baby hummingbirds sketch

baby hummingbirds sketch, originally uploaded by Az~Kate.

Since I have been too busy with preparing and teaching drawing classes (among other things!) I thought I'd re-post my flickr page of a sketch I did today. Sorry to be such a bad blogger lately!

Seasons, Back to the Two of Us

This summer brought the passing of a season that I was not looking forward to relinquishing. The season of active motherhood, homeschooling, and enjoying the final period of having our 3 boys living at home.  One by one they flew... Z  into marriage and now fatherhood, stayed close to the 'nest', thankfully!  His dear wife and 2 darling girls are a rich joy to us.  Then J left for Bible College in Portland OR, and will be wed next month, remaining in Portland (for now).  2 weeks ago we put our 'baby' on an airplane to the other side of the continent where he is attending a small private University in big, secular, New York City.  Phew!  That is a lot for this 'defined by raising boys' mama.  Thankfully it was a slowly emptying nest, but this last little fellow left with a flourish and a finality that has us proud of his courage, but feeling the sting of a very empty and quiet house. All told this season of having then raising our sons lasted from 1981 to 2011... 30 years.  We'll always be parents, I'll always be a mother, but from here on out, it will be different.  I mourn and I rejoice.

So I welcome this new season, like it or not.  I'm determined to 'like' it as much as possible. Ha ha.  My husband and I are feeling a new sense of oneness as we still have each other and are looking forward to doing some things that we've always hoped, but never been able to take the time to do.  I think both of us are a little excited about being able to focus on one another and reconnect to our 'couple-hood'.  This is good, and as it should be.

I'm teaching small art classes to homeschool kids to help contribute to the family budget.  I've been a stay at home mom for the majority of the past 30 years, so even though the classes are in my home, I feel like I'm entering the working world again!  Planning, teaching, and organizing these classes is time consuming on the front end, but it's good for me to be busy.   I hope to have more time to spend nurturing my own artistic endeavors and to hike and exercise more.

So this is how a new season begins.  Here is a quick sketch I did recently in a free booklet I found at the Asian Market.  The book is on Buddhism, but I just like how it looks as a background for my doodles.  It suits my title for this entry... The Two of Us.

Post of the Month?

Well dear followers, I have been neglectful of this little blog lately!  So, here's a super (as in covering a lot of things, but not as in 'super long') post catching up on my life over the past month.   June:  More graduation parties attended, including the one we had for our own 'baby', ending my 13 years of homeschooling.  Gardening, very succesful crop of heirloom white tomatoes and early girl reds, assorted herbs, zucchini and some chili peppers.  A wonderful day spent with my dear friend Suzie, breakfast, then browsed a large community garden, then antiquing.  Pizza and root beer floats for Father's day with our oldest and his family.  Date with hubby to see Super 8, which I highly recommend...reminiscent of ET meets the Goonies, really well done.  Different.  Had a phone consultation with a trusted naturopath and began an in depth detox with son and hubby.  (feeling marvelous now, and shed some weight)   July:  Still detoxing till the 7th, so laying kind of low, but had a terrific 4th of July with the grand-darlings, bbq, swimming, playing, fireworks, sparklers and ice cream (for the girls, we stuck to our detox diet!).  Now I'm working on my fall Drawing Classes and purchasing the 'baby's' College needs... he will go clear to New York.  Oh, and we experienced a HABOOB... the Arab word for a huge dust storm.  Not like our usual monsoon dust storms, this baby was 7000 ft. high and 100 miles wide and left a mountain of fine dark reddish brown dirt on EVERYTHING... clean up still going on!  But hey, it made Phoenix famous for a day or two.  :)
Pictures...

Sketches done in Nature Journal.                                                  
                                 

 

Here is the Haboob (Arab for dirt monster! Just kidding...it's Arab, but I don't remember what it means) as it approaches our yard.  Taken from an upstairs window. 

Lessons 4, 5, and 6

With all the big family events spanning the whole month of May (our Anniversary, 2 son's graduations, and our grand-darling's first birthday, as well as 6 people arriving to stay with us from out of state during the month) I was WAY behind in my water color class.  I finally finished the last lesson (though there is a bonus lesson, I've yet to do!) just today, so here they are...

Lesson 4 was 'Garden Tools', I photographed my grandparents old galvanized tin watering can, which I still use daily. 

Lesson 5 was 'Critters and Creatures in the Garden' and I photographed a juvenile black chinned hummingbird in our pine tree to use as a reference, here's my little painting of her...

Lesson 6 was a tutorial on creating realistic looking water/dew drops on leaves or flower petals.  I simply sat down in front of our instructors online video and tried my best to copy her instructions, and am pretty pleased with the results. 

This class has been really valuable in helping me to gain experience with watercolors in the format of nature journaling, which I love.  Also in helping me to over come my fear of not producing a 'perfect' result.  The results no longer 'need' to be perfect, the process is so fun, and enjoyable, and I'm capturing memories and creating, it's a bonus if the painting turns out to have 'good' aspects to it too.  Don't hesitate to take a course from Imaginarytrips.com if you think you'd enjoy something like this too.  I highly recommend it!

Joyfully,
Katie

Lesson 3 completed.

Desert Oasis (IVTG lesson 3), originally uploaded by Az~Kate.

Our assignment was to paint a water feature, and so I set off to the Desert Botanical Garden and sketched and painted on location for just under an hour. I finished the journal page at home. So enjoying this class!

Imaginary Gardens class lesson 2, Window Box

Our second assignment for the online watercolor journal class was to paint a window box bouquet, from life or from a reference photo.  We were to give ourselves an hour...ha ha ha!  I didn't get very far in an hour, the result you see here took me about 2 hours.  ;)  But, I'm learning a lot and getting a bit more used to the water brush, still not crazy about it.  (I think I'll like it better for water soluble inks and wc pencils)  This was painted from a beautiful picture Jared took at the Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island on his spring break in 2007.  Here's his gorgeous photo!

First assignment reworked.

For some reason I can't add a photo of my Sorrel assignment showing the changes I made in response to suggestions, so I am posting a new entry in order to do so.

Here's my page after attempts to make improvements...