Puppies in Blue

Toward the end of this August, my granddaughter Rachel, came over for her birthday art lesson, ( 3 months late). She loves animals, especially dogs, and wanted to paint golden retriever puppies. So we searched online and found some photos of these adorable little butterballs. After drawing them 4-6 times, she cut them out, chose the ones she wanted to use, and then arranged and traced them off onto her 300# watercolor paper. Rachel seems to like clean line and uncluttered space, and her choice of colors were the 3 primaries with blue being her favorite. She learned about space and shape and how to use these elements of good design to transform her paper into this wonderfully animated, yet curiously 2D, abstracted puppy portrait. And to keep the background 'back', she emphasized the puppies by outlining them with black. When the painting was completely dry, she covered the whole thing with thick, yellow tempra paint. Since it was at least 110 degrees that day, and to get it's "golden" shimmering effect, she waited only a few minutes before the second coat had a chance to get too dry, to wash it off with the backyard hose. This painting is now proudly displayed in her room...Very Good Job, Rachel!

The Last Stand

It's hard to find a view of the Superstitions anymore without a house or telephone wires. I remember after I had just come to Arizona to get married, there was almost nothing on the south side of this range as we traveled along on our way to the White Mountains for our honeymoon. It was so beautiful (I was star-struck anyway). But when I discovered this spot at the tail end of last winter, no houses, no wires (they're there but you just can't see them), I took photos so I could remember.