A Wordy January Post

Hello and can you believe January is here?   I would say I just dilly dallied around but honestly I was doing something artsy, not sure what.   I always say though even making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich can be artsy, if you want it to be.  Really just can’t put my finger on it.  A quick update on Rockport, where hurricane Harvey paid a visit.   Rockport is healing and is and will be a slow process but it is healing and it is interesting to see it all come back alive.   Today the Pizza Hut opened back up in their rebuilt building, they had been operating out of a food truck.  Just things like that shows the strength of putting the town back together.   Roofs are being replaced for the homes that are still standing and we don’t hear as much hammering as we did in our neighborhood.   So many families are still without homes and that is so sad, we don't know if FEMA is helping as much as they should, we have heard stories pros and cons as in everything.  Everyone is excited the little beach here is almost restored with its  new little tiki huts and the sand looks so pretty now.  A new tin roof on the Maritime museum and the small birds are starting to come back.   The big dump trucks have been doing a wonderful job of picking up debris.  Everyone could pile  it up in their yard or by side of road and put in categories.  The categories were tins, tree stumps and brush and building boards etc.  There are mattresses and furniture in there and then appliances in their own group.   The piles were tall, very tall but now just here and there.   I think I saw where they are fixin to start pickup round two.   Just an interesting process to watch.  The Snowbirds aka Winter Texans, we always called them Snowbirds, are coming back and that is good for Rockport,s economy as well as them escaping the snow.  A post on that little subject soon.

 Our Dairy Queen parking lot, trees were scrambled but back to normal now.  Prettiest parking lot around I would say. 


I have been doing some Crazy Quilting and of course loving it.   Believe it or not even when Baseball is not going on I either do the embellishing of the Crazy Quilt blocks or sketching. Now  the sketching is getting semi serious and the sketching be it with pencils or charcoal is getting in my blood.  Of course the painting is still going on in my art room. You can tell I am back into painting because just about everything I own to wear has paint on it.  Isn’t that a sign of an artist ?  I do have a little apron that one of our daughters gave to me to wear and it has a goodly amounted paint on it.

A few of the blocks I created and embellished around November.   There were more but don't want to wear your eyes out.   Of course with my faeries I have painted and printed on fabric. 

The next two images are some CQ blocks I embellished for a dear friend Nicki.   Nicki created the blocks and I had the honor of embellishing them for here.   She is going to create pillows for her bed out of them.   

                    Love Nicki's saying here and she is represented by the woman in the ciggie.

                                     

                                   This block represnts her two beautiful grandchildren.   

I have started my second year of Let’s Face It, a painting group let by Kara Bullock of Lets Face it 2018.   There are several wonderful artists teaching their styles of portraits.   What fun for me and I know the other artists taking this online treasure.   Taking them online is wonderful, you can create in your jammies at anytime of the day.   I feel like it is pushing me to sketch and paint  which is a wonderful thing.  This year starting off we are learning about different artists in Renaissance Movement, I find this so interesting.  I cannot imagine what they went thru to paint with whatever kind of paints they used . I guess that would be a good could hunt up that just for a personal project for myself.   Any who, here is a painting  I have done so far this year. I don't want to over load you but more are coming.   Promise. Not the pinkie promise thing, just promise.

This is  my Piero Della Francesca (1415-1492 ), Renaissance Movement, influenced art piece.   Now I did remember doing a bride once with a red background.  The bride was shocked but when she saw the photo she loved it so I just had to do a red background on Mr. Francesca's version with an Annette touch.  Kara Bullock guided us thru this and I just can't get enough of the portraits.  This one is acrylics and I am new with them but you know I am getting hooked on acrylics also.  Lets face it I love, like and whatever words cover this creating art.

Now last year Annie Hammon gave some guidance with layers as did Kara here on this portrait.   When I did lots of pastels I use to do many layers so this right up my alley.   I met this beautiful young mother on a plane on our way to see Grandaughter and Daughter in Hawaii.  I fell in love with the strength and goodness of the young mother.   She was shy, to me very shy but she was trapped next to me and when she and her friend left I got hugs and they called me Nana.   Now that was a success to me.   This is a painting of their young son I did.  I used the layers and layers and I think that is what makes it glow so much.  To me like in photographs,  film has many many layers and digital does not.   That is another subject but just had to throw that one in. 

Well I have more to visit with but will try to do better this year.   We will probably be moving again, we knew our "vacation" here in Rockport was only going to be a year and we need, we guess, to find a forever home.  I mean we have 25 more years to stay around.  We will be 100 then and really won't care where we will be living.   Besides I have a lot of CQ and art supplies I have to use before then.  We know wherever we land it will be the perfect place. 

               Thanks for stopping by and seeing what is going on in my world today

                                                 Annette xoxoxo