Climbing Hydrangea--more leafy and now less

 
























I drew the climbing hydrangea outside our south-facing living room two years ago and then again today. I designed the trellis 20 years ago and had it custom made by a local blacksmith. My husband then planted the hydrangea and, over the years, has trained it so when leafed out we have privacy from our neighbor's driveway and house, which is only a few feet away. Today, with many of the leaves fallen, the blue of the neighbor's house is seen.

When I picked the last of our pepper crop over a week ago, they were all light green. Look what happened: a couple turned red in the bowl! Procrastinating on doing this drawing maybe wasn't a bad thing.

California: Captured 3 Ways

My recent trip to California was to the Central Coast, staying in San Luis Obispo. It's a place I return to; it has a bit of Brigadoon magic for me. I travel with probably way too many different medium. (I never have mastered the travel-light mode.) But sometimes circumstance and time calls for one medium and then sometimes another. So here are 3 different ways of representing my week long time there.

"South Hill View and Sweet Pea Bouquet". NEOCOLOR II WAX PASTELS on black paper.  From the house where we stayed, looking across the foothills to the Santa Lucia Mountains. The bouquet was purchased from a white haired woman at the farmers market, whose clothes matched the colors of her flowers. For  more Inside/Outside drawings go here.

"South Hill Neighborhood".  Another from the house in San Luis  Obispo, this time in WATERCOLOR.  Looking across the adjoining open space preserve into the neighborhood below and the foothills beyond, it's 45 degrees to the right of the Neocolor above.

"Morro Rock from Black Hill". 15 miles to the coast from San Luis Obispo is Morro Bay.   Hiking to the top of Black Hill on a glorious clear day, I was rewarded with the view of the last visible, of  a string,  extinct volcano that defines this region and the Pacific Ocean. My pocket-size moleskine and a stick of WATER SOLUBLE 9B GRAPHITE STICK was all I carried. Maybe on another trip, I'll lug my easel and Neocolor II or watercolors up there. For now, small, fast sketches are  a great part of my process.

If you'd like to see more from this trip they're on my flickr photostream. Comments or critique are always appreciated!

Flowers for Mr. Glass: a Memorial

This bouquet was picked from my Cedar Falls, Iowa neighborhood and garden. It was drawn on April 15, 2012.  I had painted another version of the bouquet a few days before in watercolor, that included a tall red tulip as the center of attention. I had envisioned this second drawing, done in Neocolor II wax pastels, to also include the tulip, but alas, it dropped its petals before I could execute it.

Two days later,  I received an email from a dear childhood friend telling me of her father's death on April 15, 2012. For me, this drawing then became a memorial for Mr. Glass. For me, this drawing represents the melancholic side of Spring: its breathtaking, all too fleeting beauty. Such is life.

As a teenager, I knew Mr. Glass as a kind man with a gentle smile, the father of one of my best friends. I was always welcome in their rambling house in Scarsdale, New York, which was filled with many books, creative projects laid out in process, and sleeping cats occupying the kitchen chairs . The garden that he and his wife tended introduced me to a variety of perennial flower gardening that I would try to emulate in my adult life. I hadn't seen Mr. Glass in decades. Only with his passing did I learn through the New York Times obituary of his illustrious career and his painfully difficult youth. This one is for you, Mr. Glass, in honor of your long life, well lived.