LEMON STILL LIFE

hi there!

i finished! i'll start from the beginning, way back in september . . .

this was originally for the rookie painter challenge due last month - here's the photo prompt they posted there:

i have to admit, when i first saw it, i kinda shrugged it off. i didn't see anything exciting there; despite my admiration for artists who can portray that wonderful translucence in the citrus fruits, i just didn't feel this one was for me.

but then i looked at it again - and saw these wonderful blocks of color, especially in the shadows - and it clicked! i would do it exactly as i saw it - in distinct color blocks. i also saw more, warmer reds in the yellows of the lemon, & realized it'd make a nice contrast if the background & foreground were cooler. i also decided it had to be big to really show up the color blocks. looking at what i had on hand, i chose a 12x16 art board (only the second time i've painted that big!). ok - challenge on!

i put the photo on the digital picture frame, then went to sketch it in. easy-peasy, thought i - just a few curves and . . . err . . . that main part of the lemon kept coming out flat & wobbly - and i couldn't get the receding aspect on the slice at all! so, i gridded up the board, place my lucite grid in front of the frame, and sketched it in - & that worked fine!

for the shadows, i kept the sketch simple, but i made sure to get the lemon details fairly exact to get the right relationships between inside rind, outside rind, & pulp.

i wanted the background to stay cool so i chose prussian blue, anthraquinone blue, and ultramarine violet along with the titanium white. these colors were looking really 50s to me, & i liked 'em!

then i brought out the olive green & hansa yellow to get the color for the table. for the darkest shadow spots, i used alizarin crimson with what i already had out. the lighter shadows were combinations of the blues, green, and dark along with white. i loved the shadow areas, especially on the slice - there's light coming from all directions (well, maybe just two or three!) in the photo, and that made the shadows there complicated & interesting.

one thing i did that i think was important & helped keep the colors clear was that i was careful to not overlay the colors - the blocks of each color are the only thing there, with no (or as little as i could get myself to do!) blending.

i was pretty happy with it - it was hard to not blend the blocks of color in the shadow under the larger portion of lemon, but i felt it still represented what i wanted to do.

and there it sat. starting the next day, i had to go for numerous medical tests (don't worry - everything's fine for now!), and it took me much longer than i thought it would to recoup my former levels of energy & interest. but finally!

after catching up on all your blogs & wonderful paintings, i felt ready! without thinking about it, i put out naples yellow, indian yellow, transparent red iron oxide, and viridian along with white. these gave me light, warm, and red-tinged values to play with - & play i did! what fun, just laying down the colors!

earlier yesterday, nancie johnson had commented, "I think you'll enjoy the new vision you'll gain on painting shapes & colors (I did!)" & boy was she right! it was like stepping into an infinte, newly remade wide-open world of color & light!

in fact, i was having so much fun, everything just flowing from the end of the brush onto the canvas - that i realized when i was done (which was a sudden & surprising moment) i'd not taken any photos of the process! but in general, the naples yellow (with or without white) was for the lightest areas, then the indian yellow in combo for the midtones, and trans red added for the shadow areas. the lemon pips are straight trans red - couldn't resist! the nobbule on the end of the lemon is viridian mixed with white & naples yellow, and lighter versions of that, with lots more naples & white, are in the green tones in the pulp of the lemon slice.

and here it is:

it's rekindled, after being away from painting for so long, my joy in seeing-like-an-artist ("ooo - greens in the pulp! reds in the skin!") & painting. i feel this painting has a lot more 'me' in it than some i've done recently & i'm really happy with it!

oh - i'm trying something new - i got a bottle of m. graham's walnut alkyd medium, to see if i could use it, given my chemical sensitivities. it seems that as long as i don't stick my nose in the bottle & inhale (my usual test - you should see me trying to find a glue i can use!!), it's ok. i'm hoping it'll help the paint dry a bit faster, especially with winter coming up. the thing is, the paint went on thinner & more transparent (i used just one or two drops for my little blobs of paint, and 4 drops in the 1" long strip of white), so i'll have to keep experimenting with it.

well, that's it for now - off to do some blog reading & commenting - then deciding what to paint next. there's a number of new challenge projects (i've added more links in the box to the right) that are intriguing. the aspens of the wilderness art challenge would give me practice in doing landscapes, which i really want to learn. but the daily painters international - black & white plus one color - sounds yummy! or, i may just put together a still life at home!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

A Quick Note . . .

