michelangelo, aesop and walt ... fern and dixie .....

yesterday's post is a quiz ... go take it! ... due date is sunday night ....

today, allison(not a dog) and fern (a dog) came to do art with me (not a dog) and dixie (a dog) .... interestingly, i never used pink paint and yet, my dog has a pink paint streak down her back ....

but while not playing with dogs (new blue bunny with a squeaker... chase it!), i got quite a bit of painting done ....(but i thought you didn't like rawhides... how did you eat the whole things so fast?) ...

(wait a minute ... is that little ball with a bell really a cat toy? ... i am so insutled .... i am six pounds of DOG not cat .... )

so ... here are three new ones .. all a petite six inches square of gallery wrapped canvas ... similar notion to the two in the quiz yesterday ...

hope you are happy .... boy.beck.artist just baked cookies ... i'm double chocolate chip happy .....

it's an art blog quiz!!

quiz day!

i spent the day today doing art at allison's .... rah for that, huh?

i completed two small canvases (not as much as i wanted, i think i talked too much)....

..... here, study them before you take the quiz :

and here ....

and here's the quiz....

1.pick which one answer is correct ...

a. e.beck.artist is overjoyed with both paintings

b. e.beck.artist loves one and hates one

c. e.beck artist likes one and isn't happy with the other

d e.beck.artist really doesn't care for either one, what was she thinking

e. i.the.quiz.taker doesn't care what e.beck.is thinking

2.explain your answer to question 1

3.if e.beck.artist was giving things away, would you want one of these, and if so, which one?

4.if e.beck.artist gave you one of these, what would you do with it.

take home quiz answers must be turned in to the comment section by may 2 at 9pm EST to count towards your final grade

tuesday stuff to think about ....oh wait ... it's wednesday ...

how does time fly by so quickly .... i thought i was doing my tuesday blog .. then realized i'd been to pottery so it must be wednesday ... can that be right? so soon? so fast ? it's almost may, huh? and almost summer, huh? almost 2011, huh? ....

so ... pottery today ... glazed four pieces .. some quite time consumingly detailed ... will pick up next wedn. i hope, so i'll show them to you then ....

and ... yesterday, after blogging, i uploaded 24 pictures of artsy joy to flickr .... the whole first page of my flickr, and some new on the next as well ... the paint brush assemblage from yesterday's blog post is over there ... and easy to look at enlarged (for you especially, darla) so that you can play i spy and actually find the ink nib or the blue screw ....


and lastly, i was telling a girlfriend about a particular quote that i have taped up in my kitchen ....so i took a pic of some of them and they are interspersed in this pictureful blog post ....

which is your favorite? why?

605 ...

just in case you pay attention to such things ... this is my 605th blog post .... clearly i missed my six-0-centarian post day , but i'm still accepting gifts, kind words, greeting cards, monk-e-mail, and money .....

on to the real blog post .. that just kept me from having to think of a title, huh?

so ... there are a number of pieces of art that i worked on and even completed at my kanuga art week that i haven't shown you ... but now i'm moving on .... this is a large blue'd canvas ... i think it is 36 inches square .. maybe just 30 ... but either way, quite large ... so i papered it and blued it and ran out of time ... so ... last friday, i went to my studio with every good intention to do this piece ... work on it ... finish it ... something ... but no ... never touched it once i moved it out of the way ....

instead, i did this ... a 12 by 36 canvas ... did the backgrounds with three or four green acrylics .... and then ... well ....

i glued on all my less-than-stellar brushes ....

it wasn't actually as simple as that ... prior to going to kanuga i sorted through my brushes ... soaked loads in alcohol to get them functional again .... and only took good ones on my trip .... so when i got back, i had a pile of brushes with character, brushes that had lived a hard life, brushes that tell a story .... so, i laid them across the canvas, with a plan of just doing brushes ..... do i put them on randomly?by size? height or width? ...but that seemed dull ... so i picked out a few oddities to add on ... and oddity begat oddity until i had a nice full canvas ... and i didn't even use all the retired brushes ....

so now it's kind of an eye spy game ... what do you spy?

artsy green things ....

i'm still milking my week away at art camp .... i've been blogging it for far longer than i was actually there .... allison and i had signed up for independent study .... but were in the same studio ... so we rename our space to co-dependent study .....

