"My vase is compose rose"

OK, so it's been awhile since I even looked at this neglected blog. Retirement gets crazy is all I've got to say. This is a painting done in January 2016.  I totally enjoyed playing around with the idea of "not realistic" vases of flowers. I did some simple water colors at first and had so much fun, I decided to go for an acrylic version.The final canvas is 20 inches by 20 inches and was a pleasure to work on. Here are a few photos of the progression. 
My favorite part of all is the oil pastel outline  I add at the end. It takes me back to fourth grade when everything I drew started with an outline.  The title is based on the name of one of the acrylic paints I used made by the Holbein paint company.
Amazingly, this painting is now on display with about 14 others I did in this series at a recreation center in Lone Tree Colorado.  How did it get there?  We moved! From Florida. In May. This is the crazy part I alluded to at the beginning of this post.

Bullying- a cry to Stop IT by Shane Koyczan

An amazing plea from a guy who lives in his heart and has climbed out of the abyss.

Shane Koyczan "To This Day" 

i-phone fun

It's raining too heavily to go for my morning walk, so I'll post a few photos taken with my i-phone 3. I have a few photo apps (OK - 37) that are very amusing. In fact, hours can go by without my noticing at all. Now I know why I see people staring a these things. They really are fun toys. Since I never call anybody, I now  think of this as my favorite camera.

 It was 96 degrees and I was sitting on our porch which faces west so I got some good contrast in the photos I took. This effect is from Camera Art Fx, a free app that changes a photo into a drawing or a cartoon.

 The i-phone lets you turn the camera lense face you so you can just snap away. Click. Click. Click.

 I wish I had the patience to draw like this. Look at those lines! The shading. The cross hatching. Wow!

 When I was absolutely too over heated to sit outside in the low slanting rays of the sun, I came inside and sat on the sofa with the verticales closed behind me. A softer light and an interesting background effect.

 Once you have taken a photo and saved it to your camera roll, you can open it up and play some more. This is now a polaroid!  I think I used Lo-Mob, an app that looks like a polaroid on steroids with about 42 different effects.

 Me with the ceiling fan. I got some cool pix of it spinning, too. No, wait. That was an i-phone movie.

OK, a little color and an interesting frame. This photo was taken through three different apps, but I didn't take notes, so I can't remember how I got here. But it is a cool rendition, don't you think?