From the desert to the sea...

One of the projects we did in art class, was to do a watercolor on Yupo paper. It has a very slick surface, unlike normal watercolor paper. It is very difficult to add layers, unless you dab on the color after it has dried. You can actually take a Kleenex and wipe the paint off. Anyway, pardon the glare, I call this one, Quiet Sleep...

I really liked using this Yupo paper. I am pleased with the way the mountains turned out..

The second one is a colored pencil drawing of a yellow cottage on the island of Oland in Sweden, on the Baltic Sea. Wish I could say I had been there, but I wasn't...my girlfriend was. She LOVED the house and told me it was her dream house. She lives in Missouri and I live in Nevada, so I asked her to send me a picture of it so I could envision it like she does...

She sent me the picture and I drew it for her for her birthday, and called it, Jan's Cottage. I ended up making several prints for her, since her relatives live on the island as well. They would take walks past the cottage because they knew how much she liked it. I also made a black and white copy of it, that I kinda like . I don't do perspective very well, so it was a huge challenge for me, but she is a great friend, so the effort was well worth it.

The roof gave me absolute fits! Burnt orange type tiles with salt weathering...

It is a charming little cottage though. I would have liked to knock on the door to see the interior and meet the family who live there.

She did not have any of the background in her picture, so she described it to me in an email, and I used creative license in creating what I thought it might look like.

Both of these were finished last year, I am still plotting along on my current projects...

Had a very productive day today. Left the house at 7:30am and had all my errands done before noon!

My sister arrives tomorrow morning...I CAN NOT WAIT!!!!!