here is another painting project i did there .... greens and brown pieces ... please see the last post and you'll know that i was using raw umber (and only raw umber ... no burnt sienna)

i did six backgrounds .... greens on papers ... then painted loads of other papers brown ... and laid them all out ....

i sorted out where i wanted all the bits and glued them down ... and snapped pics .... but i think they aren't done ... there are issues with lights and darks and focal points and such .... so maybe a pop of another color ... and some words .... i'm not working on them at the moment ... but will ... to get them finished ...

below are the six of them on a bench outside the percival studio ... you can see two of the other huts in the grove ... (have any of you read the percy jackson and the olympian series? the huts in the round make me think of the huts at the hero camp ... except theirs would be way fancier ... having been created by greek gods and all) ... but i digress ... green paintings on a bench ...

once i figure out how to finish them, i'll snap more pics and show you ...

i did, in fact, go into my studio last friday with the intention of finishing these .... or finishing a giant blue canvas i started at kanuga ... but instead? i glued all my grody paintbrushes to a canvas .... maybe i'll show you that tomorrow .... we'll see ... you'll have to come back and check now that you know i'm in the blog every day habit, huh?

i like brown paint ....

today, the story of brown ....

go here, to look at the flickr set i made with some of my paintings where brown is a dominant feature ... go ahead, i'll wait ... go study them ... which is your favorite? are there any where the browness of it doesn't work for you?

while at art camp (got back more than a week ago, but i'm really milking it for all its bloggage potential) ... while at art camp, allison my artsy pal who traveled with me ... had some red issues ... and i joined her in trying to figure out the problem .... none of the reds were suiting her ... they were too pink, too orange, too purple.... just not fire engine red enough ... red is tricky, we determined ... and allison then painted papers with each and every red ...

that's a pic of all the red papers .... all different, huh?.... which is true red to you, we asked, and each had a different answer ... red is in the eye of the beholder ....

but this is a blog post about the color brown ...

allison: i need to challenge myself

me: paint with brown ( mighta been kinda snarky cause her art never has brown .. even her dogs are blue.... )

allison: brown? brown? why brown?

me: you want a challenge ... that's a challenge ... but you don't have to ... do yellow ...

allison: no, i CAN do brown.....

and allison grabbed a tube of brown paint out of her brown bin ..... and started painting papers, just like her red experiment ... that one looks like poop ... so she got another brown out of her bin ... that looks like poop ... and another squirt and some painting ... that looks like baby poop ... poop, poop, baby poop, gross poop, more poop ... does all brown look like baby poop, e?

well, no .... i in fact love raw umber SO much that i have bought the biggest jug of it available on the market .... i usually buy my fluid acrylics in 2 ounce bottles .... a titch bigger if i know i adore the color ... because fluid acrylics are pretty pricey .... but raw umber? i'd buy it by the gallon if it came that big .... i use it as a final coating on lots of paintings to give an even tonal finish (tip o' the day, though it's a rerun) ..... so ... i love raw umber golden's fluid acrylic ... love it ... want to marry it ... true blue through and through .... the one true brown of goodness ....

so ... does all brown look like baby poop, e?

no, it doesn't .... i LOVE raw umber ... have you tried that? what are you using .... and she took up the first tube ... burnt sienna .... and the next tube, different brand... burnt sienna .... and the next tube .... burnt sienna ... ok ... a jar ... burnt sienna .... and a fluid acrylic ... burnt sienna .... on the tenth or so brown she picked up ... she said ... this one isn't even open yet ... (wait for it) .... burnt sienna .... MORE baby poop .... and without a beat or another breath she said, it is baby poop i hate it here you take it .... like she was giving me a gift .... a brown baby poop gift ...

i don't want your baby poop paint ... the only brown i like is raw umber ... get your burnt sienna away from me .... and she flung it over onto my table .. here, it is yours ....

if you were me, what would you do?

a) throw it back

b) throw it away (i'm only just thinking of that option now)

c) put it in my own brown bin to end the brown-ness of the moment

d) grab a bucket, make a sign, set up a raffle to see how many people we could con into putting their name in for the most unloved and unlovable paint?

