresh rhubarb in my yard so I can make this recipe.

Do you have a favorite recipe you like to make in the Spring? I’d love to hear about it!

Cheers! 🙂

Topiary Tales

Topiary tales…

Cloud shapes floating in the sky,

What weird bird am I?

There is no right or wrong answer… Lol!  I look forward to your bird names. 😉

Our grass is finally turning green and the trees are budding, Spring has arrived!  Hoorah!!

Happy weird bird Wednesday!

Cheers! 🙂

P. S.  What animals do you see in the clouds?

Painting Tulips

I am in LOVE with the flower photos and gardens of my sweet, blogging friend, Ali at The Mindful Garden!

She grows the most gorgeous flowers in her yard!!  And takes stunning photos of them too!

With her permission, I tried to paint some of her tulips yesterday in watercolor.

Here are my process photos:

Watercolor is a difficult art medium for me.  Perhaps I struggle too hard to make my flowers look “real.”  And yet, I always feel like I learn to “see” my subjects a little clearer when I try to draw or paint them.

I do hope you check out Ali’s blog!  Her gardens are always a delight to my senses!

Cheers! 🙂

A Spring Wing-Ding

I discovered this weird bird in my backyard this week…

A Spring Wing-Ding

It was “hamming” it up in preparation for an Easter brunch!

Happy Weird Bird Wednesday!

Cheers! 🙂

An Inside View

Thank you all for your kind words of support for my hip surgery.  I am doing amazingly well.  I still get tired but am able to walk without any support and have very little pain.  I get my stitches out this Friday and hope that I will be given the green light for driving!

I have a little something different for today’s weird bird…

Birdhouses!

Our snow is finally melting and it looks like Spring is on its way!  This makes me think about birdhouses.  Plus, I have been making mini house collages in Carla Sonheim’s 2019 Year of the Collage class.

I created these eccentric birdhouses in my sketchbook recently.  I limited myself to using a circle and 2 other collage scraps for each one.  I randomly glued them into a square and then went back and added details with a pencil.

One of them looked like it had an inside view.

This inspired me to create this collage from a variety of magazines:

An Inside View of a Birdhouse

What kind of weird bird do you think lives here?  I know it is a bird with extremely good taste as the framed chicken is from a Klimt calendar!

Happy weird bird Wednesday!  

Cheers! 🙂

Where Is Spring?

It is hard to believe that Spring will be here in two months where I live in the Pacific Northwest!

We recently got about a foot and a half of new snow!  So pretty when it is fluttering down from the sky but not so pretty when the snow plower piled the driveway with a huge berm yesterday…Ugh!

I finished my doodle from last week!  YAY! 😀 If you didn’t see that post, you can find it here:  A Little Doo-da-ling

It was super fun to work on it a little each day when I had a few minutes:

And the finishing touches:

I added two colors of color pencils to complete it.  I’d love to hear what you think!

Happy Friday!

Cheers! 🙂

The Spring Sandwich Puff

Since Mother’s Day is this weekend, I decided to create today’s weird bird in memory of ALL mothers – birds and humans! 😉

Lunches and Brunches…

Recipes old and new,

I “cooked” up this bird…

In memory of you! ❤️

Happy Mother’s Day!

Cheers! 🙂

Three Spring Chicks

Since Spring is supposed to be here where I live in the Pacific Northwest…

I created these three Spring Chicks:

Maybe you’d like to see my creative process for today’s weird Wednesday birds.

I started with a watercolor background and pulled out some of its colors with paint sample cards.  The name of the paint sample for yellow was “Forsythia” which gave me the idea of Spring flowers!  And since Easter was last Sunday… I thought of baby chicks!

 

I looked up baby chicks on the internet for a reference.  Then I tore scrapbook paper for their bodies, cut old painted maps for their beaks and used three of the paint sample cards for their Spring hats.  I drew their feet with pencils.

I added some pencil shading, black pen for their eyes with white highlights and Posca paint pens for dots on their hats.  I used music notes for patches of flowers.

As I was writing, Happy Spring… I misspelled the word, “Spring” so I just cut the word out of the background and added the word, “Day!” (No reason to fuss…)

I created a few “Spring” flowers with more paint sample cards to complete my piece.  And added a sprinkle of buttons:

HAPPY DAY to you, no matter the weather or season!

Cheers! 🙂

Letter “S” Is For…

Spring!!  Can you hear the earth sing?! 

I was excited to see these tender green sprouts of chives making an appearance yesterday…

And my lilies can hardly wait for more sunshine so they can stretch out tender stems from a long, cold winter…

Rhubarb is seriously stunning in color and texture, wouldn’t you agree?  I can almost taste the Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp!  Yum!

And what about this shiny green moss?  It seems to have found a place to grow between these walkway stones!

I can see a bird head, how about you?  😉

Be sure to check out Ali’s blog, The Mindful Gardner

I can almost smell each flower’s scent in Ali’s photos and descriptions!  Her passion for gardening is like a sprouting seed after a long cold winter…

Cheers! 🙂