The Online Art community is world-wide

5 July, 2020; Vail,AZ


While this is not exactly an Aha! moment . . . .


The Web isn't called the World Wide Web for nothing; but, now that I'm taking a lot of online art classes, the fact that I'm interacting on a daily basis with other artists, and aspiring artists, across the globe is really brought home to me.  I'm currently taking a class from an instructor in Sydney, Australia and the other students come from everywhere!

A few weeks ago, I was learning more about local community reactions to recent black deaths by police in the US not from my local TV news outlets, but from comments made by Americans on posts created by British citizens living in Germany!


Warm-up Exercises for a Watercolor on Location class


Doing an urban sketching class online when most of the country (much of the world) is being asked to stay at home should be interesting!

The warm up exercises have been focussed on the way one begins to watercolor sketch; doing a few thumbnails to establish composition, values, etc.  Mostly, these have been done from still life set ups inside, or photo references.  I threw in some faces (from photo references) because I'm used to simplifying shadow shapes on faces.








I've done a few watercolor sketches from photos I took on vacations in the past.  This one was from a trip to Venice.



Arizona Fire Season

2 July, 2020; Vail, AZ


Waiting for the Monsoons


The fire nearest Tucson, the Bighorn, has been burning for almost a month and has destroyed over 115,000 acres.  It's on the opposite side of town from me so I've only ocassionally been bothered by smoke.  Until last week when the flames could be seen from my house - still far away but a reminder every night.




Slowly, the fire is being managed, but, really, the only thing that will stop the Arizona fires (and this is only one of probably a dozen) is the arrival of the Monsoon Season.  So, we are all hoping for the Monsoons to arrive.

The cloud patterns are starting to align, today I even had some sprinkles at my house.  I'm grateful as I know that our fires are nothing like the fires that happen every year in California and the Pacific Northwest.  I'm reminded of the truly horrible fires so recently in Australia.  

And, I hope for the Monsoons.


Van LED lights are in!

1 July, 2020; Vail AZ


I now have some pretty lights in my Van!


In addition to the 3 Puck lights that I installed temporarily, I wired up and installed 2 strings of LED lights for fun.  These tiny string lights come with a remote and can display a bunch of different colors and, just like Christmas Tree Lights, and be Steady, Flashing or Smooth Transition from color-to-color.  Ha-Ha - I'll probably only use one color on Steady; but, I know I'll like having the remote.


Getting started



As usual, it was more complicated than I thought it would be.  First, I had to fish wire behind the center column of the van (luckily, I found a wire hanger in the back of my closet); took me 2 tries but I got the wire, plus an extra string (to make future wiring easier) through the column and down into my power box.  Then, I had to order butt-end electrical connectors to hook it all together (finding all the wire and connectors in the Covid Lockdown was a challenge all by itself!!). 


The power box is a tangle of wires - fan, lights, solar input, fridge . . .


A bit neater now!



 Luckily, I ordered double what I thought I'd need - for some reason, getting a good crimp on an electrical connection is always particularly difficult for me.  Eventually, I got good connections on all the wires, used a heat gun to shrink the connectors tight around the wiring, taped over them just to be double sure and then flipped the switch!  Yay!! Lights!!


Not terribly exciting in daylight - I'll see how they look tonight in the dark!

I have a short weekend camping trip coming up in a couple of weeks - I'll be testing out the completed van for the first time.

More Baking


I'm trying to cut down on how much baking I've been doing since my DIY Sourdough Starter really took off!  I've been making bread, pancakes, crackers, etc trying to keep up with all the sourdough discard; I really shouldn't be consuming that many carbs. Also, I was getting a little tired of even the minimal amount of attention I had to give the Starter storing it in the fridge. 

So, I decided to try dehydrating the starter - I'm told that it will last indefinitely when dried.  My old training kicked in; I never create a backup plan without testing that backup plan.  So, after my dried Starter had been in the cupboard for a few weeks, I re-hydrated some just to make sure that it was viable. After a couple of days feeding, it was super active!  Success!  

A couple days ago, I decided to use up this re-hydrated starter and the starter I'd still been keeping in the fridge (in case my drying efforts didn't work) and make another great loaf of Sourdough bread.  This time I added about 1/2 whole wheat flour, some walnuts and olives.




It turned out great!  I'm so glad I dried the starter - it will be less tempting to keep baking up these scrumptious loaves of bread; I just can't keep from over-eating when they're in the house.