yup ... d .... start a raffle ... our new best friend, joan, was the first to join .... and then no one else joined ... and we found out she'd been threatening people ... they couldn't join the raffle cause SHE had to win .... so we made the raffle more tempting ... with mints (altoids, the curiously strong mint, actually ... oh my gosh, SO distracted ... altoids website has an arcade) ... and other not so fabulous things, like mini cereal boxes without cereal, and a squashed granola bar ... which i still think would taste just fine...... and ... as much as joan told others not to join, we had nearly 100 entrants ... 100 people willing to give that poop brown another chance .... or maybe they were partial to altoids like me (cinnamon are my way favorite) .... but joan told everyone she had to win ....

one day in fact, joan ran in, said : i REALLY need some brown paint ... and she snatched that brown right out of the raffle bin of gloriousness .... stolen ... not even surreptitiously (i did not get that spelled right on the first try) but brazen and loud .... and out she dashed with the brand new unused baby poop brown paint .....

we had a dilemma .... 100ish people were actually expecting us to draw for this raffle .... before our last lunch, i dug through the 100 names and found joan's .... ok ... i picked joan's name out of the bucket ... and i only cheated a little ... or ... well ... entirely .... and i felt bad about it ... so ... we made another bag of raffleness (no other altoids to give away, but we did have another squished cereal bar) ... and we real and true picked a name out of the hat ... i think it was an irene .... is that right? .... so we went to lunch and asked cute chris to announce our winners .... and we announced irene's name, oh! i thought joan was going to cry ..... and then he announced that there was another raffle prize too ... and he announced joan .... and joan came up to get her prize ... and was told she had to be in charge of the raffle next year .... ha! .... and she took her bag of goodness and was giddy with glee .... i won, i won, i won ...

so, too many burnt siennas, a goofy new friend, an unsanctioned raffle ... and a raffle to look forward to next year at art camp ... tra la la ...

do you like brown?

bff's, new bf's, ACKW, and other bits of lettery joy ...lj's

here's a new painting ... so that we can call it an art blog ... before i go off on an acronymical tangent .....

then, just a brief review of yesterday ... ten pears ... which one is you ... if you haven't played yet you should ... go to yesterday's blog post ... the comments thus far are quite clever .... you go be clever too ...

and today ... even though i have friday art to blog and saturday art to blog ... i am still recapping my week at kanuga .... ACKW (art camp kanuga week) ....

here's a new pic of me in the percival studio .... note my feet! ... you can read about them a few posts back as well ....

so ... allison , my abf (artsiest best friend, cause i have a couple bff's, but none close to her in artsy fabulosity), and i went to ACKW on sunday ... we set up our studio ... we danced with glee ... we were giddy with the impending joy of ACKW ... monday morning we started painting at COD (crack of dawn) ... we painted before breakfast ... how crazy is that ....i have never ever been a COD painter, but it was kind of liberating ... it felt like we were going to make the most of every minute .... MM (minute mindfulness... ) became a theme of the week) .... we painted all day .. on the way back from lunch we took the long way round the lake to get in a little exercise before a full afternoon of more painting ....

then, monday night, with our MM frame of mind, we decided to skip the evening entertainment and just paint into the night ... paint, paint, paint: that's what ACKW is meant to be, right ... but in our MM frame of mind, we made a mistake .... we should have gone to the monday evening program ... an artist who we had never heard of, joan fullerton (the artist formerly known as joan ... i'll explain that in a sec) was doing the demo.. after the demo, one hundred and thirty four people asked allison, my ABF, and i, if we had seen the demo ... what? no? why not? you would have LOVED her ... she's hysterical and talented and hysterical and funny and hysterical and interesting and hysterical .... well, we'd missed the chance to jump on the we love joan BW (band wagon) we'd missed that BW all together ... who is this mysterious joan that everyone thought that ABF and i would especially love because she reminded them of US in our giddiness (that US was just us ... i capitalized it for emphasis not acronymness) ....

tuesday morning, we went looking for the AWSHMA (artist we should have met already) ... joan, where are you? come to find out, her studio was directly across the grove from our percival house ... from our front door (which was always open except for the hour or two of COD chilliness) we could peer into her front door of her little studio house ... oh joy, we found joan! mid morning, for a painting break, ABF and i tromped the 20 yards over (30 yards? 50 yards? my estimation skills are weak) over to her house and said hello ... and explained that everyone said we would LOVE her ... and that we were so sorry to have missed her show/demo the night before .... we chatted ... we invited her over to our percival studio ... we showed her around .... and then we fought over who got to have her as the NBF (new best friend) ... allison doesn't really read my blog, so i hereby declare myself the winner ... joan is MNBF, not hers ... and MNBF (my new best friend) now even answers her emails with YNBF ....

here is a pic of a group of us in percival ... joan, MNBF, is second from the left ... looking quite serious ... though i never saw that serious face the whole ACKW ...

