Shadow Play

The Inchie and Twinchie challenges this week came together kind of simultaneously. The EIM for the week was umbra, which after careful research I learned has to do with eclipses and refers to the deepest, darkest shadow created by the planets. To the best of my thinking, that would be pretty black, right? I went in search of magazine pages with black, which are hard to come by (printers hate all black as it uses all four colors of ink and a lot of it). But, I found a square inch and went old school. Not the most creative angle, but....

And then I was going to draw some leaves for the Twinchie, because everything is so GREEN (which is highly unusual here in the desert southwest any time of year!) when I realized that the olive trees were casting these really cool shadows onto my sketchbook, so I took a photo, instead. (and it kind of shows up behind my inchie image, too)

Is that bizarre, or what?

We did have an eclipse, a 40 percent solar eclipse, yesterday, but I couldn't tell. We certainly wouldn't see an umbra from here, anyway! Be sure to check out the creative ladies at EIM. I'm really glad that next week's inchie is 'vegetable.' I know what that is!

The Little Red Spot

While I did some investigative work for this week's Inchie, with an emphasis on red spots, I found some beautiful embroidery work of Jupiter. Very intricate work. I also found the flag of Japan, and I didn't want to do something, well, just so ordinary. I'd like to do some collage work, but that didn't really fit into my schedule today. Something about Hurricane Norbert coming to town. Yippee!

I was also thinking about the red dots that artists have been known to put on sold artworks and sometimes not sold, to try the psyche of an art collector--people want what they can't have. So, kind of in that vein, I slapped a red dot on a photograph I took of some red rocks of Arizona.

The story of that hike will have to wait for another day, but suffice to say I survived to tell the tale (no, really). I call the photograph, "Perseverance," that little juniper is probably twenty years old, but it's has had to put up with a very extreme environment.
Thanks for taking the time to view my work and for all your kind comments on previous inchies. Be sure to check out all the creative people at EIM. Have a brilliant day!

Sunflower for a Birthday

My baby has reached that adult milestone of 21. Can you hear the heavy sighing? Sigh. Life is full of potential for her as she has a boyfriend who adores her and a brand new job teaching math at a middle school. (Nate's mother used to be my son's math teacher. Life is interesting that way).

Her favorite flowers are sunflowers and I had one volunteer in my vegetable garden and bloom just in time.

Not bad for a phone, huh? Makes me wonder why I have a camera or why my camera doesn't take phone calls or send texts.