Miss Ruby

This little angel visited me for her 1 year session. Talk about a sweetheart, she posed so cute & just melted my heart. I think I know a handsome little fella about her age that she needs to meet:)

Dawson & Delaney

One of my favorite sets of twins came to visit me for their 18 month session. These two have so much personality and always keep me on my toes when they visit! My belly always hurts from laughing after they leave, they are a riot, I think they keep mom & dad VERY busy at home:)

Penni | 7 days old

Meet sweet baby Penni, at just 7 days old this super sleepy little bundle came to visit me! Her mother is a dear friend & old co-worker of mine, so we chatted & Penni slept, slept & slept some more:)She was the perfect little model!

creation inspiration

I’m so behind on blogging. I have about 20 sessions in line to be blogged, waiting patiently, but instead today I’m going to blog about art:)I get asked a lot how I come up with [painting] ideas. I’ll post later about how I come up with abstract inspirations, as those are more obscure, but today I’ll show an example of how I accidentally happened upon a still life subject…

Last summer I had a giant daisy plant chuck full of blooms, I was going to get some pictures & there was this bee hovering over them. I never have any luck capturing pictures of stuff like that, but after few failed attempts I ended up with this:


Not bad right? I was pleased. When uploading the photos, one of my crappy attempts at capturing the bee jumped out at me. The image is out of focus (the bee darted out of the frame right before I clicked, arg) and normally I wouldn’t look twice at an out of focus image before deleting, but there was something about that single flower & stem that caught my attention…

I had to paint it. I envisioned it as a triptych, in black & white. I cropped the image & divided it out in photoshop how it looked in my head. I also boosted the contrast quite a bit, since I planned to paint it in black & white I wanted the shadows and highlights to be more extreme:

I printed out my divided image, used three pieces of 4″x 6″ clayboard, sticky-tacked them onto my work surface so they wouldn’t move, and then I painted.

Since the piece was so small, I wanted it mounted in a much bigger frame. I glued the piece to white matboard and put it in a black 16×20 frame, and…ta-da! I had my completed vision. It’s funny how inspiration can be so accidental, sometimes I think that’s the best kind:)

grateful

This morning I decided to make this week one of thanks & gratitude.

• Instead of complaining about how early my alarm goes off, I will be thankful I have a warm bed to sleep in.

• Instead of whining about sore muscles & the drill sergeant in my 6:00 am workout class, I will be thankful I can participate & am not in a wheelchair.

• Instead of getting frustrated with my huge ‘to-do’ list at work, I will be thankful I HAVE a to-do list and a job that pays.

• Instead of complaining about the cold & snow, I will be grateful for the incredibly beautiful winter weather we’ve had this year.

There are a million things we could complain about in a day, but there are 5 million things we could be thankful for instead! As my son gets closer to an age of comprehending things, I realize I need to be careful with my words & attitude. I want him to grow up in a thankful home, not a complaining one. There is enough negativity out there, he doesn’t need to be hearing it from me too. Blessings to you all, happy Monday, & cheers to a week of thanks!

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