My Garden Lily

After all of the rain that mother nature gave us to rid the air of all its humidity, I awoke to see two lilies that bloomed in my backyard! I was waiting for them to bloom for quite awhile now. I actually thought they might have been sunflowers because the stalk was growing so high. I planted some sunflower seeds in May so I just figured that is was going to be a sunflower plant. What a lovely surprise! They are so pretty and vibrant in color, I decided to capture them on camera and hopefully turn the image into a water color piece.

I tried to research to see what type of lily I am growing but I kept finding a variety of different answers. The closest match I have found to my lily image was it being classified as an Orienpet, Oriental Day Lily, and a Stargazer. If you happen to know what kind of lily mine is please let me know!!

Degas piece in charcoal and white chalk

Degas

Along with my passion for visual art comes my passion for the performing arts. I used to dance a lot. I even studied dance in college at one point before switching my major (again). My favorite style was modern but I always appreciated ballet and studied it the longest out of all the dance styles I have learned. I think it is a great accomplishment to study ballet because it does take a lot of commitment. It gives you the strength, flexibility, and form you can carry over into any style of dance.

Edgar Degas, an impressionist, had a fascination for dancers as well. He like to study their movement and capture it on canvas. I tried to duplicate one of his works using charcoal and white chalk.

Contest

I still consider myself a newbie to the blogging world. I found that I learn a lot just by visiting other blogs and asking for advise. It seems that all bloggers love to receive more traffic to gain readership. Today I came across a beautiful blog about a women who pretty much gets paid to shop. She is hosting a contest on her blog to gain readership. I never saw this before and it seems like a fabulous idea. Who would not want to be a winner. Check out her prizes!

Beach Day

We finally got to go the beach yesterday! It was so nice and relaxing. We had some obstacles to overcome such as loosing a flip-flop to the street that was scorching hot, finding an ATM for some cash to pay to get onto the beach, and then a parking spot among the sea of cars. We overcame the beach madness and made it to the sand and had a lovely day at the Jersey Shore. Here are some pictures I took while we were there:

This is what we saw above our heads while lying on the beach. Too bad they can't send down some samples ;)

Sky Art

Seagull

Waves Crashing onto the Jetty

Seagulls on a stroll

Guitarist Pencil Sketch

My husband Shane is an amazing guitar player. He has been playing for about twenty years now. He loves to play metal but he can pretty much play anything after hearing it a couple of times. He has such a great ear. He also writes his own music and writes songs for his band The Anger Management Project. Here is a sketch I did of him based off a photo I took when he was playing with his band at the Brighton Bar in Long Branch, NJ.

Exploring Art Mediums

I took a freehand drawing class because I want to learn Graphic Design. I haven't had a formal art class in awhile and I was worried at first how good my perspective was. After the first class, I found I was doing better than I thought I was going to be. Our teacher had us explore different mediums we can use in creating art including pencil, charcoal, ink wash, pointillism, crosshatching, and watercolor.

Here are examples of my work based on a photograph of butterfly. I duplicated the photograph in four different mediums.

Ink Wash

Pencil

Pointillism

Watercolor

4th of July

We had a great 4th of July. The rain decided to hold off until later on a night. We had a great day visiting my Aunts, Uncles, and cousins who we have not seen in awhile. They live in Staten Island,NY and we didn't get stuck in any kind of holiday traffic at all! We even went down to the shore later on to a friends BBQ and there was still no holiday traffic. I guess the gas prices are keeping more people home or more local this year.

We saw the "Kaboom" fireworks show in Red Bank, NJ on the 3rd. The fireworks were pretty spectacular and so beautiful to watch. There must have been over 100,000 people there! Yesterday my friends set off a couple of little ones at their BBQ. I'm sure we will see some more in the sky for the rest on the weekend.

How did you spend your 4th of July!

Camping in Roscoe, NY

We spent the weekend camping with my husband's Aunts, Uncles and cousin in Roscoe, NY. It was so beautiful and peaceful and it only took three hours to get there!
We were able to step up our tent right next to the river! It was so relaxing to here the water all day and all night.

We went for a hike up the river and found a friend:

We also hiked to find a beautiful waterfall:

Ahhh the beauty of nature!