Goodthoughts

7-Up Revival

My art has taken off in a new direction lately. Several months ago I decided to try my hand at mixed media and I've got to tell you this is like play! I could do this forever! As always I love to tell a story.  Try putting yourself in the middle of this one.  Hope you feel as happy as I do!!

You might want to read this if you're curious about the 7-Up bottle.

Artful Eggs

It's time to dye the eggs for Easter again this year!  I love doing this annual ritual because I always dye eggs with my friend Charlotte in her kitchen filled with springtime surprises!

This year Charlotte shared her stash of little bantam chicken eggs with me.  We spent a lot of time talking and laughing and drinking homemade lemonade. Not to mention munching the sugar cookies shaped like bunnies!  The truth is I would never do this by myself.  It's way more fun to do this with good friend who hasn't forgotten how to play!  So here's how we did it.  

These eggs are dyed using bits of weeds and flowers we found in the backyard. The design on the egg below came from a dandelion flower.

 Charlotte soaked brown and red onion skins in water.  We pressed the wet flowers and leaves on the egg, covered it with onion skin all the way around and wrapped tightly with thread. Lots of thread!

Then we placed the eggs in a pot of water and boiled for about 30 minutes.  We carefully put the pan in the sink and added cold water. The magic happens when you take off the thread, onion skin and flowers to reveal a beautiful work of art!  The next egg shows a dandelion leaf in a lovely shade of yellow!

 

 

A sprig of rosemary left its mark on the next egg.

Can you pick out the violet leaf? How about that dainty stringy weed that's in everybody's yard?

This last egg was the tiniest.  A mixture of violets and weeds turned it into an abstract beauty!

We oiled the eggs and shined them up with an old washcloth.  After their photo shoot I arranged the eggs in a blue bowl in the hall.   They make me happy every time I walk by...remembering time spent with a good friend enjoying the wonders of God.  Find some wonders of your own this Easter season!

Catching a Dream!

I've had a dream for almost 8 years of starting a ukulele band at our church.  I know it's a little crazy.  I get amused looks from friends when I talk about it.  They weren't exactly knocking at our door to sign up...until NOW!  You see there's always been one problem, I actually have no talent for singing or playing the ukulele.  Yeah, that's kind of important you might say.  

I love my friend Ruth.  She always has a smile on her face.  Ruth understood my dream.  She bought a ukulele of her own two years ago. Ruth was ready to join the band!  She even learned to play Swing Low Sweet Chariot.  But what we really needed was a leader.  Somebody who could play the ukulele like a pro...but most importantly...somebody who knew how to have a good time.

That person turned out to be under our nose all along.  She was Ruth's sister, Judy.  Judy is a guitar teacher in Roanoke.  I never dreamed she would consider coming all the way to Chatham to lead our band.  But one day I asked her... and low and behold...she said YES!!  She's perfect!  She's a talented teacher. She loves God.  And she has a huge notebook of old hymns and silly songs!

So, a couple of Sundays ago we had the very first practice of the Chatham Baptist Church Ukulele Band in our den.  We had 8 people come(Chuck's taking the picture)!  Judy taught us Rock-a-My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham and we laughed a lot as we tried to make our fingers land on the right spot!  Judy wants us to not just strum down like we're chopping wood. She she says we also need to strum up... so we'll sound more melodious.  

I'm having a problem on my upstroke.  I keep accidentally sticking my finger in the hole of my ukulele. Judy says I'm going to be trouble!!  You know, I think I'm really going to enjoy this ukulele band!!

 

Scrambled pansies

Scrambled pansies sounds like a new sidedish Rachael Ray may have cooked up, but these pansies weren't scrambled in a skillet on the stove!  No, they were scrambled on my computer, in my head and with my hands.  And why would I want to scramble pansies?  Aren't pansies beautiful just the way God made them?  

The thing I love about art is the creative process. It's a need to deconstruct reality, rearrange the composition, crank up the color and leave a little bit of yourself and your emotions shining through the work.  It's the hope of endless possibilites.  It's the only way I know to wear myself out and totally pep myself up at the same time!  

