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Thursday, July 5, 2012

Rain, Rain Go Away


Afternoon Showers



Evening Downpours

20 comments:

  1. Dear Linda, read  your blog is a great incentive for my culture in art history!
    There's always more to learn, to deepen and
      enjoy!I hope you dry days!
    Here the rain has decreased temperatures: this night I slept well!

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    1. thank you Rita. Seeing Childe Hassam's work was interesting for me too. I figured the man must have painted more things besides his glorious flag series. I was glad I researched him. I had no idea. So much is left out of our art history classes. We're really getting just a thimble full of information. And it's slanted at that. It's up to us to pursue art around the world.

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  2. Tell me you didn't paint the top one!!! If you did you're a genius, if you didn't then get on with it.

    If Pat sees on TV that there is heavy snow in the US, she says, "We'll get it next" ... never mind that its thousands of miles away and the winds are blowing the wrong way. It's been pouring here for weeks!!!!
    Perhaps she knows something!

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    1. I am not a genius--unless you count my reasonable skill at finding the picture, positioning the camera, cutting the glare, focusing, guarding against body/hand shake, cropping and adjusting exposure as an art form. Which it is. These are printed on high quality Kodak paper, mat finish. They could be Giclee printed as well. If I decide to paint them, they'll be watercolors what else?

      Bad year for the roses. Blackspot. I cut my bushes down they got so ugly. Then the heat is in the upper nineties here--in Chicago, four hours away, it was 102. It's supposed to shift Monday towards the west coast, which means it will probably come back our way sometime after that. Better tell Pat crazy is headed your way. Spray the roses.

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    2. Roses submerged ...living on an island that was just a hill this morning ... send the inflatable pronto

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    3. Sorry to hear that. Wimbledon seems to be playing on and the Olympics will go on no matter what; the youngsters deserve their chance in the spotlight. Will you be swimming over for an event or two?

      I shoved the raft off to your rescue. It's traveling towards the sea down the Franklin River Tributary. My boys once charted their way to the Atlantic down the little stream of the tributary to the Rouge River that ran behind our house and were successful on paper. Barring any spells of hot sun, which seem to deflate the thing, you should get it by Christmas. I included the four paddles. You and Pat had better start doing pushups.

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  3. Miserable weather, but fantastic photos! I agree with John - the top one is definitely worth painting.

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    1. I tried painting that top photo in acrylics. The medium wasn't right for for the subject. Watercolor would be appropriate for both. LOL. But I think these photographs came out great as photographs. Printed on a matte photographic paper, they would be knockout. Photography is an art too that's changed with the advent of digital cameras. Where a lot of the art of photography used to be in actually taking the photographs with manual settings and bracketing and sometimes, but not always followed by some darkroom techniques, now the camera takes the pictures as that make of camera takes the pictures. The art comes into it in Photoshop. --At least that's my impression without taking a digital photography course. I don't have Photoshop. I have Jasc Photo Album which offers some adjustments. Both photos were enhanced to correct how my camera takes pictures automatically, (It tends to over expose). Anyway, I'm going to just let these be what they are. good photographs. The bee in my bonnet is JD.

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  4. Seems pretty much like the weather we are getting too.

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    1. The weather is scary. One minute driving rains, the next sunny skies. Our lake was down two to three feet this summer due to hardly any snow last winter. If the skies stay clear, I thought I'd walk over and see if the rains over the last three days gave us those feet back.

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  5. Gee, I thought we in the Pacific NW were the only ones getting rain. It has been so hot in the rest of the country I feel glad to live in the cooler weather. That's about to change today, I've heard, we'll get the hot-hot weather for the rest of the week. Ugh! I like that top photo as a piece of art...love the color and effect. The rain photo is something very familiar to me! Oregonians have webbed feet, don't you know.

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    1. I like the grays in the second one, but I can understand why you would stay away from grays living in the Pacific NW. I would too. My son lives in Seattle. I don't know how he tolerates all that cloudiness; he really needs the sun. So do I. Ordinarily, Michigan has beautiful year round weather. That's one of the reasons we're still here and haven't moved to the hot, humid, sun belt. And here we are talking about the weather!

      I love finding just the right gray for a painting.It's the gray values that bring it all together and make the pure colors sing.

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  6. Don't you take shampoo and go out and get to business over there? =)
    Free shower, that luxury..... =)

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    1. These downpours are not for washing hair Roger. Along with the rain comes lightning and downed trees and electrical wires and flash floods. two million people in the middle of the country were without power over the holiday and businesses involving refrigeration--like grocery stores--lost their entire inventory; shelves were bare. Meanwhile the temperatures have been in the high nineties or over a hundred and there are heat alerts. There is no plein air painting going on around here. People are laying low and going slow.

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  7. Both these photos are amazing.

    Definitely an artist.

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    1. Thanks. I think your iPad drawings are amazing! I haven't been exploring the apps I downloaded since the first time; I should. I really think it's a great drawing pad for out in public. No one knows you're sketching them. Subtle. Plus you can photograph them as well without them knowing and work on the drawing again at a later time. Marvelous device. I bought a larger tote just to accommodate it.

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  8. Great photos. The afternoon showers one: is that the view from your house?!! Wow!

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    1. YES, AND the reason we bought the place. The condo is surrounded by a nature preserve, no houses in front, no houses in back and only 42 units on a tiny lake. Took us three years of hunting to find it. Our deck is our key place in summer, but not over the last week. Over the last week we've been suffering from cabin fever. We're as shut in in this tropical climate of torrential downpours and extreme temperatures as we are in the cold, snowy winter months. Thanks, I thought they came out of the camera pretty good. Maybe I'm getting the drift of digital photography?

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  9. Extreme weather all around the world, we could do with some more rain here...but of course the masses you are getting is just wayyy too much . Great shots ! The first one is very similar to one of my abstract oil paintings :)

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    1. I tried to paint this before the kids came to visit; it didn't go well. I abandoned it. I don't think I was up to spending the amount of time the painting needed. Thee are so many innuendos in the values I'd be there for weeks balancing them. I do like the photo as a photo. Everyone prefers the first, but what appeals to in in the second is the distorted forms played against blurred forms and the grayed colors against pure colors. Painting it, you would push specs of colors in the gray areas. But some photos are best left as such. The second one may be one of those? But paint should I choose to use these as reference photos, I see watercolor. Oils give too solid a performance. Watercolors are translucent like the effects of rain on the colors beyond the glass. The medium has more sparkle, more reflected light.

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