The Fifth Day of Christmas,

The journey continues. Sometimes our guidance is as clear as a star in the east, sometimes we need to stop giving instructions and listen.
That's me all over. I hear a lot better with my mouth shut. Trouble is...oh the usual.
This landscape may not look right topographically, my familiarity is with southwestern USA topography, so the Wise Men are following the Star somewhere outside Benson, AZ.
Enjoy your Journey, it's Life.

El Color Caliente...

The above is the theme of an upcoming show at a Gallery near me. Lately I've been thinking about this. The focus of the show is cultural, but I kept coming up with landscapes:

Arakis/Dune or Big Bend Desert Sand Storm 8X10

and

14X18 Acrylic, unfinished

the second one was not ready for the show. There are dried chilis to hang and rugs hung out to air, chimney pots to add, rungs, values to balance, oh the list goes on. I entered the first one and:

Chili's 8X10,acrylic, painted this morning.

When I took the picture the shadows all bleached out. This is without the flash, too.
After double checking the painting I found that they're there, somehow I didn't catch them with the camera. The submissions for the show were emailed in, and of course no one else will paint chili peppers, oh no.
Perhaps Photoshop could help me.

Maybe not. Best to use live submissions until I get the hang of this.

Lately I've been doing a lot of pen and ink sketching. Just got a fountain pen by Pen and Ink Sketch, a fine point. It's a delight! It has one of those adapter things so you can use bottled ink, or cartridges. So far I've used up three cartridges so I'll get a bottle of fountain pen ink to save a bit. Most ink at art stores seems to be for dip pens, so the search is on.

Well, THAT was embarrassing!

Today was the first day where there was absolutely NO excuse for not going out and doing a bit of plein air. All I can say is that it's a good thing I took pictures. Today's results will not be posted, however, before I went out I did a little painting as a result of watching a National Geographic documentary last night:

Egyptian Afternoon

There was one shot in between some of the scenes, only there for a moment, but it captured the feeling of the burning heat of which the desert is capable. This is a 6X6 watercolor.

Now this one:

Mother Hubbard's veggie bin

This was done as the result of an Art Challenge last month. Somehow I managed to delete that post. Don't ask. This is an 8X10 oil. It's a yam, the pale thing is a slice of cantaloupe.