 

So, here's how the pansies got scrambled.  I started with a photo looking straight down at the pansies and forget-me-nots growing in front of our fence. See that yellow pansy on the far left side?  See if you can find him on the finished version. I cropped a portion of this picture and opened it in Photoshop.  I then filtered the image to look like a drybrush painting.

I generated about 40 random patterns on the pattern maker.  Look how the elements in the original photo are scrambled up. The white fence is "growing" in slivers in the ground with the flowers.  The combinations are infinite, but I chose the one I like best and moved on.

 

 

 

 

Now, the fun part begins.  With Photoshop's large selection of brushes and my Wacom pad and stylus I can paint with almost the same feel I have with real paints and brushes. So I started choosing brushes and colors and just got lost in painting for a while.  But unlike, real paint, I can use different color overlays and light sources to scramble things up even more!  I painted all sorts of shapes (a triangle, my symbol for God's serendipitous guidance, seems to have crept in!) and colors over the patterned photograph. I cropped it to more of a square shape and thought I was finished.  I love the colors and the movement in it.  Can you find the pansies?

Today I decided to see if I could take it a step further with a new version.  I wanted it to look even more springy and happy.  I used some special effects with some gradient changes that focused it into a circle and a vivid light source that made it scream "happy" for me.

I noticed when I got through that one of the shapes looks like a question mark, not something I intended, but I like the idea! Questions and triangles...inspired by the springtime pansies...as they sing their happy love song to God.

Spring is back and so am I!!

Spring is my most favorite season of the year!!!  I love the freshness and colors of life beginning.  I love seeing the daffodils share their smiling faces once again after a year of waiting. Like the daffodils, I've been taking some time off to live and think at a slower pace for a while.  It's been a time well spent for me, but I'm ready to get back again to sharing my art, gardening and dreams with all of you!  Stay tuned.

Visual storytelling

I love stories...don't you?  When it's all said and done...life is about stories.   Stories shape our lives...they form our identity.  Stories have the power to make us feel impoverished or empowered.  They tell us where we came from and where we're going.  They tell us who we are.  We all need a story...a story of hope...of dreams...of joy...of making a difference in our world each day.

Art has power to shape our stories in ways that inspire and give us courage to walk along our God given path with joy and purpose...unafraid of the obstacles along the way.  Why not tell those stories of our lives with pictures as well as words?  Instead of having photos and family momentos in the back of a drawer somewhere...wouldn't it be better to arrange them into a visual story told from your hearts point of view?  Which brings me to my collage...

I went back to Tennessee a few weeks ago to visit our daughter, Amy, son-in-law, Randy and grandson, Wesley.  Amy and Randy have a farm in the rolling hills south of Nashville.  They raise milk goats, chickens, ducks, cows and horses.  I took some pictures on the way to the goat barn one sunny fall morning. The old abandoned farmhouse behind their vegetable garden looked stunning against the bright morning sun.  The picture turned out so well, I wanted to use it as a centerpiece for a collage.

When Amy was about 6 years old, I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.  She said, "A singer by day and a farmer by night!"  Chuck and I thought that was so funny.  We said, "Wouldn't it be better to be a farmer by day and a singer by night?"  She stuck with her first choice. 

Today, Amy sings every morning to her goats, Nannette, Georgette, Maisy, Polly and the new Billy Goat, Jean Paul.   At dusk, she and Randy round up the chickens and put them in their coop.  Singer by day...farmer by night.  It seems to be working out! 

The collage is just one thread of Amy's story...told from the heart. 

Don't worry, Laurie, your story's next!!

My collage was inspired by a magazine I bought last week called Somerset Digital Studio. It had some great ideas for digital collage with understandable instructions.  My collage was created in Photoshop CS3 and is made up of over 34 layers. I made several other versions but liked the above one best.  But, one of the best things I learned was about a website...obsidiandawn.com which has tons of free brushes and patterns you can download to use with Photoshop or Elements.   I could not have made this collage without the cool brushes and patterns from Obsidian Dawn.  Thanks, Stephanie, for sharing your talent with the rest of us!   Note to artists:  If you work in Photoshop you owe it to yourself to check out Obsidian Dawn!!  Here's just a sampling of some of the brushes I downloaded free!

