Dude

This is Dude, my friend's dog.  It's a little bit difficult to make a pit bull look lovable and friendly.  I'm afraid he looks a little "don't mess wit' me" in spite of assurances that he is truly a lovable goof.  To soften the look I used three colors with less contrast than the black, ivory, and beige-ish color I've used for people portraits.  In fact the light color is what I have used for the mid-tone color before.  I think it helps although it darkens the whole thing.

School girl

Several months ago the school had a silent auction fund raiser.  I donated a custom paper cut portrait.  Someone bought it, but I haven't heard from them yet.  Another mom saw the portrait of Buddy Boy and asked if I could do one of her second grade daughter for her husband's birthday.  My first commission.  I found myself watching her on the playground to look at her eyes and expressions and get a sense of her personality.  I worked from a photo her mom sent, so really most of that is already in the picture, but having done this I feel like I know her a little bit more.

a rainbow for you

Grandma would be pleased.  Thanks to PBS's Cat in the Hat she draws rainbows with all the right colors in the correct order, with one exception.  "Pink, orange, yellow, green, followed by blue, indigo and purple, that's a rainbow song for you."  The clouds are purple, must have been sunset.

The kids never cease to amaze me.  The other day at the library she took one of the little pencils and slips of paper and worked on it very intently, then came to show it to me.  "Look, it says my name".  And so it did.  She went back to work and wrote Buddy Boy's name just for good measure.  Where did she learn to do that?

We went somewhere

I know, it doesn't happen very often, but we went somewhere further than Grammie and GrandDad's house or even the coastal cousins.  Not only did we go somewhere but we got to see SNOW!  That was very exciting for the small fry.  Neither of them remember seeing snow before.  That's because Little Darlin' hasn't and Buddy boy was only 1 when we left the land of frost and snow. 

We maxed out our driving radius and visited friends in Reno for the weekend.  On Saturday we tagged along on a preschool field trip to ride the Amtrack train from Reno to Truckee.  It was a beautiful ride.  Even though we had just driven through there the day before the novelty of the train and the friends made it fun.  The Dads met us at the train station and then we found a bit of snow.  Thanks to our friends we were dressed warmly for the short adventure.  We don't have any real cold weather gear for the kids and very little for us big people.  The kids, big and small, had a great time sledding down the hill, making (the motions for) snow angels, and building or really rebuilding a snowman from the icy bits of spring snow.  We relaxed and caught up with friends and ate lots of pizza.  It was a great weekend.  Thank you friends!

Writing practice

Buddy Boy hasn't been that interested in writing, but he can't resist a secret code.  He is drawing and writing a bit more now than he used to, but still needs practice.  How do you encourage your kids to write?

Class time

I don't often take a class or spend a day away from the kids.  This week I did both, twice.  Wednesday I spent the day at a continuing education seminar.  It was really interesting.  The title was How the Brain Forms New Habits: Why Willpower Is Not Enough.  It was really interesting, all about the neurobiology of habit formation and what works for changing habits.  One of the big take home messages was that willpower doesn't work if you want to stop doing something.  It works well to keep you doing something and to pull you through, but not to keep you from doing it.  In order to exercise willpower you need to keep something in your working memory, in your mind all the time.  That's great if you want to remember to do it, but not if you want to stop doing it.  If it is in your mind, you will think of it all the time and be very difficult to stay away from.  It is much better if you fill your mind and life with "enrichment", things that make you happy and send little dopamine bursts to your brain.  When your life is full of good things the bad habits can fall away.

Saturday I took a one-minute drawing class.  That was a lot of fun.  I want to be an artist when I grow up.  I do a little bit now and then, but I want to improve my basic drawing skills.  The instructor encouraged us to use a drawing style I haven't really used before, continuous line drawing.  It ends up looking a little like Calder's wire sculptures.

He taught us how to shade the pen drawings.  Since the ink is water soluble you just use a wet Q-tip and smear it around a bit.  Very easy.  We also did blind drawings where you draw without looking at the paper.  It looks a little Picasso.

It was fun and by the end of the day I was able to do more than I could before.  It definitely encouraged me to draw more.

Projects and primroses

A few weeks ago my parents came to visit and as Dad says, "I'm always good for a project", so I took him at his word and we did projects.  The biggest project was organizing the garage.  No pictures.  Not interesting, but very good to have done.  Mom made curtains for the living room.  I wanted short curtains, not exactly the trend, but I wanted to be able to keep the bookshelf right next to the wall.  Dad figured out how to hang them to make them look great.  The curtains themselves are simply big rectangles, about twice the width of the window, with wide hems on the top and bottom.  We used clips and a simple rail on the top.  Using the clips to hold the pleats keeps them neat looking.

The second project is a shade structure of sorts for the back patio.  We had the shade tarp from our last house, but no way to hang or support it.  Dad came up with a simple structure made of PVC pipe with lines to the fence to keep it up.  The uprights come off and the rest rolls up nicely to stow away under the eaves on days that we want the sun to come it.  We almost needed it that week, but we are seriously back to winter this week.  Rumor has it that there is a chance of snow.  We won't be needing this for a little while.

I took this picture in the morning so you don't see the shade effect.  The back of the house faces west and gets very sunny in the afternoon.  That makes for a bright kitchen in the winter, but a blinding hot glare in the summer. 

You can see the little pot of primroses on the patio.  They are Little Darlin's pets.  She really wanted pink flowers one day at the grocery store and we bought this little pot of primroses.  They are almost a pet.  She will carry them around and (over)waters them and takes them outside for sun and inside to look at while we eat our lunch.  It's all pretty cute.

What's missing?

It looks like the tooth fairy will be making a visit tonight.  There won't be a gap for long.  You can already see the big tooth coming in.

Police Jones update

The next installment in the adventures of Police Jones was inspired by a Far Side cartoon.  Buddy Boy likes to read comics and cartoons.  He can read the words in the Far Side, but he doesn't always understand what is going on or why it is funny.

"Thwarting the vampcow" becomes...

Check out Police Jones.

Autumn scarf

Here is the next scarf.  It is still the twiggy pattern, but this time it is a little bit of autumn.  While I was working on it I almost changed my mind and put grey in the middle instead of the yellow (the paint jar calls it brass).  This scarf is a sheer chiffon instead of the heavier silk I've used before.  There is a better drape to the scarf, but the colors are more muted because there just isn't much there to see.  As I was taking these pictures I realized that the colors might not be autumn leaves, but spring pansies instead.  Either way it works.