MNBF became a frequent visitor in our percival ... she spied on mr. grant for us, she came and ate our mints, she discussed the notion of cute chris hanging up a zip line between our studios, she walked to lunch with us, she talked to us about our work, she marveled that we could put so much stuff in our car and get it all to ACKW .... all in all, she was a marvelous, giggly friend ....

here is a picture of joan, MNBF, talking to other percival visitors while i was painting ... clearly she is amusing him!

so .... tomorrow, maybe i can tell you the story of brown, if you can stand another day of ACKW blogging .... or i can show you a few more paintings i did that week ... or maybe i'll just show you ALL of the paintings i did so that we can move onto the painting that i did yesterday ...

how many days in a row of blogging have i done? a lot i think ! not bad for me, huh? how many days in a row have you read? come back tomorrow ...

ten

.... today you get a picture of ten pears .... i just went to a cast party for my kids' play (they are the cast, not i) ... and am back to late to do a big blog ... so instead i'll leave you with this:

when i paint pears, i think of them as people ... so ... if all these pears are my friends, which one are you, and why?

joan is the seventh from the left .... she's a titch off beat and kinda little ....not too shady ... har ... i was meant to blog about her, MNBF ... but instead will do it tomorrow ....

what is perfect?

oh darn! i had a near perfect day today .... why is that an oh darn thing, you ask? ... well ... i had a near perfect (ya gotta say near perfect even when you think it was absolutely perfect ... just in case someone reminds you of a less than perfect moment that you'd chosen to not remember) .... so ... i had a near perfect day ... and now it is ten thirty and i'm just getting home and i haven't blogged yet ... and i'm on my blog-as-many-days-in-a-row-as-you-can-phase so i'm just going to give you something late and half baked and not preplanned ... basically, i can't regale you with a shoe story ... or a shoe-like story ... it's just too late for that ...

so i'll give you a glimpse of perfection ...

a. all my people woke up happy ... each kid woke up with a smile ...started the day with a spring in their step cause good things were brewing ...

b. my dog has been out of sorts since my trip last week ... and today, she finally seems back to normal ... i think she's let go of the grudge she was holding for me having left her for so long ....

c. tennis ... thursdays are usually tennis days ... and today was a glorious tennis day ... oh ... i'll do sub-bullets

1. perfect sunshine spring weather

2. coach's birthday party (turned 50, i bought him metamucil)

3. played with my favorite tennis partner

4. won 6-4, 6-4

5. hung out with cute tennis pals after my match while we watched others play....

d. helped out with set setup for the middle school play .... felt useful and helpful ... and fed the actors and crew ...

e. middle school musical, bye bye birdie, was oh-my-gosh-so-cute and wonderful ... my kids were bit players and still made me want to cry for joy i was so happy to see them singing and dancing on stage .... same twins that five years ago would have done ANYTHING to not be noticed (clearly not genetically mine for that bit) ....

f. after party, watching boy.beck.artist and girl.beck.artist with their pals .... i love how they are turning out ...

g. my day was so full and busy ... with all happy stuff ....

so ... now ... i need to go to bed ... but first let me tell you some art stuff ...

oh wait ... tennis stuff first ... my tennis coach said to me once .... the only difference between a rut and a groove is perspective .... and i think that is the most perfect saying .... i'm always going on about being in a good groove ... but that's just cause i like my groove ... when you don't like it, you call it a rut ... so ... art-wise ... i've been in a bit of a rut .... not a groove ... i'm kinda searching ... the trouble is i don't know what i'm searching for ... i'll tell you when i know though ... so ... i've been working to get out of my rut ... which could be a groove if i had a better attitude about it ... so ... here's a painting i did last week at kanuga, while trying to get out of the rut ... or maybe it was when i was trying to make my rut feel like a good groove ... (i'm not sure that even makes sense ... oh well ... )

the question then is ... does this painting look like more of the same from me? and is that good (a groove) or bad (a rut) .... or does this painting look fresh and new and good? (a new groove?) ....

