Creating a Garden Patio

Hi, all!

  I got my bee picture that I've been working on done, but I haven't taken a picture of it yet.  I will make time for it tomorrow.

  Meanwhile, I worked on creating a patio area off of our porch for those picnicking days of summer to come.

  We have a picnic table that we only seem to use twice a year:
during our annual plant sale where the "cash registering" gets done,

and when the kids suddenly get the urge to have a picnic supper (and I happen to be willing to haul it all out to the middle of the yard).

  I decided the table might be used more if it was closer to the kitchen.

  When I thought on where the best place for that to be was, I turned to this place.

  Location is key when choosing where to have a patio.  I noticed that my kids and I all seem to try to lay claim to the seat toward the end of this porch each morning because the early morning sun comes up on this side and it's warmth is so sweet in the morning.  By afternoon, this space has a gentle shade and by evening, the shade is complete.

  The porch is also right off the kitchen, so hauling foods and utensils wouldn't be too hard to do from this distance.

  So it seemed that this place was the best place for a picnic patio...
which meant removing all the plants that seemed to grow exceptionally well here.

The first thing I felt I needed to do was extend this garden.

  The ground is so good here, so little rock and just thick, brown dirt.  It was very easy to dig and flip off the sod, so I chose to go that route.

  (For many of my other gardens where the ground has been too hard to dig and work with, I just laid a thick layer of newspaper (probably 4-5 pages thick) right on the ground and then shoveled good dirt I have from our rotted manure dirt pile right onto the newspaper.  Once completely covered, I would then top it off with mulch and hose it all down good.  In a few weeks, I found I could plant into it  Of course, I didn't always want to wait that long, so sometimes I made holes in the newspaper where I wanted the plants and planted them right away, but then I had to battle weeds that also poked through around those areas.)

  I used my hose to create a rough line of where I wanted the edge of the garden extension to be.

  (The hens like to keep me company while I dig and overturn the grass and then shake out the sod before removing it because there were plenty of earth worms and grubs to scurry after.)

   The digging of the extension took about 2 days of work, in between dealing with the kids and other normal interruptions.

  I began removing the plants that were in this place, digging each variety up and separating each plant into many plants, potting them up so that I can replant smaller version in new spaces and sell the rest next spring.  They will have time to grow and fill in the pots til then.

  We had a number of old terracotta drain pipes up in one of the cow fields where an old corn bin had been.  It seemed a shame for them to sit out there not being used, so I hauled as many as weren't broken down to the area.

At first, I thought I might use them for edging...

but did not like the way they looked and worried one of us would twist our ankles on them.

I next tried them as a type of dividing wall coming down the garden.

I dug a trench and partly buried them to make them secure.

There were extra, so I moved them the other side of the garden to create a small wall there as well.

The plants all removed and the walls up, I then called in some help to prepare for the table.

(It is always nice to have a helping hand willing to give of his busy day with a happy smile and song on his lips...

okay, I may be stretching it a little,

but his help really was appreciated).

We leveled the ground somewhat, removing dirt to be used elsewhere.

I had two old rugs in the shed that I had saved for a project like this.  They had been used in rooms where the dogs often laid on them (before the dogs were restricted to just the basement den).  They had just gotten to the point of no return.

We laid these out as a type of weed barrier.

The table was moved in, and immediately, I could see that it will have much more use in this space.

With the few extra drain pipe pieces, legs were made for this "bench."

(There is a granite counter top business in town that lets us take some of their broken pieces).

I still need to finish planting everything where I want it, and my daughter wants a little part of this garden for herself.

I can see evidence of her play here.

For now, I hope it will turn out to be worth all the effort.

Here is the before picture:

And here it is at the moment:

I will be by again soon with painting techniques;...
just need to make sure all the dirt is off these hands.


Thanks for stopping by!

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Painted Mural on the Wall.

Today my home craft is about wall murals.

Here is the painted one along the stairway to our basement.

  My husband replaced all of the stairs

right away because they looked like they might have been from the original building date of 1850.

The cracks and sway of them made me fearful every time I went up or down them.

The walls were thick with so many layers of wallpaper, as I tried to remove them, the plaster of the wall looked like it might come off with them.

It was either a job of total renovation, or some other means of covering the bumpy, uneven walls would be needed.

Since my husband had to leave two months after we bought our farm with his military reserve unit to spend 9 months in Iraq,

and I am not good with either a sledge hammer or hanging new walls,

I thought I would patch the holes that were there

and paint a mural for his birthday present.

 I worked on it in hourly increments.

It gave me something to do for him and a great way to spend praying for him.

The ceiling at the base of the stairway was not completely closed in and had electrical conduit running at the seam, so I decided to paint a tree trunk here and add the artificial greenery to hide them.

 Painting the mural took time, but it was not as hard as I expected.

