I'm painting blue skies!

Cobalt blue = perfect blue skies. Yes.
I painted this one last night - hadn't painted anything in awhile, so I thought I'd test out my new paint. Turns out it also does a good denim. Also tried to be real conscious about where the light was and where it was coming from in this painting. Can you tell? In the end I don't think the lighting was quite as dramatic as I was trying to get it to be, but I think it kind of showed up. I even did some pressing of lines with the flat tip on the other end of my brush for the trees in the foreground, as well as the delineation of the hood in the jacket. This whole person-in-the-landscape thing is inspired by a watercolor artist whose painting I bought at the 4th of July Booths in Bridgeport earlier this year - he includes a person in almost every single one of his landscapes to bring connection with the Nature. I liked that idea, and I think I'm going to try and start doing that more often, now.

I had a pleasant surprise when I got to church today: I found out that there was a church picnic afterwards! My poor bike rode all the way down the mountain with me, but I ended up not going for a ride because once the picnic was gone, the smoke from the Rim Fire had blown in and I wasn't prepared to develop sports-induced asthma today. A bit of a bugger. I left the bike in the car for the night and will try to take her out tomorrow morning, before the smoke rolls in. I also might be putting my quilt in the local Founders' Day Quilt Show, so that's exciting.

This weekend is the clean-the-house/do-the-laundry/unpack-from-my-trip weekend. Not a whole lot of fun, but I'm going to try and get a decent hike and a bike in, assuming that the smoke cooperates. It's also the cook-those-veggies-in-your-fridge-before-they-go-bad weekend which, with two monster zucchinis and two decent-sized zuc/squash hybrids, a giant beet, some corn cobs, overly-juicy plums, and other delicacies, should be fun! I'm going to be cooking up/baking a storm! Maybe I'll do a post on culinary creativity/activity.

Until next time!