. . . to let you know, i'm back! that is - all recovered 'n' rarin' to go! right now, i'm catching up on commenting on all your wonderful blogs, then - i'll finish that poor lonely lemon from last month's rookie painter challenge! i'm really excited about checking in with all of you & seeing what you've been up to!

i'll be posting again as soon as this yields to my brush! here's where it's been this past month:


this is the original prompt:

i'm going for something new-to-me - just placing in the blocks of color & playing with the juxtaposition of the cool background/ground colors vs. the warm yellows, oranges, & reds that'll be showing up on the lemon.

when i do finish it, i'll also be posting it on daily painters international - i've decided it's time to get more serious about selling my work! i'll be adding a new label - "available paintings" - to those paintings i feel are ready to go out in the world! if you're interested in any of them, please email me (dustypinesart@gmail.com) - i haven't yet figured out ebay &/or paypal, but hopefully i will soon!

see you on your blogs & back here real soon!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

Paint & Draw Together September Challenge - Puppy

or - "the coal black yeti from 4AM"! (hmmm . . . could make a good 50's drive-in movie . . .!)

hi there!

i've been recovering from the little sesshin i tried to go on, & didn't think i could get this one done for the paint & draw together september challenge in time. & in fact, i didn't! finished it at 4AM last night - tho i did send it in this morning with the prompting of my son, on the off-chance it might get posted!

this one was tough! it's my first animal, so fur, perspective, facial features were all challenges for me! this is the original photo:

i first tried an 8(h)x6(w) crop, but settled on a square 5x5 format close-up on canvas panel:

i gridded it & sketched in the main features. then - the fun part - mixing the black! i started with ultramarine violet & added a bit of alizarin & hansa yellow. it needed to be darker & less purple, so i added a bit of olive green & also prussian blue - got it to a really deep true black! very exciting, but problematic - it was transparent, but it had to be the main focus color! decided to press on since i liked it so much!

i blocked in the eyes (using some of the black, & adding white, alizarin, & olive green for the brown) & nose, and the main black highlights.


i then mixed up all the greys (using either white or naples yellow) & pinks, adding alizarin for the reds, and applied those.

then it was 'just' a matter of reworking every detail! i used filberts for the fur, plus a flat, and fan brushes for the details of wisps of fur. i wiped the nose out out at least four times & am still not happy with it! i also had a lot of trouble getting the muzzle to show length, and - did i mention the nose?!! at last, i decided i couldn't do more & called it done!

this actually was a lot of fun - i loved getting in the highlights in the eyes & playing with the fur! & hey - not everyone gets to create their own new species!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

Daily Painters International Art Challenge: Music

hi there!

lately, i've not been able to comment on the blogs of folks i follow - i'm disabled, & sometimes i can't do much, either painting, blogging, or - worse! - reading & commenting on other blogs! i really miss being able to do that, & i'd like you to know that, when i've not been commenting for a while, i'll get back to it just as soon as i can!

today, i did have some energy - & i spent it painting! oh the joy of getting back to putting brush to canvas! i've been working in stages on the daily painters international art challenge for this month, which had a one-word prompt - music.

now, when i think of "music," the first thing that comes to mind is my friend, joseph byrd. joseph is one of the great, important composers of the 20th & 21st centuries. he also plays a mean accordion! so i decided, despite my never having painted a portrait before (& having drawn faces just a few times!), i'd do a painting of joseph.

to start, i did a manip in gimp to play with some ideas. i used a favorite photo of him, taken by H. R. LoBue of H. R. LoBue Fine Art Photography. it was a black & white, so i played with the colors & added a background. i put in some place-holder music, & then got a copy of a sheet of "Water Music," one of joseph's compositions, to paint in. in the end, though, i decided the music was too busy for the painting, & just did the portrait.

here's the original manip:

i chose an 11x14 canvas panel which had been toned with acrylic cad yellow light. (the color's not showing well in the photo, but it was pretty pale to begin with.) i did the grid then sketched in the portrait, with just the barest hints of features.

i wanted the background, hat, & coat to be earthy, sepia colors, so i started working with trans orange oxide, trans yellow oxide, naples yellow (for the right side), & burnt umber & a smidge of payne's grey (for the upper left corner).

