Beacon of Light

At the risk of annoying those of you in the middle of some very harsh winter conditions, I have to tell you that I am thoroughly enjoying the 80 degree temperatures here in Phoenix, Arizona. We’re here on a planned trip but also to attend to my elderly father-in-law, who recently had surgery for a broken hip. Sol will be 93 in March and has – until now – managed to stay quite strong. He’s a tough cookie and quite a character to handle. We constantly marvel at his daily caregivers’ capacity for compassion and we’re very grateful for their efforts to keep him comfortable. If you know of someone responsible for the daily care of the elderly, an invalid or someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease, do take a minute to thank them – and even give them a hug. It takes very, very special people to do this kind of work and we would be lost without them.

In my last post, Fearless Still, I mentioned that I am taking Life Book 2015. One of our first lessons was to create our “beacon of light” – an encouraging guidepost for the year. My little lady reminds me more of a sunflower than a beacon, but I am happy with the way she turned out  – and notice no penis nose!!!. As you can see, she is reminding me of my choice of “fearless” as my word for the year.

She is on 9 x 12 watercolor paper and I used mostly Neocolor 2 watercolor crayons and acrylics – along with some stamping and watercolor markers. I was supposed to use glitter on her “flames” – or in my case, petals. But I don’t have any (shocking I know) so just pretend she’s sparkling.

So tell me … have you chosen a word to guide you through the year?

Also in my last post, I shared photos of mixed media backgrounds I made during an art day with a friend and her daughter. I told you we used unusual – and unexpected – tools instead of traditional implements and asked you to guess what they might have been. There were some very creative replies (some of which I plan to try) and I’m happy to announce that there were THREE correct guesses!

All of the backgrounds I showed you were made using ONLY vegetation of some sort! An ear of corn – both the cut end and whole ear (which is what the correct guesses were), mushroom caps, potatoes cut into shapes, celery (both individual talks and the root end), green onions, broccoli, cut brussell sprouts, rosemary twigs, berries from my nandina shrubs, and sliced lemons! We had such fun! And I must say that the rolled corn, the mushroom caps and the broccoli were my absolute favorites!

I had intended to enter those with correct guesses into a drawing, but I was so impressed with their guesses that they are all winners! Congratulations to Danielle Seymour, Debby and Su Hall!  Expect an email from me in a couple of weeks (when the product is released) with a link to download your set of the digital backgrounds I created directly from the painted backgrounds!

Thanks to all for your nice comments and guesses!