Scattered Thoughts . . .

L ate at night over the past month or two, on those nights when I've felt up for it, I've been working on a painting of Cincinnati.   We're booked for a trip to Cincinnati and Dayton, via Manhattan and Washington DC, in June with Lukey and Kenzie in tow.  In preparation of this trip, I've pulled out some of my photos from past visits so I can show the kids.   We're all pretty excited about this trip but, considering what is happening with the Federal government now, I'm not too sure we'll be able to go on this trip.  So much is being cut that I worry about funding being cut to Amtrak.  I'm worried about Amtrak long distance routes being cut (as has been threatened).  I'm very concerned that my disability pay will be cut, interrupted or completely taken away.  I'm worried that my retirement pay will be eliminated, temporarily or even permanently.  And, of course, if there is a significant uptick in civil unrest in any of the cities we'll...

A s with most of my projects, I had thought that painting my homebuilt truss bridge would be a quick and easy job.  It hasn't been difficult but it has not be the least bit quick. This paint job is becoming a very long process.   First, I primed it with a spray can or two.  Then I spray painted an Anvil Gray spray paint and it was far too blue.  I wouldn't even call it a gray.  It really was a very dark blackish-blue and I didn't care for the color at all.  Once I started spraying this color, I realized that I had been fooled by the name of this color once before when I was painting my steam locomotive.  It was far too blue for that project too and ended up wasting a few days while I searched for a more appropriate color.   Then I sprayed a can of something named Deep Gray.  One would think this would be a gray that is into the darker shades of gray but, on the contrary, it was a rather light shade of gray.  This paint also had...

T oday, Kenzie and I had a really nice "art day" and we produced some nice pieces of art.  I need to purchase a few more frames and mat board because I realized today that I don't have any on hand anymore for framing small pieces of artwork.  Actually, I found that we are short on a few art supplies so I'll need to remedy that also before I forget. After spending far too much time searching for and digging out our art supplies, we sorted out what we would need for today and then came up with a plan.  We chose a couple of ideas and decided upon some nice compositions for two pieces of artwork each.   We sketched a few ideas and then did a little practice on some scrap paper before we touched the watercolor paper.  Then we talked about shapes, colors, values, light and shadows for our compositions.  Below are a couple of our initial sketches to help iron out sizes of the basic shapes... The first watercolor piece of art was sort of a memento of our Chris...

W hile Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us this week, we did a little bit of painting.  Sheila and I have been wanting to do this with them for quite a while so it was great that we finally had some time to do this with them. This was supposed to be a lesson in watercolors but we chose to use the kids' new set of acrylic paints instead.  Honestly, I didn't feel like digging out the watercolors and the acrylics were already sitting on the kitchen table so we painted with acrylics.  I needed to adapt my lesson due to the last minute change in paints and because I haven't used acrylics for artistic painting in decades.  So, I demonstrated each step before having them do it.  This would allow me to adapt my plan as necessary.  That being said, this also seemed to introduce some unnecessary confusion.  If I had been more concise without adapting, what I was attempting to teach would have been more effectively communicated.   On the previous day,...

O ver the past couple of weeks, I purchased some better art supplies.  The brushes I had weren't all that great, the paper was kind of lousy when using it for painting with watercolors, and I quickly realized that I could use a few different sizes of drawing boards. I had been doing my sketching and painting on a table which wasn't ideal.  Sometimes I kept the paper loose so I could turn it and angle it but then it seemed to buckle and warp more.  Other times I taped the paper down to the table which helped with the buckling and warping but I lost some control in positioning the paper just right.  There are advantages and disadvantages to each method but I decided to purchase a couple of pieces of acrylic to use as drawing boards. This way I can still mount loose sheets of paper for sketching or painting while still allowing full control over positioning and angling the paper as needed. I purchased two 16" x 20" pieces of 1/4" thick acrylic to use as drawing boar...