then i put in the hat & coat, using mostly a combination of burnt umber & trans yellow oxide, darkened with a bit of payne's grey in places, & lightened by the orange oxide in others.

for the face colors, i chose hansa yellow (i think in other brands, lemon yellow would be the closest), indian yellow, permanent green light, alizarin, & prussian blue. i started putting in the pink, yellow, & orange, using burnt umber for the shadows & glasses frame.

then the greens & blues went in.

after that it was 'merely' a matter of getting the features just right. for the next three hours!! i worked on the face shape, the beard, the nose shadow, the shadow under the chin, the glasses frame, the shadow under the hat, the eyebrow, the placement of the colors to show facial structure, and - the eyes. getting his left eye just right - oh wowie! i think i redid it about eight times - and the highlights twice! but finally i was able to step back & say, hey! it's joseph!


i'm pretty excited about it! i've always felt that portraits were terribly daunting - & it was a lot of exacting detail work - but now that i've done my first, it's not quite so scary any more!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

p.s. i'll be gone from the computer wednesday through friday, so i'll be catching up on my blog reading - & commenting! - after that - see you then!

Mandelbrot Iteration #8

hi there!

i love fractals. they're so infinite, complex, endlessly fascinating. i have a program that will generate them called fraqtive (free open source program, if you get interested!). you choose all sorts of parameters, colors, etc to create them. you can then zero in on a particular section & explore!

this is one of my favorites of the ones i've created so far. it's full name is Normalized Iteration Count Algorithm 8! I call it The Red One:

i've been wanting to paint it for a while. when i finished the september plums i realized the colors i had on the palette would be perfect for it. so i took out a 5x5 dark-gold toned canvas, and sketched in some cad red light.

i decided i needed a darker blue, so i got out the ant blue, & lightened it with some white. to put in the black & green, though, i needed the paint to be more fluid. so i cleaned the brush, but didn't dry it as thoroughly as usual, leaving some walnut oil in it. this let me pick up the paint & spread it much more liquidly than usual. the green is sap plus white, the black a combo of ant blue, quin rose, and a hint of trans yellow oxide. i played with the shapes a bit & got both sides in.

then for the little curlicues on top. hmmm . . . i decided to go more playful than the original, and put in a series of dots. i did that, then changed the shapes of the black merging into the blue - and there it was!


i'm pretty happy with it, & am encouraged to paint more of my fractals. tho i wonder if i should come up with less computerese names for them, like 'cliffs at sunset' or something!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

oh - i meant to say - i hope this blog may prove useful to beginner painters like myself - if there's anything i can be doing to make this blog more helpful, please let me know! thanks!

Artists Helping Artists Challenge: September

hi there!

when i read the artists helping artists challenge, i tried to think of what i associate with september. to help, i went through my old camera files. and there was this wonderful picture of ripening plums from one of the trees in our backyard, taken by my son last september!

i was really excited to find this, for a number of reasons.

first - i've always wanted to try a painting with a very dark background & just the center of interest lit. this would give me a chance to try that out, as well as practicing controlling values in order to get some leaves appearing just out of focus in the dark background.

second, i've been feeling like i've been using a lot of white lately, which has been unusual for me. i love my m. graham paints so, i tend to want to use them pure mixed only with each other if necessary, not white! so this offered a chance to use as little white as possible.

third, i've not done much with leaves, especially profusions of them, & i wanted to see how i'd handle that! in some ways, painting is like writing - you don't know yourself until you do it!

so i set up the grid in front of the digital frame, marked a grid on the 8x10 gold-toned canvas i chose, and sketched in the basics with a bit of charcoal.

after wiping away the grid lines & dusting off the excess charcoal from the sketch, i laid out my colors.

i love alizarin, but decided not to use it - i wanted to explore some other reds i'd not tried much. i also decided i'd need pretty much every green i had to pull this off without white. but i did need something opaque to lighten the greens, and to accentuate the center of interest.

for those, i chose cad yellow light and naples yellow. i added trans yellow oxide to brighten the deeper reds, if necessary. the reds were cad red light for the opaque parts, and quinacridone rose & red for the shadow areas.

