Freesias and thoughts

20 Apr Freesias and thoughts

I’ve been thinking a lot about painting lately.  What?? Shocker!  But I have a dear friend, someone who I look up to for lots and lots of reasons but one reason is that she is a very accomplished and talented artist, and lives an artist’s life even as she tucks her animals into the barn for the night, and she came to stay for a whirlwind visit.  This girl knows what she’s doing (even when she thinks she doesn’t) and  I sort of just soaked up her thoughts on everything.  I tried not to make it too too obvious that I was doing that but I’m not really known for my poker face.

She was down across the border in Tacoma, Washington, and I plugged in my ipod and enjoyed a drive of great music, a little seat dancing, and my own thoughts on my way down to meet her.  Me and myself have maybe not spent quite as much quality time together lately as is my want, so it was a good time to chat away to myself in my head.  Hey me.  How doing?

After being so proud of myself for getting down there without a single hitch I started a weekend of getting lost and making wrong turns when looking for her hotel — my GPS went on a little bit of a walkabout for some reason and ended up totally muddled and confused and throwing out “Turn right here, no left! No right! Straight!”  It was very odd.  He hasn’t done that before.  I’m trying not to think it’s from hanging out with me.  But I know it is.

But the very cool hotel was found and so was my friend.  Have I mentioned that we had never actually met before?  This lady feels like my big sister (big only because she’s waaaay wiser than me) but we had only talked electronically up until then.  Daunting!  I wanted to know that if we couldn’t make the switch to in person we’d be able to find our way back to our online friendship.  No worries.  She’s wonderful.  We met with a hug and started talking and didn’t stop except to sleep.  We squished in a visit to the Museum of Glass (a showcase of some of Dale Chihuly’s exquisite work)

and the Pike Place Market

and stopped to visit and have a fabulous chat with an artist who does beautiful glowing landscapes.

And then we drove back to my side of the border and I introduced her to my favourite place.  I’ve said I like the beach right?

And then we painted together.  A very very nice time.  She talks about it here.  Disregard the nutella reference.  I was framed.

Anyways.  Back to painting.  It was so good being a sponge and soaking up all of those painting and art pieces, philosophies, techniques and tricks.  It was a bit of an up and down week after this and painting had a place in settling down a bit.  Lots of painting but not so many finished pieces.  Ah well.  All part of the process I guess.

The fabulous Miz M — another of my dear ones — and I had, after months and months of not being able to get together to paint, set aside two days.  Two days!!!  It was wonderful.  Yummy salads, music playlists that varied from Hawaiian folk to 70’s funk, just a little bit of catching up, and PAINTING!!

So I bounced around a bit and all those ideas bumped into each other in my head and I wondered where to start!  I painted some freesia   Not from a photograph!  That’s sort of new for me.  I kept stepping back to have a look and then looking around to see where I’d put my picture down.  Would pick up a real flower instead, turn it around to try and get the same angle, and then carefully put it back in the water away from the others so I could find the right one again.  Really fun trying something just a teeny bit different.  I know, it really is just a teeny bit different, isn’t it.  Still counts, I think.

And you know what?  Now I totally want to try it from the picture.  Old dog, don’t know you know.  They have their place.

And this old dog squished a birthday into the week.  Happy birthday me!