Going silent for awhile – May you enjoy the blessings of the season, dear Readers.
Tina, Where Are You?
This is an unusual post, for an unusual circumstance. Someone named Tina ordered a calendar but did not provide her mailing address.
Her email address was provided from Paypal, but there was no physical address or P.O. box # provided so that I could mail her a calendar.
I emailed her twice, and didn’t hear back. This probably means that my email landed in her spam folder.
She emailed me asking where her calendar was, but still did not provide a mailing address. I replied, but am thinking that may have also landed in a spam folder.
So, this blog post is an attempt to locate Tina!
Tina, I hope you are reading this! If you are, please use the contact button again, and this time include your mailing address. I really want to send you your calendar!!
Thankful
Here is a short list of things for which I am thankful today.
Rain that is turning the hillsides to green!
A strong healthy husband who can replace our roof.
A group of women friends who packed 84 Operation Christmas Shoebox boxes to share with children around the world.
Snow on Alta Peak.
A friend to help on the roof, and a new roof!
Fantastic fall color, suddenly and everywhere.
Kaweah Post Office – Sad and Good
It took a few weeks to gather the courage, but I finally drove past the Kaweah Post Office. You may need to avert your eyes – it is dismal and sad.
Forgive me for such ugliness on this blog.
Let me atone for this indignity by sharing some good news about the Kaweah Post Office.
The eBay auction, the commission for Chuck, the sale of another painting of the post office, and several generous donations have produced. . .
rap a tap a rap a tap a rap a tap a rap a tap a rap a tap a rap a tap a rap a tap a rap a tap a rap a tap
(That was a drum roll, in case you were wondering.)
$2050!
This is a HUGE dent in the $3000 insurance deductible that the owner of the post office has to come up with for the repairs.
You people are CRAZY GENEROUS AND AWESOME! THANK YOU!!
(I used my favorite color of teal for that sentence to express my appreciation.)
Tomorrow I will further atone for the offensive photo above by showing you the 3 oil paintings of the Kaweah Post Office when it was whole and surrounded by greenery.
P.S. I keep repeating Kaweah Post Office so that Mr. Google can help people find it when they are seeking updates about our beloved Three Rivers landmark.
One More Look at Adding Blue
To continue yesterday’s dissatisfying post about color, here is an aspen painting before I added blue: 
Here it is afterward:
Ahem. Why is it that I can repair photos quite well using Photoshop Elements but cannot get the same painting to scan the same way 2 times in a row?
Who cares? I have real work to do!
Kaweah Post Office Fundraiser Update
We interrupt our normal broadcast schedule to bring you a Kaweah Post Office fundraising update! (music, graphics, running line across the bottom of your screen? Nope, “We” is just me.)
My husband just retrieved today’s mail, and included was a check for $1500 to help pay for the rebuilding of the Kaweah Post Office!
Fifteen hundred dollars.
I am not making this up! What a crazy-generous friend we have!
Thank you, crazy generous friend who wishes to remain anonymous!
Weirdly Easy Little Contest
Competitions and contests are usually a waste of time for a professional artist. This is just my opinion – there are bound to be those who disagree. One can win awards and not sell a thing. Or, one can sell but not win. I’ve been in both places, and frankly, I’d rather sell than win.
Contests usually have an entry fee, a form or two, a bio to be written, photos to submit, and then involve long drives to deliver the pictures, see the show, and retrieve the pieces. My time is better spent drawing or painting or preparing talks or planning art or teaching drawing lessons or blogging or. . . you get the idea.
HOWEVER, I found an exceptionally easy, fun and FREE contest. It is sponsored by a magazine called “Professional Artist”, and this is how it works.
- Go to their website and print out the entry form.
- Make art in the little bitty space (2-1/4″ x 3-1/4″) on the form itself.
- Fill in the few blanks with contact info.
- Put the form in the mail.
That’s all. No fee. No photography. No bio. No delivery.
Why bother? Because it was fun! It was so fun that I did 4 entries. My first entry is the sand dollar above, drawn in pencil.
I’ll show you the other 3 tomorrow.
Blogging Break
It’s been a rough few weeks. My blog will go quiet for a little while. Please enjoy past posts while I figure out how to recover some blogging mojo*.
I’ll be back. . .
*Is “mojo” short for “motivated joy”?
Reading Rabbit Returns
Here is a list of some of what I have read this summer. All were either entertaining or informative. All are worth sharing, and thank you to those who shared with me. (I didn’t list the mediocre books, of which there were several. Those I skimmed or didn’t finish.)
- My Reading Life, Pat Conroy. Nonfiction. (Thank you, Jennifer Dougan, for this recommendation.)
- The Light Between Oceans, M.L. Stedman. Fiction. (Thank you, Cathy T., for this recommendation.)
- The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr. Nonfiction.
- Knowing God, J.I. Packer. Nonfiction
- Under the Wide and Starry Sky, Nancy Horan. Fiction (More thanks to Cathy T.)
- The Calorie Myth, Jonathan Bailor. Nonfiction.
- Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath. Nonfiction (THANK YOU, MAK, FOR THIS FANTASTIC RECOMMENDATION!)
My list of unread books continues to grow, in spite of reading 2-3 at the same time all summer long. The over-abundance (is that word wrong, like “irregardless”?) comes from finding a book recommended on someone’s blog, and immediately ordering it from the library. We have a terrific library ordering system here in the San Joaquin Valley. I go to the site, find and order the book, and when it is available, the system sends an email saying the book is waiting for me at the Three Rivers Library.
That’s good news! Libraries are just the best thing ever, and so is reading.
If you have discovered any great books recently, please share them with me in the comments! (in case my stack of unread books gets too short and then I get antsy in case I wind up without something to read.)
Odd Job, Chapter Two
It is a bit odd for a pencil artist/drawing teacher/oil painter/muralist to be asked to paint a sign. The owner of Blue Moon Nursery in Three Rivers knew we would work well together, so she decided to overlook my lack of experience and hire me for the odd job. (Odd job to me, but sign painting is a solid profession. I’d like to have the tools, ability and knowledge to do it well.)
After messing around with typestyles and shapes and weights, it was time to add the extras. A nursery asks for things that look growy, and “Blue Moon” is sort of a gimme.
None of these made the cut (what exactly and literally does that mean??).
The owner of Blue Moon Nursery had some definite and good ideas, and together we came up with an excellent combination of type and frou-frous.
Stay tuned for the decision and the next steps.