the greens were veridian, phthalo (for its blueness), sap, and olive (for its wondrous darkness!). i also put out ultramarine violet, planning on mixing it with the olive green for the transparent background. and here they all are:

this arrangement of colors still seems to be working really well - keeps 'em separated & also allows lots of room in the center & along the other edges for mixes.

i put an initial layer of color down for the plums, using the quin rose for the shadows, the quin red for the transitional areas, and the cad red light for the brightest areas. i mixed a small small bit of all of those with a lot of white for the highlight & lay it in.

then the background - for which i had a plan! on the outer areas of the canvas, i used a mix of lots of ultramarine violet with some olive, figuring the purple tone would compliment the green leaves. closer in to the plums, i used the same mix, but with mostly olive green, to compliment the reds in the plums. they look nearly the same, not only in the photos but on the canvas, but i feel it did make a difference.

here's the plums initially in & a start on the outer background:

i got the rest of the background initially in, then started playing around with straight olive green with bits of this & that to see what would show up, but barely, against the background. here's the first few back-most leaves in:

i decided the phthalo would be good for those leaves emerging from shadow but not fully in the light, and used both cad yellow light & naples yellow to modify it. then sap green and a very little veridian, also modified with the yellows, made up the rest of the leaves. the brightest leaves were sap green and cad yellow light. i refined the plums a bit & stood back for a look. (this photo is a bit bright - i had an amazingly hard time getting good photos of this painting - probably because the dark background was wreaking havoc with the auto settings on my camera! and i also managed to get some blurry photos - using the tripod!!)

i saw some areas i wanted to improve - the highlights on the plums & the too brightness of some of the background leaves - & my son pointed out that the leaf & bit above the plums were too light. after fiddling with the values some more, i got it looking the way i'd envisioned it! (and then spent a few hours trying for a good photo!) here it is, finished!

i'll be submitting it to artists helping artists (pretty cool site, btw!) tonight & start the next challenge that's due the 15th - daily painters international: music! also, i'll soon be posting an abstract that i did!

this one & the abstract both went well, so well that i had to keep reminding myself to pause now & then to take a photo for you to follow along - that's the kinda painting time i like - when you feel that putting paint on canvas is one of the best things that could ever happen to you!!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

p.s. just checked out the other submissions for the aha challenge - they're all so very good! - & my little plums are going to join them - oh dear! quite nerve-wracking! *gulps*!

Virtual Paintout Challenge: Prince Edward Island

hi there!

this time i finished the virtual paintout before it ended! and it really was a challenge! except for the sailboat painting, i've never done ocean, & few landscapes . . . plus i decided it was time to loosen up!

first, this is the view on prince edward island that i chose:

i liked the simplicity, the opportunity for abstraction, and the play of rosy pinks against purpley blues. here things are, ready to go:

i used a 5x7 canvas board (untoned), put the photo up on the frame, and laid out my palette, using ultramarine, cerulean, sap green, trans yellow oxide, cad yellow light, cad red light, & alizarin:

i tried a new way to organize the paints - i put the white in the upper left corner as usual, but i put the reds & yellows going off to the right on the top & the blues & greens going down the left. i really liked it - seemed a natural way to arrange them for me, & it kept the colors well separated, too! i'll keep trying it this way for a while.

i started to mix the sky color first, using cerulean & white, with a tidbit of alizarin. but before i got the colors really mixed, i thought about using painting knives instead of brushes. i've done only one painting before this with knives only, & loved it! so, just to make this even more of a challenge (mere hours before it was due!) - i decided to do it! here's the sky mix (which i kept marbled instead of mixing it to a consistent color - same with the water mix later on) & the knife (brown handle) i used to put it on:

then i mixed the water color (ultramarine & white) & put that in with the same knife. here is the initial block-in - i've left the canvas blank where the dune was going:

then i mixed up the sand bar color, using alizarin, white, & a smidge of trans yellow. i used this little guy to lay it in - this knife felt like a filbert to me & i thought the shape would work well for putting in that long strip of color - & it did!