any insight or observations about this painting would be greatly appreciated ....

and just to leave you ready for tomorrow's blog post ..... i believe that tomorrow i am going to have to blog about my new best friend ... who i call M.N.B.F.... and she actually signs her emails to me "your new best friend" ... you'll like her ...

the shoe story ...

ok ... here's the long version of the shoe story .... in may of 2007 ( wow, i am in my fourth calendar year of blogging, how 'bout that?) .... in may of 2007 i had on a pair of new clogs .... i am too cheap to buy birkenstocks ... so they were birky knock offs from payless shoes .. 12.99ish .... not bad ....( they've gone up in price now, i see) .... until i had a studio day in them ... and i spilled yellow paint ... on the nearly new shoes .... rendering them unwearalbe except for painting shoes ... so i decided to paint them all together ... and i blogged about it... and i had thesed totally groovy doodle shoes that i adored ... and have worn out .... the bottoms are nearly gone now ....

but i still wear them ... especially with jeans .... and in the winter ... but really, they are year round joys ....

so recently, i was cleaning my closet .... and ran across a pair of clogs ... again, not birkies ... but knock offs from walmart ... because yellow doodle clogs aren't always appropriate ... sometimes you want brown ....

ok ... huge diversion here ... i wanted to link up the "walmart clog" bit so you could get yourself some cheap knock off birky bits ... but WOW ... walmart online has some way groovy shoes ... way groovy ... like these ... but yikes they aren't cheap .... and then let's talk about these? they are one of my fave colors ... but really? not even i can quite imagine wearing them .... they do have them in other colors in case you aren't an orange girl ....

so ... back on track ... i was cleaning out my closet of some very worn out, soles nearly gone, brown suede (ish) birk knock offs from walmart ... and i put them in the goodwill bag ... little.e.beck.artist thought i was crazy ... paint them, mommy, paint them ... i told her i would, thinking i might not .... but then she was diligent in putting them into my kanuga bags .... and painted them ... orange ... because i'm an orange girl, as we've already established in this post .... and after THREE coats of paint to cover the dark brown, i wrote on them ...

one shoe has natasha bedingfield lyrics and the other has cheryl crowe .... love them .... if i had three feet, the third clog would be kelly clarkson, based on what i sang (loudly, poorly, and with total enthusiasm) while at kanuga .....

that left shoe has my family on the tongue/flap ... the other shoe has a sunshine ....

so ... as i've mentioned in previous kanuga-recap-posts .... i was there with my best pal al ... and my mom was there with her best pal taylor .....

i call taylor my other mother ... she's known me since before i was born (that's a long time no matter how you look at it ....) ... and taylor just loved that i paint my shoes .... and asked me to paint her shoes ... she brought me her oldish, black, heeled, not cheap knock off, clogs .... fancy shoes ... that she wanted me to paint ... but she wanted to still be able to wear them to "parties that i am supposed to look nice for but that i need to wear comfy shoes to" ... uh huh ... what am i supposed to do with that? no pressure .... so i bailed ... no can do ... and then that light bulb went off over t's head and she zipped off to fetch her old grody black sneakers .... and i painted them ... give them new life and ungrodiness (do you know how to say that word grow-dee .... it means kinda yucko) ... here they are in their new daisied splendor .....

well ... you can't paint shoes for other mother and not do them for first and foremost mother too! .... so here are the shoes i doodled up for my own mom .....

quite the shoe spectacle we all were .... and then ... because i'm just a contrarian at heart .... i wore two different shoes for the rest of the art week ... because i could ....

during one of the days, we had taylor visiting our percival studio .... and fr. jim came by from his own painting class .... we were his study break every day .... and taylor made fr. jim ooooh and aaaah over our shoes .... and then she said OH ... will you bless all our shoes ... not sure what made her think of that .... other than jim's a priest ... but i've never seen a priest and thought, oh, bless my shoes, please .... but .. there you go ... she asked and he said yes.... i'm not sure he even said yes ... he just went and prayed over them and bless these shoes and the feet that are in them ...

