Monday, June 29, 2009

Flowered Steps, San Gemini, Italy

Daily Journal
Traveling in Car
San Gemini, Italy

Funny thing about traveling - I love visiting new places, seeing new things, learning new ways -- but once I get home, I often find that I'm so very tired! C and I spent yesterday resting, doing some chores, and watering the wilting plants. The heat was high again, so we waited a while before venturing outdoors. We took our ususal walk and picked our own blueberries, caught up with a few neighbors ... but mostly caught up with ourselves! LOL

This was sketched and painted again in the car over the weekend. The trickiest part of sketching in a moving vehicle is getting one's lines fairly straight! LOL Fortunately, we were on open road during that part of our trip home - so sketching was a bit 'smoother' than dealing with the jerkiness of stop and go traffic.

The photo I used for reference was from the small town of San Gemini, Italy. The pinky/blue/lavender blossoms of hydrangea match those just blooming at home in North Carolina. Our soils tend to be pretty acidic - and so my hydrangea tend to be more blue than pink. I wish I had kept the steps a bit lighter in this - but I certainly learned a lot about wet in wet (and balancing a vial of water) during this painting! LOL

Off to a busy week and lots of sunshine. I heard the rain late last night - unfortunately it didn't last long enough to refresh the drying soils and thirsty plants. We're already 2" down from our ususal rainfall.

Hope your week is terrific!

3 comments:

Teri said...

Beautiful and bright!!!

Katherine Kean said...

I'm so impressed that you can paint in a moving car - and envious that you can pick your own blueberries!

Painting and traveling is the way to go, isn't it?

Joan said...

Lovely!!!!! The flowered steps are so typical of what you see all over Italy. It still amazes me that you can paint in the car while it is moving!