Cay Denise

What a fun night after a work day...to meet good friends for a glass of wine and be led through a step-by-step painting lesson by an artist resulting in a take-home piece!   Called 'Paint Nite', there is a planned lesson piece...this one -- a canal with bridge scene in the fall. Even those who hadn't painted before -- seemed to have had a great experience and were tickled to take a finished piece home.  Maybe it was the wine, but I think it was true delight in discovering they were able to do a painting!   A few years ago, I saw wine bars and other art pop-ups where these kinds of parties were starting to take off.  Paint Nite doesn't have a fixed facility but varies the locations.  Our set-up was at a restaurant and accommodated about 40 participants...a great activity for groups! 

Found a way to do this with Photoshop by way of a You Tube video tutorial.

Week 44's short lesson was fairly nebulous though you were to draw a tree with a face and incorporate messages to yourself in the root area of the tree. My tree is going through the fall seasonal color change.  I miss the midwest fall season. The trees have so much natural color from annual leaf die-off because of the shortening of the day, and it is an amazing visual feast!  After this time of shedding, they go barren and dormant for the harsh winters to wake up in the spring.  (The west has a much more subdued season change.) I celebrate the richness of nature's beauty that moves us from fall to winter whether we're ready for it or not.  She is signaling us that it is time for hunkering down, taking inventory, and replenishing ourselves through rest and seeding new growth!

Sometimes you're in the right place at the right time to see something ordinary in a totally different light.  This was one of those times.  I was walking and happened to 'see' this, pulled out my cell phone and snapped a quick photo.  It looks like it could have been a planned shot.  But it was truly spontaneous, and came out great!

This is my first fabric piece in many months...possibly a year, in fact.  I started it for a magazine challenge with the theme of Going Places, but I won't be submitting it after all.  The size is slightly larger than allowed.   The piece is based on a photograph with caricatures of the images in the photo thread-outlined over fabric flowers and leaves.  Surprisingly, my open-toe, free-motion foot broke while working on it. I guess, for some reason, it wasn't happy. In any case, I consider this piece a rescued failure.  Its not perfect nor particularly great, but it is meaningful to me.  It conveys the energy of a special group of friends who went places together!