Paint Party Friday - Week 11 - The Weeds Won

I thought I would have nothing to show for Paint Party Friday. (Severe Pout.) But the accountability of the PPF check-ins inspired me on to finish up my May page for Kat's sketchbook as part of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Sketchbooks. Soon it will be on its way to Nicola in Australia. (If our postal service isn't disrupted, that is...)

My page spread shows some of my Spring Garden along with a few tools of the trade for this time of year. (As always, double-clicking on the image increases the size.)

My Saucer Magnolia, Tulips, Daffodils and Lilacs

Flowering Crab, Irises, Poppies and Purple Sandcherry

Really though - the weeds won. When it wasn't raining I was weeding and pruning and digging up dandelions and cleaning/raking garden beds and this is what I had to show for it on "yard waste" day.

And I have only done a small fraction of the garden. Sigh. Not sure how productive my painting will be when all my non-work hours are spent weeding!

What about you? Does gardening take away from your painting time?

Here are some photos from my garden that inspired my pages:

Forget-Me-Nots

Purple Lilac

Flowering Crab (a bit past its prime)

Tulips

Purple Sandcherry

Poppy

Poppy

Saucer Magnolia

The mint has started to grow, so please help yourself to a mojito and keep me company while I weed! Have a great time at the party!

Sunday Sketches and Creative Tuesdays - Four Seasons Tree

Sundays seem so busy lately and I have been missing Sunday Sketches with Sophia of Blue Chair Diary! So this week I wanted to get back on track. I was thinking about the seasons recently and how we may have skipped one! Spring never seemed to come here or if it did it was so rainy that it was hard to notice. And yesterday felt like full on summer. (Yay!) Any decent day - the garden (and the weeds) call and I need to be outside working instead of inside on my computer. I did however make some time one rainy day and played with Creative Tuesday's (which I have also been missing lately) theme of "tree". I thought it might be fun to try my own variation of the Four Seasons Tree:

I have also been working on my pointillism tree painting (which if you're joining in at Paint Party Friday you've already seen).

WIP - Pointillist Tree

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's effort at Sunday Sketches and Creative Tuesdays but it may take me until the evening or when the forecasted rain arrives (sigh) to visit!

Paint Party Friday - Finishing something finally!

Do you ever start things and not finish them? It seems like I have a lot of unfinished projects in the works at the moment! I have made progress with my "dots" but it is not finished. Nor are my other painting WIPs but I did finally finish painting my Mexican Sketchbook. Yay!!

I took a Strathmore Windpower drawing sketchbook (with 80lb paper) to Mexico with me on vacation and tried to capture all the highlights of what I saw in this book. Some pages I painted there while others have been sitting since March with unfinished pencil sketches. This week I finally decided I was going to finish it,  and I did.

Here they are for Paint Party Friday. (Warning (and apologies) - there are a lot of pages so I will show most recently finished (and previously unshown) pages first.)

Sea Fan found beachcombimg

Statue of Balam

Beach Map

Sand Writing

Sergeant Majors and Brain Coral

Angelfish?

Variegated Foliage

Painted Cover

View from Balcony

Beach in late afternoon

Champion Fisher-Bird

Start of the Day

Sea Tang or Doctorfish?

Friendly Iguana

Mexican Flowers 1

Mexican Flowers - Hibiscus

Mexican Flower 2

Mexican Flowers - Bougainvillea

Mexican Flowers 3

Mexican Foliage - Banana Palm

Mexican Foliage - Purples

Mexican Foliage - Sun Palm?

Mexican Foliage - Elephant Ears

Pina Colada (help your self to one at the party!)

Eagle Ray

Sea Turtle

Sting Ray

Sketchbook pre-vacation

Travelling Paint Set

Travelling Pen Set

Do you ever paint on vacation? I found it to be very relaxing and a nice little break from reading, plus now I have a fabulous and unique souvenir of the trip. (And I fell in love with those waterbrushes!) I keep looking at the pages, trying to decide if I have a favourite painting or not but am so far undecided. When you finish a journal, do you usually have a favourite page? 

(Update - LOL!! My PPF partner and friend Kristin and I must be on the same wavelength today as she has tropical sketchbooks on her post as well! And she has just reminder me of Illustration Avenue's theme this week of "Tropical" and this sketchbook definitely suits that theme! P.S. Kristin, I LOVE the Thank You painting!! Thank you!)

Have a great time at PPF!

Paint Party Friday - Week 9 - More dots but not yet enough dots

Happy late Paint Party Friday! This week I continued work on my pointillism piece when I could. It will take a lot of dots to finish this piece! It's still a work-in-progress but looking back at last week's photo, I can see that I am making (slow) progress.

Photo 13May2011

 Scan 13May2011

Where I left off last week...

As you can see, I have lots more dots to go but I have made progress! And thanks to Theresa's encouragement, I kept searching Google to figure out the name of the painting I thought was so spectacular. it is Bonaventure Pine by Paul Signac. And while mine will be very different, here is my inspiration below:

Gorgeous, isn't it!

I expect the party will continue over the weekend with all the challenges everyone has had (it will for me) so I have fun and I will visit soon!!