draw a sign challenge

last weekend was a very busy weekend -- so busy, i haven't even gotten all of our activities that we did posted to my blog. but one of the things i've wanted to do for a long time was to go over and see my friend's house she had built and take a picture of a junction near her house where F hwy and U hwy meet. something about that just struck me as funny!

after a morning of soccor, lunch out, finding friend's new house, visiting, and more -- we headed off for this somewhat famous junction near her home for my picture. for the curious, this junction is located near la russell, missouri.



the EDM group challenge lately was to "draw a sign" -- so here it is. my version of the junction of F and U highways. hope you have a laugh out of it, too.

this drawing was done in a 9 x 12 sketchbook w/ 70# white paper and a black prang colored pencil, sprayed w/ matte finish sealant to keep it from smearing.

meeting at powell gardens

last summer, i drove on a bus trip to powell gardens, about 25 miles east of kansas city on highway 50, and found that it was a lovely place that i would like to take jerry back to at some point. i also stated on one of my groups that focuses on botanical artwork that it would be great if some of us could meet up there for a sketchcrawl or if cynthia padilla, the list owner, could come here and teach a class. i guess cynthia got online, checked out powell gardens, and decided it would be a place where she could teach some classes on creating authentic botanical art.

about 2 weeks before her scheduled classes to teach at powell gardens, she announced on our list that she would be in the area and would love to have anyone from the list come to her classes or drop in and meet her. i would've loved to have gone to the class, but i just couldn't afford it on that short notice -- so i settled for traveling there while she was there so i could meet her and jerry and i could explore the gardens.

here is a picture of cynthia and me together in the beautiful atrium area as the garden areas begins. i had stepped into the class she was teaching when i first got there, but she was busy explaining a process and all the students gathered around her so i didn't want to intrude. i just wrote a note and left for her that said, "jill was here. i'll be back after while to say 'hi'." she was looking for me before i got back, but i didn't want to interfere w/ her class time. we scheduled it just about right to arrive back in the main building about 30 minutes before her class was over, so students were very busy trying the techniques that they had learned and were trying to get finished up on things before departing.

here is a picture of cynthia rearranging a plant so a student could get a better view of the part needed to draw. cynthia gave many important details during the class to make the sketching/drawing go much easier, and one of those was to not try to draw the plant while looking at it straight on. looking from an angle usually provided a much better drawing view.

here, cynthia is working w/ her student (marsha) and showing her a technique on getting the right look at the right angle. sometimes it just takes having someone point out another technique or assure the student that it can be done a certain way and it's okay to use that method.

after the day of class time for these students (who had not taken art classes before), they were hanging up their works of art and some of these were absolutely amazing. throughout the class, the learned new techniques, heard new ideas, tried new things and probably felt the class was a great overall success.

if you want more information on taking a class from cynthia padilla, you can contact her at botanicalart@ev1.net. she told me that she'll be back to powell gardens to teach more classes in april, 2007, and i intend to be there to take one. meeting cynthia was a fun experience and it's so neat to meet the person and put a face to the "personality online".

if you want to explore Powell Gardens more to see if you want to make the trip there, it's well worth your time and effort.

IF - quiet

the illustration friday word on 9/29 was "quiet". even though i haven't been keeping up w/ the IF drawings, i have been keeping track of the words for a day when i have time and inspiration to catch up. as soon as i read this word, my first thought was a sleeping baby, but they are only quiet and angelic for certain length of time. the next thought i had was of my father's grave.

then i realized that i didn't have a picture of it, so it took me a week to get myself out to the cemetary to take some pictures. i don't go there often (maybe 5 times since his death in 1997) and only when something is dreadfully wrong, so jerry was suspicious of my need to go to the cemetary and take pictures.

after i had the pictures, then it was another few days before i was ready to work on the picture. funny thing was, though, that once i began working on the picture -- it was a picture and didn't bother me to work on it. now that it's done, it bothers me to look at it.

my father was the most awesome man i have ever met, and my respect and love for him is unmeasurable -- so this picture is dedicated to him.

this picture was done in a 9 x 12 sketchbook w/ 70# white paper and a black prang colored pencil, sprayed w/ matte finish sealant to keep it from smearing.

the real answer

as i've been going thru 3 comp books and painting all the unpainted pages, i've found a couple journal pages that i had forgotten to finish or forgotten to photograph or forgotten to post. this page is one of those "forgotten pages"!

this comp book journal page was actually painted with the pictures glued on last january (2006), but the wording was added two days after jerry and i got married (wedding on 2/14/06 and wording on 2/16/06).

we were married on a tuesday evening, and then we left on wednesday to go to osage beach, missouri, where i was presenting in the missouri state "write to learn" conference. so, we combined our wedding/honeymoon/conference presentation all into one week. i had my comp book in my conference bag for those times when i needed entertainment between meetings or during a presentation that couldn't keep my interest.

for those who are wondering, i was already scheduled to present at the conference at the time we set our wedding date -- so we just tacked on a couple extra days at the end of the conference to stay in osage beach and counted that as our honeymoon.

the pages are painted w/ the cheap acrylic craft paints, the pictures were from some junk mail i received at school, and the writing is done w/ sharpie markers.

hummingbird moths -- amazing!

