Hoard

It's been awhile- finally found a few hours for this week's word - 'hoard'. Just thought of a little squirrel hoarding his stash of nuts away during these great summer days.

Fail

"Courage allows the successful woman to fail and learn powerful lessons from the failure - so in the end, she didn't fail at all." Maya Angelou

Save

This is a quick sketch- but when the word 'save' was presented I could only think of all the animals out there saying, 'please save us'. I hope we can.

Homage

My IF post this week is an homage to Joseph Raffael, a painter whose work I have admired and been inspired by for many years. His is the wonderful top image and is called 'Spirit'. I worked on the koi in the more humble lower image very quickly and in my more painterly way-wanting to somehow take off just a bit on his sense of color, movement and interpretation of nature which just astound me. I initially saw an exhibit of huge oil paintings of his at the Newport Harbor Museum of Art in Orange County, California about 30 years ago - aaaah!! They really were the most beautiful paintings I've ever seen-water lilies, water, foresty things. I'm not sure when he shifted to watercolor - but now I think that's his primary medium - huge very saturated watercolors. I could step into them and be very happy. He left California and is now in France and shows in New York- do see if you're there. You can see more on his website: http://www.josephraffael.com/

Heavy

This is a stretch - the song 'he ain't heavy, he's my brother' popped into my head- does this have anything to do with a mouse and an elephant? Why not!

Garden

I did this oil painting about a year ago for a garden tour. It's called 'Nina's Garden' and is where I was painting during the tour. I had been a little apprehensive about doing that- but it was nice- the day was beautiful, the visitors were friendly and happy and the garden was magical. I wanted to submit new pieces to Illustration Friday, but this piece fit the word 'garden' too well for me-bringing back all the memories of that really beautiful place- so here it is.

Leap

Leap'in lizards....
I'm a little afraid of reptiles, so I thought making cute lizards might be a good exorcism.