More art from my classes with Helen Shafer Garcia

 Watercolor

 Pastel and Watercolor

Watercolor

I've taken several classes with Helen at the Fallbrook School of Art. She teaches Watercolor, Pastel, Mixed Media, and Book Art among others. I've really enjoyed them all.

My art done in Helen Shafer Garcia's class

Here are just a few. More next week. Bet you can hardly wait!

A flower for Jodi

In memory of her mother.

R.I.P Muammar... (Rest In Pieces)

I was looking through my stack of artwork from last year's classes, (the day after the death of Khadafi) and I found this:

 My teacher, Mary Tomaskevitch, had brought in several newspaper clippings to use as reference material for that day's lesson. I ended up with a picture of Gaddafi. It wasn't a very good painting and I just filed it away and forgot about it until the day after that fateful day.

SHADOW SHOT SUNDAY -BUG IN LIVING COLOR

My friend Robert Sommers, turned my last week's shadow shot into a work of art.
He has an art gallery here in Fallbrook and is also a wonderful writer. I never miss his interesting blog:
blueheronblast. It's often very irreverent and usually about politics, food, music and/or art.

Don't miss all the other shadow shots at: heyharriet.blogspot.com

SEPIA SATURDAY- Four generations

Four generations on my mother's side:

My great grandmother, Katherine White;  my grandmother, Bessie Reis; my mother, Arleen Reis;

my great great grandmother, Rosa Daehler (about 1916)

My great grandmother, my mother, grandmother and me. (1940)

My father's side: My grandfather, Petrus Finwall (the one who was killed in an accident with a fire truck [story in a previous post, Feb. 20]),  Great Grandmother, Josephine Mefford; Great Aunt, Ella; Grandmother Della Finwall; Uncle Glenn (the one who saved the family in the accident with the fire truck). See more about heroic Glenn on March 18 post. This photo is taken in back of the house that my Grandfather built in Chicago.
My sister and I went to see this house a few years ago and it was still standing. I made an altered tin using this photo, another photo of the front and the census page listing the family at this address in 1910.

My father's maternal side; Great Grandma Mefford; Me, Grandma Gilbert (Finwall); my father, Gil. (About 1940)



The Sepia Saturday Site is actually on vacation today for the Easter Holiday.  So, if you go to the site it won't be as complete as usual, but I think some people are still posting.
For more Sepia Saturday stories go to http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/

SEPIA SATURDAY Beach Party

My Uncle Glenn, Aunt Phyllis, Unidentified Floozy, and Uncle Bob at Sunova Beach. (About 1937)

You met my handsome Uncle Bob a couple of weeks ago and My Uncle Glenn was mentioned a week before that.

Uncle Glenn was the 11 year old hero who steered the car to the side of the road after his father was killed by being hit in the face with a piece of a fire truck tire.

Uncle Bob was put into an orphanage with my father and their other brother, Don, so that their mother could go to work after she became a widow. Uncle Glenn was the oldest and went to live with an aunt and uncle.

I don't know why my Aunt Phyllis was completely clothed while the others are wearing fashionable bathing attire.

Don't you love the name of the beach?

Uncle Glenn was the oldest of the Finwall boys and the most long-lived. He almost made it to 100.
He died in 2006 at 99 years old.
We dedicated one of our painting books to my Uncle Glen.

One of his paintings titled "The Old Miner"

A self portrait.

More Zentangles

Travel sketches

My new favorite blogger is Vivian Swift.(vivianswiftblog.com ) She has written a wonderful book called "When Wanderers Cease to Roam." It's her travel journal and it's full of her beautiful little watercolors. I bought it because of the watercolors but as I read it I realized I liked the writing as well as the paintings.  She's so inspirational and full of information on writing,  journaling and painting...and she's funny.  I found myself identifying with her so much that I've emailed her several times and she actually wrote back.

She's inspired me to start writing about my own travels. I've been looking through my sketchbooks to find things I've sketched while traveling. I've done a lot of traveling but surprisingly little sketching. I buy sketchbooks all the time and take them with me but when I look back at them they'll have one or two half finished sketches in them and lots of blank pages.