The yellow road of weeds

I love it when it's sunny on my yellow road of dreams! 

When the flowers bloom cheerily...and the only bugs in the garden are beneficial insects...when it rains twice a week so I don't have to drag the water hose all over the yard...when the humidity is low and the mosquitoes are few...when I'm full of energy and enjoy bouncing outside every morning to pull weeds when they're tiny...to prune and tend God's beautiful garden...and share jelly jars of flowers to brighten someone's day...that's perfect...it's ideal...but what if it doesn't happen like that! 

What if my yellow road of dreams is full of weeds?  Life is never perfect.  But sometimes it seems that the yellow road has a lot more weeds than dreams!  Our summer has been like that...distractions from our routine...viruses in early summer for Chuck and me...the death of Chuck's brother and the sadness that followed...people in our church family with serious illness, bronchitis that I'm just now getting over.  I look around and see all the things that I usually do that haven't been done.  It's easy to feel overwhelmed...when life slows me down...and the weeds keep growing.  What's the best way to deal with it?

Count your blessings even if you're standing in a weed patch!  I was actually standing in a weed patch when I took this picture!!  Unfortunately,  the weeds are growing all over our beautiful labyrinth in our backyard.  The rock paths are hardly visible from under the weeds.

Life is like that.  Difficulties and disappointment that come to all of us.  Even when it's hard to see the path for the weeds...remember it's still there...and you're not alone on your journey.  God is with each and every one of us, in spite of our circumstances. 

A thankful heart is the secret.  When we focus on being thankful for all the good things in our lives...our thinking shifts.  We see things from God's perspective...a perspective of hope!  

Imagine your dream...orderly and complete...then...calmly start pulling weeds!!  Take your time...your on a journey...setting things right can be an enjoyable process if you focus on the solution instead of the problem.  And you know what?  Whether my weeds are on the labyrinth or in my head... it doesn't take nearly as much time to make things beautiful again as I thought it would.  Keep your hopes alive...and you'll soon discover your dream again...right where it was all along!

The Lord says, "I will guide you along the best pathway for your life.  I will advise you and watch over you."-- Psalm 32:8 NLT

Creative play

Today was a great day!  I've been dragging all week with a tired, fever, headache, coughing sort of virus.  I perked up enough today to feel like doing something again, so I thought I'd work on an unfinished watercolor painting.  I decided to just play and see what happened.

This painting is about the ukulele band I want to start at our church...it's a little obsession of mine...a longtime dream I can't get out of my head!  I can see it all happening as plain as day...a group of all ages...all musical abilities...talented...mediocre...and no sense of rhythm whatsoever (I fall in the last group) getting together to learn to play the ukulele.  We'll play old silly songs that we sang as kids and old gospel tunes and whatever else we want to.  I'm getting excited just thinking about it!!!  More about that later...back to painting!

I'm painting in watercolors on a stretched canvas...mainly because I didn't have any watercolor paper and I wanted to see how the canvas accepted the watercolor pigment.  It seems to work just fine.  But I had quit before I finished and it's just been sitting around in my studio gathering dust.  The neat thing about watercolors is that they come back alive and workable again with just a little water.

Here's how it looks so far.  This is more suggestive and loose than most of my bluebird paintings.  I added the girl with the ukulele looking up at the bird and the big triangle above it.

The triangles are symbols of the ways God guides us and intervenes in our lives.  I love the way watercolor puddles and gets darker in certain spots. I raise the canvas up and let the puddles drip down the canvas all the way to the bottom.  I like the way it looks.  When all 4 triangles were done...they reminded me of giant flowers  reaching for the sunshine.

The top triangle looks like it has a sideways heart in the center.  I didn't try to paint that.  I was painting a red triangle inside the yellow one and the watercolor was really wet and just sort of rolled around into that shape...so I left it.

I gave all the 3 ukulele players' shoes an ever so faint touch of red for their journey...you've just gotta have the red shoes!

