Author Archives: Deborah
Dog Art
Precious Puppy!
Image
Part of the way into the drawing, I took a photo. Maybe I should have stopped here, but I chose to work on the background some more.
Words vs Pictures
They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
But sometimes a few words are needed to describe a picture.
Sunday is a Workday….
….if you are a me-myself-and-I business owner and it’s an art studio/shop, EVERY day is a work day. Sometimes I have to crack the whip myself to get me into gear, but that’s just the way it is. Last night was the first of the Summer on Trade Music series for this year….Always my favorite event in Winston-Salem. Hell, it’s FREE music … every Saturday night … all summer long … at the intersection of 6th & Trade Streets which is basically my front yard, so to speak. I like to set up a table outside on these evenings and paint hats. It’s pure painting time, which I really needed yesterday to calm down after a hectic afternoon. After 15 years of painting in a fish-bowl environment on St.John, it’s really nothing new to me at all. And I’ve always said, since the day I crash-landed back in Winston-Salem some 7-odd years ago, that the Arts District is like St.John, only in brick. Comments from the crowd are somewhat different…..in St.John, you’d get “Do you LIVE here?” Here it’s “you sure have a fun job” or something like that. Well yeah, it’s fun…it had better be fun, ’cause it’s my shop, and the pay is lousy, but hey—-it’s MY shop, and I’ve got a great boss……myself. But hey, “It’s my life, and I’ll do what I want….” One of these days I’m going to write the story of my life in song titles or lyrics.
A customer placed an order today for me to paint this fellow on a different size T-shirt for a little fellow who LOVES dinosaurs. Since I paint everything freehand, and since this is a shape and color combination that is different from other dinosaurs I’ve painted, I pulled the shirt on the rack aside and took a couple photos, just in case somebody else wants to buy this one before I’ve had a chance to paint the order. Otherwise, I may never remember exactly what I did to this one to make him so appealing.
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I’ve been painting more wrap-around designs lately. Big design motif, fun to paint, fun to wear. One little critter, in this case, a reddish-orange dragonfly, gives life some meaning for the dinosaur….
Grapevines
Popcorn Break
My niece Krista Morgan has a blog called The-Not-So-Desperate-Chef-Wife. To celebrate the 300-follower-milestone, she’s asking people to post a comment naming their favorite ingredient to cook with. People who know me know that I DON’T DO FOOD. Don’t cook it, eat it, serve it, etc.
With one exception: POPCORN. And I can fix it (I learned to “FIX it,” not “make it”) to perfection. Pop all the kernels without burning any. I get some white, hull-less popcorn (a rare breed these days, but Lowes Foods has an excellent house brand), vegetable oil, popcorn salt…into a deep pot, on the stove, shake-shake-shake till the top starts to pop off, pour into big bowl, add more popcorn salt, do the popcorn toss, add more salt, toss again, add more salt, toss again….Pure and simple, no messy, stinky butter or cheese, and definitely no sticky, sweet glop.
Sit down with bowl in lap and gobble it down like a machine. Chase with a glass of ice water or pure Florida Orange Juice.
Feeling good and refreshed, go back to the painting station.
Goodwill Mary’s Skirts
There is a woman who works at the Goodwill Store who absolutely loves my bright-colored, happy designs. She has bought numerous T-shirts and sweatshirts–I’ve lost count long ago. One day she told me about some denim skirts she had gotten at a really good price and wanted to know if I could paint them. She brought a few of them in for me to see. They were a darker-colored denim than I normally like to paint on, but she wanted only one panel of the 6-gored skirt painted, so I agreed. To date I have one more to do.