Face 95 gave me Joy

Face No 95

Row 3 of One Hundred Faces

love this group of faces

Another great week in the garden

SHARING MY GARDEN CHORES and DOCUMENTING GROWTH AND BLOOMS

This week started with seeds.

I love to collect seeds.

The problem is I seem to have a hard time planting them. 

It could be a seed hoarders problem.

four o'clock seeds collected last fall

 Anyway, this week I planted some four o'clock seeds collected last October. 

FYI: I cut the bottom out of this little pot and set it in ground just so I would know where it is. 

When it germinates, I will remove the plastic pot. 

seed bed planting

 The bed next to the garage was reserved for annual seeds. 

Again, I cut the bottom out of little seedling pots and turned them upside down and then planted. 

garage side seed bed

 If you look close you can see four rows.

Monday I planted

phlox

zinnia

gomphrena

cosmos

and the dirt area on the left near the wall is gypsophila

Wednesday the zinnia and cosmos had already germinated. 

new stepping blocks

peach crop (one of)

toad stools in the garden at ground level

supper

These and one more went into the pot Friday night.

squash pan

 Yummmmm

Garden Palace attic

 The most exciting thing happening.....

yesterday....

and today!

Getting my floor in the Garden Palace attic.

I Love my Son.

I Love my Brother.

I Love my DH.

hot peppers

sweet peppers

tomato at bulls eye

pickle

I'm headed out the door to the Garden Palace attic. 

♥

A Bird Performer

Face No 94

 No 94 has a story (as they all do).

It is no coincidence that No 93 and 94 are very similar. 

My muse takes me slowly down the path sometimes.

Row 4 of One Hundred Faces

OK, here is the story, it just came to me.
She is a bird trainer and circus performer or something like that.
She being No 93 and No 94 who are one and the same.
And
Specifically, she trains the Yellow Tailed Blackbirds, which is why she raises them from baby chick.
The adult bird changes to black except they do keep their yellow tail.
I'm so happy she, like others, made it into One Hundred Faces more than once.
♥

A bunch of faces

My Muse helped yesterday

No 93 with Preliminary Drawing

 I slowed a bit on One Hundred Faces mostly because so many other things on my to-do-list. 

To get back in the groove yesterday, I did a quick little sketch of what I might paint in this row 4 spot.

As you can see, things changed when my muse showed up. 

I listened. 

Painted. 

And was happy. 

I think I will use the same little sketch for No 94 and see what happens. 

Face No 93 in Row 4

 Here she is with the Sam and Vickie

Face No 93

Another week in my gardens

SHARING MY GARDEN CHORES and DOCUMENTING GROWTH AND BLOOMS

Fairy Garden Update

dichondra in the fairy garden

 I gave up on the beautiful moss; however, I notice the plugs of moss that were very bright green (the most alive) were not bothered so much by the sow bugs. I'm leaving the moss to see if it can survive those little rolly-pollies.

I have wild Dichondra growing all over my yard. 

It is a very small scale little creeper and it spreads by underground runners. 

I started transplanting little batches of it around the fairy garden. 

I think it will look great if the moss doesn't make it.

dichondra

 Here you can see it growing between the patio pavers. 

helper Stupid Kitty (his real name)

 This helper gets into the action anytime I am outside. 

He won't look me in the eye anymore than a glance.

work!

 Very heavy rains this week made pulling Bermuda grass much easier. 

You can see on the left what it looked before I started. 

Still have lots more to pull. 

turtle laying eggs

 This is a red eared turtle and she chose to lay eggs in the garden.

I'm not sure if she actually completed the act as they usually do this in total privacy. 

I was busy and didn't notice when she left but she didn't cover it up. 

making a pot herb garden

 I potted up a herb garden this week. 

The pot is not mine and I will be returning it next week.

Herb garden in a pot

 I'm not sure if this will work. Hope so. 

I used:

Hot Spicy Oregano

Spicy Globe Basil

Thai Basil

Garden Sage

Pineapple Sage Salvia elegans

German Thyme Thymus vulgaris

and

if you look closely, I tucked in tiny zennia seedlings in the bare spots. Couldn't help myself. 

purple cone flower seedling

 This made my day yesterday!

I discovered this little purple cone-flower Echinacea angustifolia var.

I had many many of these in all of my beds until we had chickens and guineas some years back. They eventually found every seed or seedling and disappeared. 

I have been on the lookout for a plant or seedling. 

I got the start from my Mom as a passalong plant.

She passed away in 1991 and these mean so much to me. 

purple cone flower potted

 I marked the seedling with a rock until I could get a pot. 

helper lady bug

 Right after finding the seedling, I spotted this lady bug.

They are always welcomed helpers.

helper of the day

 But this guy! He was the helper of the day as I had four holes to dig to finish up the Dwarf Nandina Nandina enana planting.

Dwarf Nandina

 This garden will be finished in the afternoon shade today with the addition of mulch.

I'm about to break my arm patting myself on the back.

old rose root

 Here is a rose shoot coming up and even though it is just old rose rootstock, I can't help but pot it up next week. 

I mean, why not?

It makes beautiful red roses once a year in early spring. 

brown eyed Susan view from think tank

 You've heard about my "think tank"?

Here it is and is the same color of Brown-eyed Susans Rudbeckia hirta.

When I mowed two weeks ago, these were in bud and I left them to enjoy. 

