Yardwork

I love working in the garden, but this year, for some reason, it's been more difficult for me to get out there. Just this morning I was thinking about how beautiful the gardens were when we first moved out here. They've been sorely neglected lately. So today, though my studio is also screaming for attention, I've decided to tend to the gardens.

In keeping with my "painting a day" theme (okay, so I haven't actually painted anything new today) here's one I did last year that won the People's Choice award from an on-line painting group. It's called "Hibiscus." It's a watercolor, which I honestly don't do much these days. I tend to overwork them. This one I did quickly, though, as you can see by the soft edges and the colors flowing into each other. In my opinion, that's the point of watercolors--fast and loose. I think having worked with oils for so long makes it difficult for me to resist the tendency to layer on color after color. In this case, though, I managed to hold back and it worked quite well.

Different subject: I'm sure I'm not the only one this happens to: while listening to some old music last night, a flood of memories were triggered by one particular song. Next thing I know, I'm scrambling for my notebook and began working on a poem. It's still very rough, but when it's finished, I'll post it.