then i mixed the dunes mix, using some of the sand bar mix with more white & a touch of cad red light to brighten & warm it up. i used this little triangular knife to lay in all the rest of the painting, including all the details of plants & shadowing, etc that came later:

here're all the blues & pinks in. i didn't put any paint where i was going to put in the largest mass of green for the dune plants: i hadn't done any measurements, & at this point i realized the sand bar was way too wide. so i just used the knife to lift it off & lay in more ocean. then i mixed up four different greens (using my lightest pink for the base of the light greens), some lighter or darker, some purer or greyer. & i realized the sap green wasn't going to cut it for the darkest greens. ooops! got out the olive green & that worked! i also decided the sand colors needed a hint more depth, & added hints of burnt sienna to the bar & the darker dunes. the water behind the sand bar i darkened using anthraquinone blue (if it's ok with you, i may just start calling this 'ant blue' - i'm lazy, & it's fast becoming my favorite blue!)

i then had to put in the clouds. i realized that the horizontal clouds of the photo just wouldn't work - too many horizontals (that sand bar's a whopper, even though it looks better in person than in the photos!). so i decided to go for a fluffy cloud approach. first i mixed up a black to get in the darks. i used the ant blue with alizarin, & a teeny hint of trans yellow oxide - very nice, deeply purple black, just right for the clouds! (this is an awful photo, but it gives you an idea, i hope!). i mixed a small amount of it with white, & worked it in where i wanted clouds.

then i dipped the knife into pure white, strolled it very lightly through the ant blue (leaving a trail behind it!)
and worked in the lighter parts of the clouds. by the way, you can see in the above photo the trail left in the olive green when i slid the knife lightly through it to get just a thin line of paint to make some dark highlights. i love how versatile the knives are, going from smearing on huge masses to fine detail (well, it'd've been finer if my hands didn't shake!).

here's what my palette looked like when i was done. i didn't end up using the cad yellow light at all. i really am finding that the more i paint, the more i experiment with my colors & find out which ones work better for me.
and here it is all finished! (it's hard to get a good photo on this one, since the masses of paint keep picking up &/or shadowing the light!)

i had a lot of fun with this one! it's got that looser, more abstract, interpreted style i feel i want to express in my work, & the painting knives made it easier & even more fun! i really like the clouds - they have volume but are also fluffy - they float as they should! (i have been terrified of trying clouds in the past!) the dunes worked well, along with the plants. the water i'm so-so on - and the sand bar . . . well, i knew it would be hard to get that strong horizontal to work. i think it needed some more variation in color to really pull it off - and a steadier hand to get in the light & dark tones right in the front of it (i tried, but it was too shaky to look very good so i modified it a bit). all in all tho - i like it!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

Toning Canvases - My New Approach!

hi there!

last month, i posted about toning canvases, how & why i do it. i've started doing something a bit different, so i thought i'd show you.

i hate to waste paint - it's expensive, it's too pretty to throw out, & it just goes against my new england upbringing to waste anything! so when i clean off my palette, it feels really wrong to just wash all that paint away.

when i was cleaning up after one of the last paintings i did, i noticed the color of the smudged together paints was pretty nice - in fact, with a little more cad yellow & raw sienna, it'd be a decent, if dark, gold. and there was a lot of it. i decided to use it to tone some canvases - & this is how it turned out:

i'm pretty pleased with it, though i am concerned it's a bit dark. so the next time i painted, i used just the lighter colors & came up with this:


with the most recent painting - the sailboat - i left out the greens and blues, using only the reds, yellows, & oranges i'd mixed up or put out on the palette. it made this lovely color my son said should be called "sun-dried tomato"!

i'm really liking doing this! first, it lets me use up a good portion the leftover paint so i'm throwing much less out. this lets me feel a bit freer about how much paint i put out on the palette when i'm starting a painting, knowing it won't go to waste. it's also a really easy way to keep at least one canvas ahead of myself so i never run out of toned canvases when i'm ready to start a new painting! and any way i can outthink my tendency to procrastinate is ok with me!

thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!

dusty!