After two weeks, they look like this!

They are amazing!

FYI it only took me four hours yesterday to get it all mowed. 

A lot of thinking went on.

purple leather flower view from the think tank

 Another view from my think tank of wild clematis.

 Purple Leather flower Clematis pitcheri

They are on a pasture fence.

I anxiously wait for them every May.

That's it for this week. 

Except I didn't show or tell you about the Marigold seeds started on Monday and germinated on Thursday. Amazing.

One more thing, I can see the squash blooming from my kitchen window and that thrills me.

♥

Inspiration feeds Inspiration

Inspiration feeds Inspiration

I don't really know what that means.

Prayer Book

 Inspiration feeding inspiration is something that I feel. 

I feel it when painting and I feel it when stitching.

The only way I can explain it is knowing that if I take the first stitch or the first brush stroke, inspiration will come for the next stitch or stroke and so on and so on. 

The term, blind faith, just came to me.

I looked for a definition and found:

Blind Faith

Definition:  belief without true understanding, perception, or discrimination

I think that is what it is; believing and trusting a beginning inspiration.  

Prayer Book Bird

Oh dear! 

I got way off track with that. 

I simply wanted to share the beginning of this little prayer book.

and 

to say that you can follow me on

Instagram

or

this rabbit hole that I recently fell through.

Pinterest

♥

I passed the countdown mark

Face No 90

Face No 91

Face No 92

It's countdown time. 

All three of these are in the dime-zone (meaning their face can be covered with a dime) and when I painted them, it was dark and cloudy outside. 

I couldn't see what I was doing.

But I had no idea No 92 had been out in the snow. 

Only three more of the tiny spots to go.

My fav of this group is 91.

♥

Take time to look at No 89

Face No 89 is 1.25 inch square

I have a lot to say about No 89 and hope that I can express my thoughts, as well as, show behind the scene of painting No 89. 

The first thing you should know, she is small. I never counted this one in the dime-zone, however, she is one and a quarter inch square....more or less. I just checked and she could be considered quarter-zone (meaning her face can be covered by a quarter).

The next thing you should know is she is painted on the one text-place-holder out in the middle of the blank space surrounded by the dime-zone.

While painting one hundred  eighty eight faces, there has been a lot of time for thoughts to swirl around. More than once, I worked myself into a frenzy about what to paint where. In other words, some of the place-holders seemed more important than others. 

This one is a fine example of that. Right out in the middle. Alone. In my mind, she would stand out and needed to be special in some way. She demands to be seen because of her placement away from the crowd.

All of these thoughts are swirling along with wondering when the time would come to paint on this special spot. While I was curious, I held onto the plan to be intuitive about when and what.

While resting in the chair zone several days ago, I flipped through the pages of a W magazine just looking at faces.

reference for face 89

This one jumped out at me. I bookmarked the page and kept flipping. Then yesterday, after a great afternoon nap, I woke thinking it was time to paint No 89. I sat down at the easel and stared at the board wondering what face would show up today. 

Then, I picked up the W magazine and opened it to the bookmarked page. 

I had forgotten about her.

BAM!

It all made perfect sense to me. 

Straight forward pose.

Confrontational.

Demanding.

Exactly the pose that should stand alone, away from the crowd, surrounded by the dime-zone faces. 

I get thrilled when these things become so clear to me while painting.

beginning first sketch

First I decided to give the text square a background layer of white. After the first swipe of white, I stopped and painted all except the middle with black.  Then, went over the black with white leaving a black border edge. I continued with thin layers of white and really liked the result.

I did purposely paint the chin line. However, the face that you can see under the first pencil marks is coincidental.

I love when a face emerges even before I get going!

I laid down some pencil marks to guide me with the feature placement. 

iPhone reference

However, as you can see, the face covers the whole page and is very awkward to paint a quarter size face from a big magazine page. 

Instinktively, I picked up my iPhone and decided to crop out the part I was not going to paint. When I did this I realized that I could paint from my iPhone instead of the magazine.

editing reference

When I chose the square aspect mode, it dawned on me that I could use the lines to help with the sketch.

I kept a screen shot to paint from.

And do you remember the 1/3 rule? 

Of course, that is where I lined up the eyes.

layout for sketch

I erased my first bit of pencil marks and started over.

new sketch

Once I am deep into the zone of painting, I forget to stop and take photos. 

I was loving the result of every brush stroke. 

And, thinking about how often I do love every stage but feel it is unfinished and keep going. 

Somewhere along the way with her, I made a decision to "not" keep going. 

The very next thought was to leave off any color. 

In other words, wouldn't she be more special and different and demanding if she was painted in black and white.  

painting with iPhone reference in hand

she gets her number

When I am finished, I give them their number. 

They are too small for a signature and it just seems like the number is my signature.

The final touch. 

Face 89 in the scheme of 100 faces

But wait!

face no 89

I went back and looked at the magazine reference. 

Suddenly, the word jumped off the page!

Throughout this whole project, if you were talking to me about it I would tell you that my whole point in painting these many tiny faces all together on one piece of art was to get you to stop, get close and linger over the painting.

I want you to Look around the whole board at each and every face.

I want you to choose a favorite.

I want you to make comments about the ones that speak to you. 

I want you to see what I see.

I want you to see what I don't see. 

I just want you to Look and take it all in.

Take time to Look.

No 89 demands that you Look!

♥