ok ... here's the short version of the shoe story ...

i painted three pairs of shoes while at kanuga ... my friend asked a priest to bless them.. he did .... now i wear non matching, holy shoes .....amen

it's a bird ....

so ... first to catch you up with my real life ... little.e.beck. artist found out today she needs glasses .. she is thrilled beyond compare ... hard as i tried, i couldn't convince her to get the green and purple glasses with flower cutouts ... instead, she chose a bright blue pair .. that are perfect on her sweet self ... mr.e.beck.artist said he was surprised that i didn't talk her into some brown or more neutral glasses ... neutral? brown? mr.e.beck.artist, don't you know me at all? pish posh, who needs neutral?

then... more real life .... boy.beck.artist and girl.beck.artist are in a play at the end of the week ... i did some painting and set work today .... the theater might be the calling i missed ... i would like to be a set designer ....

and, back to our regularly scheduled program ... the art blog .... this is installation three of my kanuga recap ..... now ... i'm not telling you the brown story yet .... or the my-new-best-friend story ... cause i don't have great pics of that .... i could tell you the shoe story (have you ever had a priest bless your art? how about your art shoes?) .... but instead ... i'll go with real artsiness .... a painting process ....

here's an 18 by 18 gallery stretched canvas .... with great britain maps on it .... nice to have a brother and sister in law in the land of more exotic maps .....then i stenciled on some letters ...

white letters no less ... have i ever done white letters before .... i'm not sure i have ... very subtle ... and that's not my usual modus operandi (woohoooo, throwing in some latin) .... nor is it anywhere in my usual modi operandorum (now that's just geeky, knowing the plural ...) .... but, i was working on subtle .... it was an effort ... but turned out to be a worthwhile effort ...
so, i put some light blue glazing over england and my white stenciling ....
then i cut out a bird silhouette (spelled that correctly the second try) .... and tried on a nest for size ....
in the above pic, please note the ubiquitous diet coke (breakfast of champions too) .... and the writing on my table ... i spent much of my time writing down song lyrics .... handy that you can rewind and pause and play and rewind and play and pause a bajillion times til you get the words just right .... poor allison had to listen to the good lines of pocket full of sunshine so many times cause i was writing so slowly ....

and then here's the final pic ... more subtle than my usual?
it makes me happy ... an empty nest full of promise ... full of what's going to be ....

that's day three of i'm-blogging-lots-of-days-in-a-row-for-you ..... see you tomorrow ... leave me a note so i know you were here .... love, love ....

a week away ...

so ... my week at kanuga watermedia art workshop was a bit on the giddy side .... as you might know from my last post .... lots of laughing and dancing ... but i did paint ..... so rather than tell you the brown paint story .... or the bit about the painted shoes (complete with pictures) ... i'll show you a real painting's process ....

here's a petite canvas ...well... petite for me ... i think it is meant to be 8 by 16 ... but actually is 8 by 15 .... how imprecise the art world can be!
it is a commission .... i put on dictionary pages, turquoise glazing ... and light purple letter stamping for some added texture, color and interest ... then i pianted on the dark blue line .... horizon line, table line, a wire .... just a line to anchor my pears .....

below, you can see the first purple pear added ....
i have clipboards full of painted papers ... so i'd just chosen a good blue and a good purple ... because the commission was for a pear family ... and the twin daughters' favorite colors are blue and purple .... one is a blue girl, and one is purple girl ..... so i made the parents blue and purple too ....but each have a titch of the other color too ....

below, you can see i've mat-mediumed on the pears .... spell check is saying that mat-mediumed isn't a word .... it is though .... the synonym is glued .... i glued on the pears .... you can also see in this pic my favorite feathered paintbrush and raw umber liquid acrylic (jumbo sized, i love it so much) ....
and here is the final pic ... which is not as subtle as the actual painting .... i added some light from the left to shine on the pears ... and some shadow beneath .... and those stems, which in a pear family are the smiles .... i sure hope the pear family that ordered this up likes the family portrait ....
and one last pic ... this is allison's view of the entire week ... me with bad hair, a painted sweatshirt, and a purple apron .... surrounded by my most important things: brushes, paints, diet coke, country crock butter tub that was bought in the jumbo edition 10 years ago solely for its art potential .... do they even sell country crock anymore? i've moved on to something else!
so there you go .... something accomplished during my week of art joy .... in between the singing, dancing and socializing ....

