Sunday Morning Coffee #27

This photo was taken by my niece, Gloria, during our family reunion in early July. Some family members rented local vacation homes, and Gloria added several cairns to the courtyard at this one.

Cairns are manmade piles of stones used to mark or memorialize spots on the landscape, and they are often used as trail markers. I love this photo for its simplicity, balance, and for all it represents for me right now. Maybe I love the idea of a single path going one direction best of all. But that is still only a dream for me.

Finding balance is an ongoing theme, as you all know, and I am still looking.

But, I LOVE this cairn as a visual icon and as a ritual idea. What if you assigned the elements you are trying to balance in your life to individual rocks – maybe size could indicate their relative importance.

You could then try to stack them in priority order and see how well they balance – or if they can balance at all!

If you don’t want to play with real rocks, this cairn would make a wonderful art journal page. Rocks are easy to sketch and paint, and you can write on them if they are on paper.

I will be exploring this idea in my journal, and I wanted to share it with you in case you have some things to figure out and want to do it in a very creative way.

Not Just on Sundays . . .

My Sunday morning series of blog posts is fun, and it is a great way to relax for my readers. However, my choice of Sunday was a little short sighted. That is the only day our gallery is closed and Mark and I can do things together – like relax, maybe?

So, although there will still be occasional Sunday coffee posts when time and energy allow, I am returning to the freedom of also posting whenever and whatever – which is the name and the original idea of this blog anyway.

iPad News . . .

I have posted the first three iPad Studio Workbooks for individual sale and download.

I have also set it up so if you buy the first one, and then decide you want the Workshop (to save money on the rest of the Workbooks and share the iPad art experience with other students), you can apply the purchase price of the first Workbook to your Workshop tuition.

For example, each of these workbooks sells for $15. So, if you try the first one and want to go on, you can either continue to buy the Workbooks individually, or opt to sign up for the Workshop for $110 instead of $125.

There are six Workbooks published so far, and all six are available when you join the Workshop. Only three have been released for individual sale so far.

It’s a good way to see what this is all about before committing to the workshop. Here’s the Workbook Page.

http://www.dotcalmvillage.net/ipadstudio.html

Garden News . . .

I have to fess up. Gardening is one of the BIG rocks in my Cairn. When the gardening season is here, there is nothing I would rather do than . . . garden! Of course, it does not make me a living and it costs me a ton of money, and there are so many other things for me to be doing instead (notice I did not use the word “should”), but I am obsessed, and there’s just no stopping myself.

Remember the Morning Glory battle – that ended up depending on sheets of Sheer Heaven to keep the bunnies at bay? Well, here’s how they turned out . . .

Of course, the red, white, and blue thing did not happen in time for the 4th of July or the family reunion, but it’s all there now! Also, notice my edging bricks. Yes, I got carried away and when I finished everything inside the courtyard, I came outside the gate and kept going. I have more photos to share sometime.

One of my most favorite birds is the Bushtit. I love them because they are so social. They all show up at once and make a big “bird ball” on a suet feeder. They are so tiny that a dozen of them can all fit on a single suet cage. Everybody has a few bites, there is lots of activity and flying around, and then they all leave at once. Sort of like a bird tour bus came through.

Here’s a photo I took yesterday  during one of their visits . . .

They think nothing of acrobatics – like hanging upside down . . .

One of the best things about gardening is the bird visitors. I could watch them for hours – and I do.

Art History . . .

SmartHistory is simply wonderful. From a very compact and user friendly web page . . .

. . . you can access a fairly comprehensive tour of the history of art, from ancient to modern times. Clicking on any image brings up a short video featuring everything you ever wanted to know about that image and artist and era.

This is a masterpiece interactive web book. You will only likely have time for a bit at a time, but bookmark it and return often for inspiration and a broadening of your understanding of art.

Smart History

Dogs in Cars . . .

And this is for nothing but fun . . .

29 photos of dogs doing that thing they love so much – sticking their heads out the car window. I love it!

Car Window Dogs

That’s all for now, folks. I am going to try painting in the garden and see if I can resist fooling with the flowers long enough to paint or draw a few.

 

 

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