I was sitting on the couch in the living room yesterday evening before starting on cooking dinner and picked up my notebook.  I write thoughts and ideas in this notebook everyday (I now have a whole library of notebooks tucked in all sorts of places around the house) and, quite often, add some sketches of some of my ideas or thoughts.  Yesterday, I was thinking about Christmas and the lake house. Every year of my life, in the few months preceding Christmas, my mind always drifts to spending Christmas in an Adirondack lodge-type of home or lake house setting.  I have not had the opportunity to do this just yet but I do plan to do this at least once before I have no Christmases left.   The closest I have come to living this annual dream of spending Christmas in an Adirondack-type lodge or lake house has been a few Christmases spent on various air bases.  Back in my earlier years of my Air Force career, the Airman's Club was typically the hub of social life o...

I 'm still trying to figure out how to paint with watercolors.  I'm making some progress but I am still needing more practice. Although I am learning and making some headway after the few paintings I did in the past week or two, I am slowly changing my painting supplies too which also causes a need for adjusting technique.  For instance, I purchased a different brand of warercolor paper, different brushes, and a few other supplies.  Each of these changes requires some practice to get used to the new characteristics of the new supplies.  I seem to be learning fairly quickly though. Here is my latest painting from yesterday... I need to start with having a specific plan for each of these paintings.  That is definitely a problem that is making things a bit difficult.  I'm sort of winging each painting with not much of a plan in mind.  Also, I really should be working on just one part of these paintings at a time.  Once I get a handle on each part, th...

I recently started getting back into sketching and that has been going well.  I've never really stopped sketching throughout my entire life so I wouldn't expect to have any problems with refining my sketching abilities again.  Painting, however, is something I haven't done much of in many decades.  Watercolor painting is actually something I've never been comfortable with even when I was an active artist in school as well as college.  In college, every art-related class I took was sketching, engineering drawing and architectural renderings in graphite only and then blueprinted.  Back then, we didn't have all large format color printers using today's printer technology.  We only had large format blueprinting available.  Consequently, it made no sense to render any original drawings/sketches in color. Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us for the long holiday weekend last weekend and they also did some sketching but I noticed that they were very reluctan...

A week ago, I had written about having screwed up my prescription refills. One of my medications... one which is a mast cell stabilizer and an H1 blocker...  and one which is not yet FDA-approved... had fallen through the cracks of my record-keeping and memory which means I forgot to order a refill before I had run out of this medication.  For most prescriptions, people can just run to the local pharmacy to pick up a last minute prescription. I actually do this with any acute problems I am having. I bite the bullet (taking a serious hit in cost) and I buy the prescription locally so that I can start on the medication immediately.  Unfortunately, most of my medications are absurdly expensive and going to our local retail pharmacy is not financially possible for me. For instance, one of my medications, by itself, costs upwards of $40,000 annually. If I bought this medication locally rather than through my insurance plan's mail order program there would be two problems.....

The title of this blog entry is almost meaningless since art projects are about the only thing I accomplish since developing Systemic Mastocytosis. Art has many forms and I do try to stay active in many... drawing, painting, photography, videography, music and even designing and building things like models and renovating our home.  In this case, the illness I am referring to is this miserable lingering cold (12 days at this point). I occasionally have periods of clear thinking that are driving me crazy because I am so bored (I need to stay productive and creative) but I'm still not well enough to tackle anything of significance. During these fleeting periods of clear thinking over the past few days, I've been trying to draw and paint. This particular art project is a sketch of the Empire State Building. I already created a matching piece  of the Chrysler Building   a few months ago and it is now hanging on a wall in our newly renovated bedroom. I plan to hang this ...

I've spent some time painting the doll townhouse the past few days. What I've been envisioning in my mind has been taking form in real life... and now, in color! I'm really liking this paint scheme and I think it favors the Georgetown Townhouse style I was envisioning.  The traditional yellow walls with a nice (but non-traditional) stucco texture... the clean lines of white trim... contrasting black window shutters... and a welcoming red front entry door... this is all coming together very nicely and is very reminiscent of the traditional Georgetown style. I'm actually getting excited as this homemade dollhouse comes together. The yellow exterior paint has been a major problem though... I think I now have about six or seven coats of yellow paint on this dollhouse due to some errors in choosing the correct shade of yellow. The first shade of yellow I chose was a bit dull. The second shade of yellow I chose was so bright that it had a bit of a fluorescent tint ...