re entry .....

so ... i'm back to my usual life ... which is lovely ... but it is not quite as absolutely easy blissful as last week was .... re entry was rough .... i pretty much returned home and acted like a slug .... enjoying being with the e.beck.family, but not really getting anything done ... like getting my suitcase unpacked ....or, eep, even out of the car, for that matter ..... so, today, 48 hours after arrival home, i got the sweet e.beck.family to help me unload the car of suitcase, canvases, paints and the sundry things (wheat thins) that had made my trip with me .... prodigious amounts of artsiness were trundled out of the car .....

downloading pics tonight seemed like a good way to accomplish something and enjoy the joys of last week's trip ..... here are the first five pics off my camera... and two from allison ....

allison and i left for kanuga on sunday afternoon for our art workshop week ... half way there, we called my mom to tell her we weren't going to get there in time for dinner .... would she check us in? and she did ... and she told us that we were going to have our studio set up in the percival building .... great name huh? let's paint in percy, 'kay? ....meet me at the percy place, kay? .... what's happening tonight down at the perce? ..... i had thought we were getting another spot and was ecstatic that we were getting percy ... it was BIG for two artists to spread out in ... i did, in fact, do the happy dance while truckin' on down highway 25 from south carolina to north carolina (life is a highway and i want to ride it all night long ....).... it was the first of many happy dances that day .....

once we arrived at kanuga, we dumped our suitcases (full of such inconsequential items as clothes) and dashed off to percy ... here i am .... posing after my preliminary percival dance ....

once at percy, our car spewed forth two studiofuls worth of artsy joy .... darn that spell check ... it says studiofuls isn't a word .... i really should write the e.beck.dictionary, huh? .... i digress .... so ... walk into percy ... do the happy dance .... unload the car .... do the happy dance ..... set up the room to look like a studio ... do the happy dance ....

walk down to the balthis building to see where everyone is ... do the happy dance ... listen to the evening's entertainment, singer who paints, painter who sings, barbara bailey hutchison .... do the happy dance ... she rocks ... it was a happy dance kind of day ....

here's a pic of me surveying my new domain ... pre-unpack ....i think i was seeing if the furniture was set up right ...we'd moved it all around to be perfect for us .... i was also considering a line dance in that big open space ....

here's a pic of the inside of percy after i set out all my artsy joys ...
here's a pic at about lunch time on monday ... half a day of painting and i was rocking out to the tunes and painting up a storm ... poor allison had to listen to me singing ... and once went so far as to tape me on her iphone so that i could hear just how bad i am ... i am NOT an artist who sings ... well.... i am an artist who sings ... i just sing poorly ... and loudly .... and frequently sing whatever my own version of the words might be .... my singing could actually be a character flaw .... you might want to ask allison if you don't believe me ....

this pic below is a shot of my side table .... tools on the left, then fluid arylics, an ott lite, sharpies, palettes, acrylics paints ...... all in easy reach ....

and then below was a testing of all red paints .... allison was having a red problem ...... so she took all of her reds and all of mine and painted a page with each ... red is a hard color! lots are too tomatoey (another entry in my dictionary, how can tomato not be an adjective?) lots of reds are too maroonish or purpley (clearly websters has a lack of joyful color adjectives ... more words for my dictionary) .....

allison and i did quite a bit of color testing and paper painting .... all while singing along to every song on both of our iphones (sheryl crowe was a fan favorite) ... a fair amount of dancing (me more than her... i more than she ... me more than she) ..... a lot of world problem solving discussions (health care, education reform, the true difficulty of returning whales to the wild after captivity, the browness of brown paint)

and here are six green twelve by twelve canvases that i started the first day ... and finished (sort of ) the last day .....

so ... that's the beginning of the story ... in a way it's the whole story ... talking, laughing, dancing, singing .... all while trying to get in some major painting time ....

i'll be back tomorrow with actual finished pieces ....i think i'm going to go for a week of blogging every day ..... you with me?

any questions?

... any questions is loaded ... please don't ask me why i didn't edit this blog post!! ....