Maybe it's finished...maybe not...we'll see how it feels after a few days.  But just squeezing out the paint...playing and watching the colorful drips made me feel so much better...now... if we could just get our band organized... :-)

  

Sweet Frankie's Cabin of Dreams

Hold on to your dreams...because they just might come true!  My friend Charlotte knows that from first hand experience. 

Charlotte is a kind, gentle person who loves her family and the simple things of life.  She's a lot like her mother...Sweet Frankie...who grew up on the farm in a little cabin...very rich in love.

Charlotte's dream has been to someday have a little log cabin of her own to relax and enjoy the quietness of the country.  Her husband, Jerry built a small room onto the back of their house and put in some ceiling beams and a woodstove to give it the feeling of a log cabin.  But Charlotte still dreamed of her cabin in the country to remind her of Sweet Frankie.

Last week Charlotte called and said, "I have my little cabin!"  I was so happy for her!  Her daughter, Cheryl had recently married and moved to a beautiful old home in the country with her husband.  The farm has several outbuildings and it turned out that one of them was a little log cabin that had been covered in wood siding many years ago.  They asked Charlotte if she would like to have the little cabin as her getaway from the world place....and that's how Charlotte saw her dream come true!

Since then, Charlotte and Jerry have been painting, washing windows, and turning an old vacant log cabin into Sweet Frankie's cabin of dreams.  Charlotte loves antiques and brought some of her collection to the cabin.  It's all finished now except for planting flowers outside.  

Yesterday, she invited me to go on a picnic at the cabin.  It was like being transported to another century.  It was a hot, humid day at my house in town so I dressed to stay cool but wondered if we might spend the day sweating and swatting mosquitoes.  I wasn't prepared for the wonders of the entire day!

The first thing I noticed when we got to the farm, which is way out in the country, was the temperature under the tall, tall walnut trees was at least 10 degrees cooler than it was at my house.  There was a breeze blowing...no humidity that I could feel...and no mosquitoes!!  But the best part was inside...

It was like stepping back to a simpler, quieter century!  Charlotte and Jerry had painted the old beadboard walls a sparkling white and decorated the cabin with treasures from the past.  The well insulated log and wood walls kept it cool inside.  The  large windows with their original wavy glass stood wide open letting in the breeze and the sound of the jar flies singing in the walnut trees.  Only 1 car drove down the gravel road the whole time we were there.  You couldn't help but relax and be thankful!

Charlotte had prepared lunch...delicious hoagie sandwiches and chips in little tin buckets that she had painted and decoupaged for her 3 girls when they were young.  Her ice cold homemade lemonade was already there waiting for us.  I must have had 6 glasses...it was so good!!  Dessert was chocolate brownies with rich chocolate fudge icing.  Yum!  But the best thing was the care and love that goes into everything Charlotte touches!

Charlotte's also an excellent writer.  She has a notebook filled with wonderful stories about her mom, Sweet Frankie, growing up on the farm.  Her writing reminds me of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her "Little House" books.  After lunch, Charlotte sat in her rocking chair and read several stories aloud to her youngest daughter, Jeri Leigh and me.  They were stories she wrote for her grandson, Mark, when he was younger about the nighttime antics of the scarecrow in their backyard garden.  With the help of a friendly fairy, the scarecrow was able to hop down from his pole and run around all over the neighborhood after everybody else had gone to bed!  It was a treat to be read to...like listening to ocean waves...relaxing and soothing.

This picture of Charlotte and her mom, Sweet Frankie, now sits on the mantle in the cabin.  It's a dear, tender picture of a young mother with her baby close to her face.  A rich legacy of love...passed from mother to child.  Charlotte continues to generously share her legacy of love and simplicity with everyone who's fortunate enough to know her.

Thank you, Charlotte, for the loving memories of yesterday at Sweet Frankie's Cabin of Dreams!

Your Mind has Wings...the end

This is the end of the story...let's see if Oakley will finally find his dream!  Scroll down to read parts 1, 2 and 3.

The End

copyright Debbie Warnock 2007