Fossil and Lace watercolor 12" x 20" on 200 lb paper
Tracing the photo onto 200 lb watercolor paper using a scribbled carbon backing. I've never attempted something this detailed. Will I have the patience to finish it?
Beginning to fill in the many small spaces. There are so many!! Blue will do for a start so I can see the composition and judge what to do next.

The darks are too dark. The rule is to leave them for the last but I couldn't wait. Additional colors are needed in the holes of the lace. The hIghlights need a warm color.
The values look believable. The limited palette gave coherence yet a variety of hues. It will look good in a white on white wide matte and frame. I'm considering doing another lacey subject. This was very satisfying.

The fossil, embossed tin and crocheted place mat sit on my printer most of the time. The fossil is a souvenir of my winter in Brookings, Oregon while I waited to sell my boat, damaged in a storm as I travelled the coast one fall. The placemat used to be a curtain over a storage shelf in my boat. The tin is a garage sale find that I store rings in.
I've misplaced or accidentally deleted the photos of building this kayak..........I'll keep looking
How I learned to draw a horse.......
While photographing the horses that live near me I overturned my ankle, fell to the gravel and ripped the knee out of my best corduroy pants. I hurried home, called Kim to bring something home for dinner as I couldn't walk, and printed photos while I grabbed my box of pastels and a pad of colored paper.... and a hiking stick... and a towel to catch fall out.
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After a week on the chesterfield I had mastered pastel horses and walking with a cane. Pastels are user friendly but I hadn't practiced with them very much. Changes can be made without leaving any telltale signs. I use hairspray to fix the chalk to the paper. "What's that smell?" Kim asks. I must remember to buy unscented next time.

I will look for my large multicolored rendition in pencil crayon on canvas. Now there's something to try. Crayon and charcoal on canvas goes very quickly as the texture eats up the stick of color without any effort. It's not possible to make corrections though.
Painting on Yupo.......a polymer surface that allows all trace of watercolor to be removed at will.
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The white Christmas balls are thumb prints.
Because I knew I could remove paint so easily I felt freer to experiment.
The paintings above were done on 8"x 12" yupo. I photographed them and printed them out as 4"x 5" art cards.
It was now time to try using a large sheet of yupo. 20"x 28" The paint is really not controllable. The results are always spontaneous looking. The photo reference for this was a lily. I like how active the brush strokes look. Lots of movement.
This was an experiment on glossy surfaced 20"x 30" foam board. The watercolor paint did not stick at all unless it had some chalky white pigment added to it. All brush strokes broke up into little pieces. I added the white pigment very sparingly. The results were unpredictable. This is an economical surface containing the usual acidic chemicals so it is yellowing with age.
My very first quilt art. 8"x 12". I became interested in this art form when I spotted the magazine Quilt Art. I had many years experience on a sewing machine making everything from tailored suit jackets, and coats, to boat canvas and tipi covers. It's very satisfying to sit at a sewing machine and make art. I love the style of the background mountains over pieced blocks. It is an adaptation of something I saw in the magazine which was more complex. The reeds are appliqued eyelash yarn. I like to leave raw edges when possible to show the process involved.
"Look what I found!" I told my neighbor. "Here I'll throw it in the garbage for you," he replied. No,I had real plans for the squashed rusty deep fryer basket . Then I decided my bathroom rug need replacing. "Throw that thing away," said Kim but I had real plans for it too. I wanted to use smudgy metallics so I bought bronzer and eye shadow at Walmart. I added another rusty piece from my collection, a couple of pieces of jewellery some thistles and incidental pieces of string. It is still in progress as I add more embellishments. The hanging bar is a nicely flawed 2x2.
Drumheller mud! It's pretty sticky on its own but I added white glue just to be sure. I applied it in a leaf shape to a discarded drawer front. Mud reveals its best qualities when used in long graceful strokes. I have seen some very lovely art done with mud.
Saskatchewan has patches of uniquely crooked trees. It is believed it is a response to the minerals in the soil.

While on my search for the officially recognized grove of trees I noticed that I was camping among some very dramatic ones. So I went no farther. I photographed and sketched. It was late fall so there were no leaves......making it easy to see the skeletons.
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I had learned that these trees existed when I spotted an announcement for an art show called The CrookedTtrees of Saskatchewan that would take place in Kelowna, BC.
Kim was discarding a worn out sheet from her massage therapy practice. I grabbed it before it could hit the garbage bin , ripped it into strips and began reassembling it by crocheting it into a circular piece of art. I stiffened it by soaking it in white glue and laying it in the sun on a sheet of plastic. Then I added dabs of metallic paint. And I have since added a winged bug piece of jewellery as this really does look like a free form spider's web. Perhaps it is called "Catch of the Day."