Reflections

hi there!

sorry i've been away from here so long - been a bit under the weather, but also very busy! i got a writing job that turned out bigger than expected & that's been keeping my limited energy-time tied up. but it's almost done - & i did get another painting finished! been working on it slowly - so slowly, i totally missed the deadline!

this was for the august Daily Painter International Art challenge, which was "reflections." i decided to finish it even after the due date passed because . . . well, one, i'm stubborn - &, two, i'm a bit compulsive! also - i guess this is three! - i felt i'd learn a lot from it - &, boy, have i! i'll go through my process painting it, then sum it up - more reflections than the original photo has!

first - here's the photo:

i took that over the july 4th weekend at woodley island. i figured i could simplify it pretty easily so i could concentrate on all the things i've never done in it - things like boats, water, reflections . . . ! i put it on the digital picture frame, placed the grid over it


then sketched it in in charcoal on an 8x10 canvas, pretoned in gold:
this was the point at which i had my first qualms. the perspective seemed off, even after following the grid. the boat didn't seem as angled away from the viewer as in the photo, yet the perspective of the stuff on the boat seemed correct! i tried to fix it a couple of times, but decided to go ahead with it.

first note to self: fix it in the sketch, not after it has umpteen layers of paint!

i decided which colors to use: ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, raw sienna, trans yellow oxide, cad yellow light, alizarin, cad red light, & titanium white. i felt these would do the sky & water (the blues), the sail cover (the reds), & the trees (the yellows w/ the rest of 'em).

i started with the sky. i wanted to show some yellow at the horizon to reflect the warm sunniness of the day, so i put straight cerulean blue in the top of the sky area & cad yellow light mixed with white in the lower half, then mixed them up, going up & down with a fairly large brush to blend them roughly. the light yellow mixture & a light blue mixture i made up on the palette served as my atmosphere colors in light & shadow, and went into any color mixes that needed to be lightened.

i then put in the water, using ultramarine & white, & the sail cover, using the alizarin for the shadow areas & the cad red light for the bright sunlit parts. i mixed up various greens and put in the first sketchy bits of trees. at this point i still put in the buildings in the background & the other boat to the right behind the main one. i decided that boat wasn't working, but still left the buildings.


only that was too much stuff back there for me to do well along with everything else. so i wiped the buildings out, mixed up some more greens, and put in more trees! if you ever go to eureka & see trees growing where the carson mansion used to be, now you know why!

second note to self: settle on the composition before you start painting!

right.

next was the side of the boat & the reflection. i knew the boat couldn't be pure white, so i did a first layer of the light blue mix over it all, then put darker tones at the two ends and the yellow mix blended in in the middle to show the curving shape of the side. i mixed up a color for the main reflection and put that in, along with faint indications of the other things that were reflected.

at this point, i asked my son to look at it. he studied it & realized i had the color of the reflection completely wrong - it was green based rather than blue. oh dear. he sure was right. i scraped the color out & reworked it with a slightly darkened form of the light blue mix, & it looked a lot better!

third note to self: don't mix colors based on what you think they 'should' be - hold up the brush or palette knife next to the original & check!

i then finished off the insides of the boat, discovering leftover bits of the original sketch i'd decided not to do, which i had to paint out. (is that note one or two - or both?!)

i didn't like the sky, so i took my big soft fan brush & started squiggling it around, getting a sorta van gogh-ish effect in the sky, which i liked. at this point i also added some ultramarine to the sky & some cerulean to the water to create more life in them both. i adjusted the darkest parts of the shadows under the boat, the shape of the reflection, and added more cad red light highlights on the sail cover.

the last thing was the mast. i am incapable of drawing a straight line, so i placed a ruler at the top of the canvas, slanted away from the paint but in the direction i needed the mast to go. then i loaded up my finest brush & placed the tip on the starting point of the mast on the boat. using the ruler as a guide, i was able to put it in fairly straight & was really relieved! i didn't use it for the two cross bars but they were pretty short. and that was it!

after all that, this is what my table & palette looked like - not literally every brush i own but every one i use regularly!
oh - plus some new ones! i discovered some taklon long handled guys that i really like - inexpensive too, as they were student grade - perfect for me!

i can't say i really like the painting, though i do catch myself recognizing the reflections as reflections when i walk past it on the drying rack. so in that i succeeded. i do really like the sky, and it does have a certain naive charm about it. (i did notice that i have ripples in the sky, but not the water!) and i sure learned a lot about painting doing it - which is the fun part of the challenges!

i guess the thing is, it just has no 'me' in it . . . somehow it's missing that spark that directs my hand & helps me choose what to present & how. not sure why . . .

if you ever have ideas about how i go about things, or what i could do to improve what i'm doing, please let me know via the comments or through email - i'd really appreciate it!

thanks for stopping by - take care until next time!

dusty!