totally amazing information! as i was trying to find out what the numerous caterpillars are that we seem to be "blessed" with right now, one of my online friends in my botanical arts groups told me something that just totally astounded me.

these tomato hornworms (these are actually the "tobacco worms" b/c they have diagonal lines on them instead of V-shaped lines like the tomato worm), which are familiar to most all gardeners, are the most despised of caterpillars. they eat the foliage off of the plants and can strip a garden bare in no time. the goal of the gardener is to eliminate ALL of these little devils.

these picture were taken in my garden this last summer as these little devils tried to take over my cherry tomato plants. their markings and coloring make them so hard to spot that it's easy to miss them totally until the tops of the plants start looking stripped of all leaves.

same picture, but cropped in a little closer for better view.

i grabbed this big one and put him in a jar to show to raven when she came out. then i decided to lay him out on a white background and take another picture or two. the little dark things in his "feet" is called frass and is left as black droppings on the ground where they have been.

these tomato hornworms and tobacco hornworms actually morph into these beautiful hummingbird moths, which we saw a few of in the front flower garden but didn't know what they were.

the ones we saw here looked like a cross between a bumble bee and a hummingbird, but so similar to a bee that raven didn't want it near her "because it might stung me!" if i hadn't posted the question about the caterpillars, i might not have ever known this amazing tidbit of information!

alligator snapping turtle

last may, jerry picked this little alligator snapping turtle up in the road for us to share w/ raven. i thought someone might be interested in these pictures for their artwork.

if you want to read the whole story, it's on my personal blog as checking out a small armoured tank.





if anyone wants high resolution pictures of this little turtle for artwork, send me an email request and i'll send them to you. i have a 7.2 megapixel sony cybershot camera, so you can blow them up pretty big and still have excellent definition.

caterpillar mystery solved

special thanks to everyone who offered help and ideas on the identification of all the caterpillars that we have been having in our area. while they are great fun for "the kids" to play with, they are causing an environmental problem with the farmers as they strip the leaves off of the soybeans and may cause an even more harsh problem in their later phases of life.

i was hoping that all these caterpillars were headed toward "butterfly-dom" some day and imagining how thrilling that would be to see (and to share w/ raven), but instead have found our that they are going to be moths instead. sandy, who left the info on my blog as a comment in the previous post, supplied the name of "yellow woolly bear caterpillar" -- with the scientific name of "spilosoma virginica" -- and after checking several internet sites, that seems to be what we have.

according to the websites, these caterpillars are searching for dark places to hibernate as larvae since the weather has started to turn cool/cold. that would be why they are all on the porch, around/on the doors, around/on the garage doors and so easily underfoot. after hibernating through the winter, the caterpillars will become active again for a short time and feeding before making cocoons out of silk and body hair. then after 2-3 weeks, the tiger moth emerges from the cocoon to begin the new phase of life. at that point -- this is what we'll have an overabundance of . . . . . . . .

caterpillars everywhere!

we've been taken over by caterpillars here. they are EVERYWHERE!!! in some places, they are so bad that farmers are having to spray their fields to keep them from eating all the soybean leaves. other places, so many caterpillars were squished while crossing the road that the highway looks a different color.

at our house, it's not a problem but more of an adventure for raven. she loves to see how many caterpillars she can find and put on herself to come and show me. she's very careful in handling them and then takes them all back outside to the porch/flower garden so they can "go back to their mommies" when she lets them go.

i'm wondering -- what type of caterpillars/butterflies-to-be are these? should i be expecting to be bombarded with a certain type butterfly soon?

also, is there some old folk wisdom, wives' tale, or native/nature relation between how many of these there are compared to what kind of weather we've had or will have?

any help would be appreciated. if anyone wants up-close pictures of some of these to draw, i can send you full-resolution photos from a 7.2 megapixel camera if you want to have big pictures to look at. just send me a request by email and i'll send them to your email.

page painting technique

i had the urge to paint the other night and work in a comp journal, but didn't really have a plan of what to do. i decided to take my paints and my journals to my night job and work on painting some pages so they would be ready to work on.

unlike some people in my groups, i can't seem to plan ahead and paint the page in the morning w/ the intention of journaling on it that night. i like to have several pages painted ahead, flip open my book and find a color i want to work on or will work well w/ my topic, and go from there.

the other problem i have is getting paint on other pages, the back of the page i'm painting on, or various other places that it shouldn't be. as i was putting plastic down on my work area to begin painting, i realized that i should put my whole journal into a small trash bag, cut a slit to pull a couple pages through, and then paint could only get on those 2 pages.

pull the pages through that i'm going to paint on and leave the rest of the book protected inside the plastic bag.

now, clean white pages ready for painting. with 4 books set up this way, painting pages went really fast. i could put the paint on, go do a couple things for work, come back and switch pages to paint, and paint some more. it also helped that the work table i was using for painting was located right under and AC vent -- so pages dried very quickly, too.

overall, i was pretty happy w/ my idea of painting my pages while protecting my books. i couldn't decide if i had thought of something other people hadn't thought of OR if it was so obvious that everyone but me had already thought of it!

anyway, that's the news on painting journal pages here. i'm working on getting a bunch of pages painted so i can just have fun on doing journal pages then.