More Cairns and Thanksgiving

It must be the color that reminds me of Thanksgiving.  I did this guy awhile back, still love how bold he is.  

I have so much to be thankful for!  Our day was quiet, our grandson was with his mother and our son was with a friend; Ed and I enjoyed dinner with friends too.  It was a traditional meal beautifully prepared and served by our hostess.

And as we walked back home that evening, the clear sky and crisp weather, not cold, just crisp brought to mind other Thanksgiving Days, times when we ate too much and then had to go for a walk to work part of it off.  So many Thanksgivings and so much to be thankful for.  I don't think I am as thankful as I should be at times but reflecting back, there has been so much good.  Far more good than bad in my life, that's certain.

Meanwhile, I'm still playing with the cairns.  I haven't photographed this morning's yet; however, here are a couple more.  I think this first one needs a couple more tiny stones to make it believable.  I think I can take care of that... I'll post when I do.

Another Cairn

I think this one is not as good as the first two but that's okay.  It was fun playing with the wet on wet.

Cairns And A Collection Of Stones

I am a collector of stuff for sure and I’m working at getting rid of some of it; however, there is one collection that I’m thinking can’t go away but can be used somehow.  I collect stones.  Why?  Who knows why but I have bowls filled with stones, bags filled with stones and jars filled with stones.  Some are a certain kind of stone like these chocolate rocks from a beach in Fennville.

Others are just random stones.  Some I’ve written a date and place on but most are just stones I’ve picked up on the beach.

Every summer during my art retreat at Spider Lake I build tiny cairns on the dock.  One summer I lined them up on the open stairway.  I have a photo but who knows where that is.

A couple days ago I came across Tonia Jenny’s website.  She too is a collector of stones and she had a little workshop on painting them.  I checked it out and here are two little 4x6 watercolors that I did, one yesterday morning and another this morning based on what she taught.  

How fun was that and as she said… very meditative.  I think I’ll do a few more.

A little history of Cairns (pronounced sort of like Karen but it’s a very quick en.)  I always thought of them as a stack of balanced stones much like I’ve painted; however, according to Webster and some photos I’ve found it’s actually:

“a pile of stones that marks a place (such as the place where someone is buried or a battle took place) or that shows the direction of a trail”  There is an interesting article in Glass Magazine that tells the history of cairns and shows images of some that are different than what we think of as cairns today.  Here’s a link if you’re interested, GlassMagazine.

And now back to sorting clutter but first... so much to be thankful for and I hope all of you have a nice Thanksgiving Day.

Catching Up

I am working at collage most days but every now and then something pops up that gets me going in another direction.  Such was the case a couple weeks ago when my wetcanvas.com friend Kay posted an old fella that I just had to draw.  I got out my grunge journal and here he is....

I realized when I did him that I was at the end of that journal so I've started getting another one ready.  I do have one done that is a larger size but I don't like it as well as this size so I'm back to gluing pages together and gessoing.

I'm also beginning to think about Christmas.  I usually make a new holiday table runner but so far haven't been inspired to do that.  I did start working on a new centerpiece though.  A small scene... home, trees, potting shed.... snow.  Nothing firm yet, still in the thinking stages.

And thinking about 2019... new word, new goals, look back at old goals and see what I got done and what I no longer care about doing.  Something I haven't done in many years is a Vision Board, I was in my studio on Lake Avenue when I last did one and that was several years back... my 40 year old son was still in college back then, in undergraduate school.  I've begun tearing images out of magazines... not all will make it to the board but it's a start.

I've also done a few more of my 4x4 collages... here's another one...