Something New

Illustrating a blog for the better part of six years helps you accumulate a surprisingly sizable pile of sketches and paintings, even if you’ve been selling them here and there. I’m not the brightest bulb in the box, so took a few times rearranging my tiny studio before that I have an Etsy store where some of those find new homes and even new lives on mugs, today iPhone cases.

I designed these from a series of botanical themed watercolors that started as the foundation of a spring themed watercolor exhibit a few years ago and have continued a little bit each summer since.

Fall Colors

Ironically, the first pile of firewood in the driveway is still a sign spring is still springing. The day-lilies still so brilliantly blooming announce and celebrate summer, but for me, the Black-eyed Susans are the first color of fall.

They open just after the middle of summer and the orangey yellow is a reminder to stop complaining about the heat, but take the time to enjoy it because it won’t last.

Blossoms

  Dune Blossoms, 9×12, Watercolor

In any other garden, these would be weeds. On the dunes along Lake Michigan, they’re delicate blossoms that, in concert with the dune grasses that cover the sandy bluff, prevent erosion with an effectiveness human might and engineering has yet to match.

Prints can be purchased on Etsy here.

Bouquet of Blueberries

Prints can be purchased on Etsy here.

This is a bouquet of blueberries I painted for my mom who is in the hospital right now. She should’ve gone to the blueberry Festival in South Haven Michigan last weekend, but instead she went to the ER.

She’s on the mend now, but I think the scariest moment for me in our relationship was Saturday night to say she was going in for surgery. She sound worried, and she never sounds worried. I’ve watched her merrily making blueberry muffins with a waterspout making a beeline for her kitchen and ask if anyone wanted butter at the table for them, so when she was worried, I was worried.

I’m a mom, but worrying about my mom made me feel like I was five again. So, when the person who taught me everything I know about mothering and unconditional love got sick, I did what I would’ve done when I was five. I made her something.

We will be together in a few days, and I’ll give her as big hug as possible. For now, it really is the positive thought that counts.

Summer Supper

Summer Sup

Work’s been keeping me inside for most of the daylight hours this summer samosa the landscapes I’m drawing are of the aquarium or in my head. This one was inspired by a collection of flowers and critters I did a couple years ago for a show. 

More than Weeds

A week ago it was in the 30s, and this morning I walked out to the driveway to find that The first wave of dandelions had already bloomed and float away. This is a member of the second wave getting ready to open.
I know they’re weeds, and I probably won’t be so philosophical when I’m yanking them out of the garden next month, but right now, after a long rainy spring, they’re a lot more than weeds. They’re miniature sunflowers.

May Flowers

If was rainy and cooler for most of April, and the May flowers arriving right on cue. A couple weeks ago, I bought a basket of pansies.  I am the world’s worst waterer –so bad that the Society for the Prevention of Picking on Pansies has sent several threatening letters warning me not to buy hanging baskets anymore. Mother Nature intervened this year and made sure they survived.