Inspiration and Perspiration

It hit 107*F today.

I knew it was coming, it always does this time of year, but for some reason I was clinging to the denial part pretty heavy. The chickens have NOT been happy about the heat and have been pretty verbal about letting me know they are going on strike until the coop has air conditioning. Yep. It's getting pretty ugly here at Casa Crazylife.

 I am just hanging out in the house waiting for the heat to pass and looking forward to school starting in less than a month. I have 3 classes this semester and they are all art classes, so this is going to be a great semester for creativity.

A series of paintings I am working on of my morning coffee cup. I read of an artist that took the same object and painted it 100 times in different colors and settings. Not sure if I can stay with it for 100 paintings, but I'm having fun with it right now.

I did get to learn a few new things while I've been off for summer break--I took an oil painting class at Wichita Center for the Arts and got to play with oils. I have worked with acrylics and watercolors before, but never oils. I love it!! I have amassed a ton of oil paints and canvas/gessoed boards to paint on and have been trying to do a little painting every day to get myself more familiar with the medium. I have also started collecting a few books to help me along on the subject, which I will introduce over the coming posts. One book that I absolutely adore, but is out of print is "60 Minutes to Better Painting" by Craig Nelson. He has a DVD out which looks to be a really good version of the book also. I bought the book on secondary market and then was shocked to see it skyrocket in price. Hopefully the publisher will reprint the book since it is a great reference. I like the idea of doing LOTS of 60 minute paintings to get proficient and learn what to edit and what to keep.  

At the beginning of the summer Cute Man and the boys got 2 really great raised bed built for me and we discovered that they eat of a huge amount of soil. I think each one took close to 30 bags of peat hummus and top soil to get filled! Finally after we filled them, I went wild planting seeds.

That is where I ran into trouble.

In all the excitement of getting my seeds in the ground, ONE OF US (that'd be ME) didn't mark what was planted there. Did you know that there are a lot of plants that appear to be weeds? Yep. After pulling what turned out to be stuff I planted, I have decided that next year the planting beds will be clearly marked and I won't put so much in them. Cucumbers and melons become monstrosities in no time at all. Plus--when you plant Brandywine or Cherokee Purple tomatoes--PUT CAGES AROUND THEM EARLY!! They grow to be huge and flop over if not supported.

Lessons learned.

The hard way.