I have used this technique for making a vest with long fringe, too. Photo later.
My first representational work using watercolor on satin and embellishing the image with machine stitching. The results were a surprise. I will be doing more in this style.
This one is now sold to an enthusiastic admirer of art of all kinds.
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I am currently working on red poppies on a white background that will require a lot of rows of stitches to quit the background to make it recede behind the delicate flowers.
I masked out the trees with frisket intending to paint them later. When I pulled off the masking I discovered I liked it pretty much as it was so I did very little and to only some of the tree trunks. Interesting art happens by accident for me. I even preferred to leave some of the masking on the trees far in the distance. I am trying to figure out how to use something like frisket but not as expensive to paint with and to leave it on the surface as it absorbs paint in a different way, leaving interesting texture and hues. Maybe So-All which is a rubbery glue used for fabrics that's been around since I was a kid.. It can also be used as masking for paintings.
It's probably obvious that there are jigsaw puzzle shapes in this piece. I coated the puzzle with white house paint which glued it together. I need to put another coat on the back to ensure it is really stuck together. I then played with acrylic colors and shapes. The little pieces look like people so I emphasized some of them. Are they falling out of the buildings? .................. Or are they good at teletransportation? Depends on your world view.
This is a photo of the frost patterns on our storm door. The color in the background is the siding on my neighbor's house. This makes a lovely art card to celebrate the holiday season.
I met these two young boys while camping. The one was very gregarius and convinced his dad to take me out fishing with them. He caught me a fish which provided me with a first time experience of gutting and frying in the dark on a small home made penny stove fueled with mostly coconut oil.

In exchange for the photos I sent them , they sent me this photo of these two city slickers posing as hay seeds leaning against a huge hay bale.
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I printed it on a t-shirt transfer and ironed it onto canvas. I stitched and then tried to remove the transfer. It wouldn't come off so I now pretend I meant that to happen. It actually looks better than if it had come off easily! Another happy accident.
This was an experiment to see how small I could make quilt blocks. I used a strip quilting technique and you can see the repetition of patterns that happens when the strips are jogged one direction or the other. It was a successful way to portray the contour of the coulee hills .

Some of it is reverse applique, also, which involves carefully cutting away the top layers until you reach the underlying fabric you wish to expose.

This is now in the collection of a local admirer of art.
Near Drumheller is a small collection of houses named after the Cambria Coal Mine that was there at one time. Miners dug into the low hills near there. The dugouts are big enough for a bed, stove, chair and table. Very comfortable in all climates I'm sure. There are nearly a dozen of them. Some are being used to house riding mowers now. There is a very interesting row of them that has license plates tacked to the doors or other small bits of material from that era. This oil painting is of the only one facing south, around the corner from the ones that are now "garages."
This is a watercolor on bristol board that I did for my mother. In the distance is the house I grew up in. No one cared to burn or haul away the discarded farm machinery from the 30's when my grandfather established himself here.

I have always liked how watercolors behave on bristol board. Often there are what I call bathtub rings around the little puddles of paint. There isn't the opportunity to redo anything with this paper. Leave it where it lies.
An Acreage of my Own


This is a piece ( 3'x3') that was prepared for a Fibre Arts Competition in Edmonton, AB. It combines a weaving done on a cardboard loom plus a small quilt art piece of birches I sketched while doing laundry at Crimson Lake,AB.The background is hand stitched in the traditional cathedral window piecing technique. The folding of a large canvas squares into a smaller square gives the back a finished look. All raw edges are folded within the final shape that has lips to fold back and insert scraps of color. in this case, I have inserted pieces of wrinkled road map in a number of openings.
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I'm always on the alert for that little piece of land that is surprisingly underpriced and just right for me. A few have slipped away before I could make a commitment.
This is a detail from an aluminum pie plate that I embossed by laying knives under it that look like asparagus. I then used the lip of a spoon to press the foilaround the knives. I even have a round frame that fits! Ihave experimented with aluminum foil in various ways. Wrinkoliong and rolling it flat several times makes it thicker and stable and textured. Then press it over something that is of interest. Even thin blocks of wood make a series of tiles that are strong enough to use on a wall.
Tin can art! The ribs are from a typical can, maybe it was beans. We eat a lot of black bean burgers. One needs a good tin snips that doesn't leave a sharp edge. Dragonflies should be our locally celebrated insect. They love the water feature at the Tyrell Museum. When we have the water feature in our yard going, they come around to catch the mosquitos.
Central Alberta badlands is the perfect climate for working with papier mache. It dries so fast!
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These angels were assembled from shredded newspaper soaked in diluted white glue on cones of cardboard. The head shape is a ball of paper contained within masking tape. The sleeves are upholstery fabric.

Papier mache is so strong I was unable to texturize and distress the surface it with a wood rasp! With a coating of clear acrylic they could be used out doors.
Next to me is the remains of a very ancient smoothed over landfill. The land glitters with broken bits of glass. I always find interesting bits of rusty artifacts and ceramics. I have a substantial pile collecting in the corner of my yard.

The words on this piece were made from an alphabet that I carved into those white erasers. It took longer to make the alphabet than to assemble the collage.

The assemblage has been glued to a canvas wrapped and painted frame with Shoe Goo, available at hardware stores. Very reliable stickum qualities.
This image is painted on an oil that my mother did. I had lightened her mountain scene from 30 years ago with white. It turned out to be exactly the right background for the totem pole and cedar.
BBBusiness card backs. Print painting on 8x12 cards stock and hand print name. On backside print out details of card in business card program.
What my painting looks like in a living room