Day 85 - The weather

Has been nice and cool for the last week...the warmest it has been is 76 which I LOVE but its also been grey and rainy for the last week...boring skies to paint. One thing about painting...you DONT have to paint the sky you see...you can choose another!!

 I whipped out my jillion photos that I take for the day I cant paint from life...or when I need to finish a painting and picked out a photo I took in my neighborhood when the skies were bright blue a couple of weeks ago.

Savannah River Rice Paddie

The sycamores were just beginning to get golden as they do every fall.  This is the old rice paddie at the end of the neighborhood.  I think the tall standing grass is really old rice because all of the five rice paddies here have that same odd grass with a brushy top.  Maybe we should go pick some rice...or do you glean it?? 

Sky is cobalt blue.  Clouds cerulean and yellow ochre.  Trees are hmm Indigo and ultramarine, a yellow green Holbein, and Daniel Smith Green Apatite with some yellow ochre and quinacridone gold.  I tilted the notebook at 45 degrees so the darker colors ran ...fun effect I think!! I do like drippy paint.

Out my window

I could not paint on the left side of this paper at all...it repelled the watercolor...also a smidge on the right side.  The handbook watercolor journal continues to be a POOR choice!! 

This is what it really looks like out the today...so this one is plein aire despite that I did it in the house.  I used the same colors in the trees...and I really like the way they turned out.  More green in the water than the rice paddie had...no blue sky to reflect into it.  The clouds are cerulean and yellow ochre with a little red violet mixed in.  I repainted along the tree line with cerulean to darken it down some more....not a bad view from your favorite tv seat or your seat at the kitchen table or when you are lying in the bed but the white fluffy clouds win...several more days of this weird misty rainy weather.  

Thanks for looking!!

Spring on the river

Spring on the river is a beautiful time of the year despite all the tree pollens flying everywhere...here are some pics from our Easter walk in the neighborhoodMy Favorite sign of spring ...and the beginnings of an accordion sketch book in a lovely pale green done using directions on Nina Johansens blog

Out for a Sunday Stroll with a cup of coffee...I guess that is what they do in Atlanta?!:>

The Bradford pear trees are starting to leaf out and pretty soon all the lovely white blooms will fall in a shower of snowy white petals...an amazing site in the early morning sunlight

They are getting closer

More bradford pear flowers

A sure sign in the south that spring is hereA scrawny forsythia in front of one of our neighbors VERY patriotic fence

The side of one of the neighbors houses...looks very oriental dont you think?

Leeann and Drew waiting for me while i am once again taking pictures....I think the comment was cant live without a picture of that old dead tree can you? and then they waited most obliging for me...i would never catch up with their LONG legs...

Funny story about our dogs...i downloaded these pictures at school today along with about 100 pics of the kids...they are firmly convinced that i have Sid the dog that is in their reading books...and I even have two of them....they played spot Sid with these pictures and were quite enthralled with it.

and really its kind of an interesting tree...a woodpecker favorite

Woodpeckers have drilled this old dead tree full of holes...a drill press could not have done a better job

I am not sure what kind of tree this is ...a maple of some kind no doubt but its a HUGE tree...more than fifty feet tall..

what would spring be without a crop of fresh darling dandelions?

River elm is once again loaded with its ballet dancers

Drew and Leeann pausing by the river with Jazz...shes down in the left corner

Charley though he was 16 this year likes nothing better than to get out and run (literally) around the neighborhood where there are all kinds of wonderful doggy things to sniff..he used to have a brown patch around his right eye but its faded away to white...When the kids saw this picture at school today they just KNEW I had SID the famous dog from their reading books....and said things like you really do have Sid for your dog...tooo funny....

 

he really was the most obliging egret...posing on the edge of what we now call the lagoon but is really an old rice fieldposing for several pics before he finally decided to fly off and hideCan you find the egret...when he finally flew off he tried to turn into a stick to hide...hes in this picture i swear he is

The Crislips azaleas strating to blossom...mine still have buds...not fair Dianne!
I dont know what these bushes are called...honeysuckle bushes? butterfly bushes? but they were too lovely not to take pictures of...








one of two rice trunks in our neighborhood which is built on an old rice plantation and this is what is left of the old flood gates for the rice paddies ....we now call them lagoons...i guess they called them rice fields? ANYWAY we are very far north for rice growing...more than 125 miles from the coast of South Carolina where most of it was done.