Landscape of Virginia

I am back to work with regards to my oil painting. My elbow is doing much better although I can still feel a strain on it after exercising or painting for an hour. No matter, it feels well enough to put up with for now. I am beginning another Japanese Buddhist painting, one with a lot of movement of people. I'm hoping to take my time and give it the attention it deserves because after all, it will remain in this world long after I leave it. What good weather for photographing the outdoors. Although we need the rain, I can't complain about being uncomfortable in the outdoors today. With the clear sunlight, it's just perfect to photograph items and get some good pure colors to register well. This type of weather is why I like living here. Nothing like seeing the mountains as clearly as you can today, it seems like you can make out each and every leave on trees miles away on a mountainside in the clear air that we have today. I will be heading out now for a walk...

New art is up on my site !! I hope you will have a look at the finished state of my Japanese painting. I took photographs along the way of it's creation so there is a step by step photojournal if you will of it being made. There are also more photos of my pen and inks. I'm feeling better. I'm following doctors orders and resting. My arm feels much better day by day I'm getting a little better and I'm thankful I'll be able to get back to the gym. I'm headed to Staunton today to bring a painting over for sale. If all goes well I should have a check and a new home for a still-life. Working is going well. We're doing our dishwashing than'g on a daily basis. Back to work I go!

Feeling better after this longtime bout with tennis elbow, I'm beginning to feel better. It's been a week since I did anything substantial with this arm of mine and I know it's helped me. One more week of rest then it's back to the pallet and canvas once again. The hard thing will be not to overdo it again, it's like what my father used to say about things going in one ear only to come out the other. Sometime's it can seem like life is going that way. I have some plans for where I want to go with my painting. Since this break in the action is mandatory I will use it to plan for my next paintings. Today I got word that one of my paintings in Staunton was sold. I kept the price low because it was a small painting and it didn't take much to do any of those little ones so why make someone pay a lot for it. Well, I'm sure there will be much to do outside of any artwork this weekend, so I think I'll get to it starting now.

I have had to let off painting due to a reoccurring "tennis elbow". I did finish the painting I was working on and it turned out much to my liking as you can see. I'm hoping after resting for a good while to finish building a new canvas for another Japanese theme painting. My work at school is going well, I'm working as a job coach all day. It's good though. I am busy and time is flying by. I'm thankful to be helping the students I have because they are an eager audience and work hard. When I make a criticism of one of their habits they don't give me any lip back to me but try their best to do better. I'm thankful for that, I'm not sure I was that good to my teachers when I was young. I try not to be over critical, but I am as helpful as I can be with working hints since I was a dishwasher for so many years. I will be painting when I am feeling better. I still visit the gym but I am not doing any arm weight resistant exercises...

I've been working on a painting this past Holiday and it's of a Japanese scene that my father photographed. I was able to save a few of my Dad's prints in black and white before we had to throw everything away just after his death in 8-6-91. Of the photos I saved I took one and put a canvas together and worked on it. As I was working I kept a photographic journal of the paintings progress. It took a good while to do as anything worthwhile seems to take for me thesedays, but I will document it on my website at a later date. I like the results and I may try doing another painting using one of his photos later on in my time at the easel. It is a challenge to do a color reproduction of a black and white photo, it might be every harder to do one the other way around using a color photo and making a black and white canvas out of it. I don't know, I use to do monochromatic charcoal drawings and they weren't all that hard to do. Well, I'm thinking of h...