Dazed and Confused by Summer Speeding Past

I haven't posted in ages, but not because things haven't been happening.  We had a drought.  We have rain, humidity and a rising river.  Crab grass is crawling across the yard, and the flowers look pretty much exhausted.

I have been putting together a couple online family trees, complete with photos old and new, and inviting people to look at them and help by adding pictures and making corrections.  Limited success here. I have discovered Ancestry.com. and solved some mysteries about our family stories.

I've hosted my local book group (The Lace Reader), cleaned like a mad woman, and even prepared food!  I haven't read much.

I dropped my figure painting class in Madison and added a figure drawing studio in Whitewater.  I keep meaning to paint, but then don't.

There have been family memorials and weddings.

We've taken a couple little trips, including a fun "mini cruise" from Manitowoc, WI, to Ludington, MI, on an old car ferry, the S.S. Badger.

We didn't take out car, but instead parked the Saturn in Manitowoc and just boarded the ferry with our bicycles.  The  trip takes four hours.  We stayed over night in Michigan, then rode our bikes back to the ferry and returned the next day.  It was lots of fun.  

Then we drove up to Door County to Dick's sister and brother-in-law's house.  They had never ridden through Peninsula State Park, so we did that together.  I remembered the beautiful scenery, trees, water, lighthouses, but had forgotten the hills.  I managed to fall of my bike at a place where the gravel trail met the asphalt road on a hill.  Not much blood or hide was sacrificed, but a good amount of dignity was abandoned.

So, tonight is figure drawing and I should get my act together and give it a go.

Sometimes This is the Only Way to Stay Cool

6x6 inches, paper collage

My studio is a narrow room under the eves upstairs, and in the summer it get really hot.  Really hot. That's the excuse I'm using for my not working harder on my collages and paintings lately.  I was supposed to be in Madison this morning at the figure painting studio, but I didn't have the energy to get packed and drive up there - so I decided to work at home instead. I got going before it heated up too much, and this is the result.  I found a couple gems at the local consignment shop, an old ledger from a cheese factory, and a children's book on birding.  Neither was precious, except to me as a source for paper and imagery.  I think the castle was from an old National Geographic. 

Completed Collage - Peaches and Summer Cherries

5x11 inches, paper collage

I finally finished the paper collage I did for the Inspiration All Around Us challenge.  As I mentioned in my last post, my idea was to create a paper collage with a watercolor under painting in complimentary colors, and to let those colors show through.  In general, I like the results, and will try more collages with this technique.  I like my color choices, though the yellow table cloth is close to the peach in value and hue.  I also like the bits of background color peeking though, and the textures in the vintage papers and maps I ripped up and cut to create the composition.  I tried to have some papers with no printing, so it wasn't too busy, and I think that worked too.  The peach on the left is my least favorite, perhaps because I tried to do too much shading.  Still, it was a good experience, and I am satisfied with how it turned out.