Nancy, Megan, and I went to Paris and London in 2002.  These are the only sketches I could find although I do remember doing some others.

When we got to our teeny- tiny hotel room in Paris there were three beds jammed together. We thought we could save money by all 3 of us sharing a room. We would have had to walk on the beds to get to the bathroom. So we splurged and I got a separate room. This is Nancy resting before we hit the streets. Nice socks!

We had a friend who lived in London who we hadn't seen in more than 20 years. We called him while in Paris and he insisted we come to London.  So we took the train through the Chunnel. It was a little disappointing because while going through the chunnel you obviously couldn't see a thing. I liked the ferry better.

Our friend, Jim Singer, was an Oriental art dealer. He had specialized in Tibetan art but said it was too picked over now and he had gone on to other Oriental art. His large apartment was full of paintings, prints, textiles and statues.  The one of the Buddha was almost life sized. The smaller one sat on his fireplace.

This was the view from his living room window. (not a very good sketch, but it helps to remember it.)

Jim came to visit us in California a couple of times when he moved from London to Tiburon, Ca.

And then he disappeared. Every time I called I got no answer and no answering machine.

So I googled him and, to my shock, he was dead.

We had just seen him about two weeks before this and he had talked about being depressed. It hadn't seemed that serious, though. He had been recently divorced, both his parents had died and his only sister had died years before.  So he had no family left.  We've never really found out what happened but we assume he committed suicide. Just when we found him after so long we lost him again.

More from our Art-full L.A. trip

 

One of my favorite places in L.A. is the library. When you're there, always look up.

This is the ceiling in the main lobby.

Another ceiling.

One of the many exhibits at the library was of old movie posters. We loved the titles of these two.

 

  

The lobby of the beautiful Biltmore Hotel, just a block away from the library.

The inner courtyard of another of my favorite L.A. buildings- The Bradbury.

  

Nancy snuggles up to Charley Chapman in the Bradbury Building.

On our walk to the Grand Central Market - 

the window of a curandero shop.

All sorts of herbs and potions and religious statues were on sale here.

They promised to cure you of everything from liver to love problems.

Christ on a crutch (or two). 

The window of a shoe store in the art gallery area.

From the L.A. Art Show and Zentangles

Here's a couple of the artists that were represented at the L.A. Art Show.
These first two pieces are by Oh, Kyong-Mi. I didn't notice it at the time but my latte photos from my last post must have been taken with these in the back of my mind.

Hers are ART, though.

After our Zentangles class we saw Zentangles everywhere, in tile patterns, carpet patterns, nature, etc. 

I don't think this artist knew he (or she) was doing a Zentangle, but it looks like one.

This is by Poli Marichal. It's a lino-cut called Regerenaciones/Transcendence.

 

 Lino-cuts are a lot harder to do than Zentangles.

What are Zentangles?  Doodles turned into art.

They were developed by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. They can be used as a form of meditation and relaxation. (You know, that space you can get into while doodling). Rick Roberts noticed that Maria (a calligrapher) was hard to reach while she was working on a very involved illuminated letter.

He was an ex- Buddhist monk and thought she might be in a Zen-type space (don't quote me on this- it's just my interpretation). 

Suzanne McNeill has a book called "Zentangle Basics", (by her publishing company-Design Originals)- which is a great way to get started.

Here's my first attempt- a bookmark. It's fun and really is relaxing.

 

Here's one by Suzanne showing how complex and beautiful they can be.

An art-full trip to Los Angeles

Our friend, Suzanne McNeill, was here for a visit and we spent a few days in Los Angeles. It was all centered around art and started with a Zentangle class at my cousin's store TheART bar in Santa Ana and ended with The L.A. Art Show.

Zentangle by Penny Raile whose loft we visited in L.A.

 

One of Suzanne's Zentangles 

One of the murals in the L.A. library

Also in the wonderful L.A. library

Murals, while walking to the Grand Central Market for lunch.

 

A bridal shop on the way to Grand Central Market.

Suzanne at the Market.

 

Penny and some of her Zentangles in her loft.

One of Penny's paintings.

The model.

More art... on our lattes at breakfast.

 

At the Neon Museum.

More tomorrow about the Art Show.