If it is broken down into sections, it is a fun and manageable art piece for the home.

 I will explain the steps of painting a mural as well as show some ideas.

To see the instructions for mural painting, click >HERE<.

Thank you for dropping in.

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Art Lesson: Seeing and Drawing in Reverse.

My art lesson this week is very late, and I am sorry about that.

I have been determined to get the cushions covered on the chairs on the front porch before summer passes.

Here they are.

Here they were before.

As you can see, they were in desperate need of attention.

Here they are looking off the porch from the other direction.

I used three different  materials on them as I got the material at a discount store and there wasn't enough of one.

I thought the contrast of the three materials would give some variety.

I hope to cover a couple of throw pillows in the orange and dark purple for the couch as soon as the old pillows I washed to recover are done drying on the clothesline.

I put the screen I had painted sometime back out on the porch to block the trash can/recycling can.

I think I may put a hook and chain and attach them to the wooden ceiling so that they don't blow over when it gets windy.

It is nice to finally have the porch as a good place to sit.
The cat Moon thinks so, too.  I think he may be the new couch hog.

Now on to the lesson.

When doing art, it is easy to draw the basic outline of whatever it is we are attempting to draw,

and then color that in.

Take for example, this echinacea flower above.

Once we get the basic outline and color on the paper, we then proceed to shade and add the detail.

Sometimes, however, it is essential to look at whatever it is we are drawing from a backwards viewpoint, drawing the outside of the object without drawing the object,

usually because it is white.

 This stretches the brain
(or perhaps I should say, it uses a part of the brain that we do not use a lot).

  I always find myself feeling a bit disagreeable when I have to use this reverse thinking,
but I know it is very good at stretching one's art abilities and forcing the brain to draw what it sees rather than what it knows.

I recently had to do this and the image in my sketch book, above, was a practice sketch.

I wanted to do a piece of artwork of some Queen Anne's Lace.

It is such a simple beauty, but I knew it would be hard to capture it's detail.

I decided to do the piece using my Prismacolor colored pencils.

First I sketched what I wanted onto tracing paper.

Because this is a white flower, I did not want to use anything too heavy to transfer it onto my good paper, so I just rubbed the pencil I was using onto the back, it being a harder lead.

I then flipped it over onto my paper and lightly traced it on.

I then started a bit of shading.

I find when I am doing a white object,

the background is going to receive more attention to make the white stand out.

I got to a certain point of my shading and decided to start adding in the background to help me visualize the white space better.

 Because the background of these flowers is blotchy, I did not feel I needed to put in all the background base color at one time, but chose to work in sections.

The picture looked nice enough to me at this point

(I tend to be afraid to keep at something for fear I may mess it up if I overwork it,
most likely because I have ruined projects by not quitting when I should have).

I could have stopped here, I think,
but my daughter said she thought the original photo was just so beautiful,

 I decided to work with it a bit more.

I find when working with a detailed project like this that requires a lot of reverse thinking,

I have to stop after a time and put the piece aside.

A fresh start the following day always feels great and gives a renewed look to pick up colors and areas of new work that may have been missed in the previous sitting.

 I have worked on this piece for two evenings, and am hoping I can finish it on the next evening I sit down to it.

Do you find you have to put some art or painting projects down and come back with renewed focus?

Have you ever tried to draw or paint something white?

Be daring and take the challenge this week and stretch your abilities.
Give yourself time to work on it when you don't feel hurried or pressured as it is helpful to be relaxed when working on something that requires this kind of thinking,

Work a practice run in your sketch book first.
You'll be glad you did.

And, as always, thanks so much for stopping by to visit!

(For those of you who may be wondering, I haven't forgotten the unfinished duck painting.

I plan to finish it to enter in the fair.  I just set it aside because I had to do this project for a specific reason.)

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Art Lesson: Blue Skies, Blue Mountains, Blue Grass.

Have you looked up and noticed the blue sky lately?

Did you know that if we did not have the atmosphere that we do on earth, the sky would be black like it is on the moon?  How sad that would be.  Of course, we could not live without our atmosphere, but the blue sky does make it even nicer considering all the colors it could have been.

I love blue skies!

The way that light travels and hits the atmosphere of the earth causes the colors of light to separate in such a way that the blue rays that make light are what we see,

making the sky blue.

Notice how the blue seems darker higher up in the sky whereas on the horizon, it is lighter.

The atmosphere that we have also creates a bluish color in the distance.

I went out into the pasture to try to capture some pictures to demonstrate this.

I opened up and let more light into my camera lens for this shot to try to make it easier to see the bluish tint we see in far-away landscapes.

This is called atmospheric perspective.

 Also notice that often the grass that is nearest to us is brighter and more distinct.

 As we look further back into the distance, the shade of the grass color takes on a slightly darker color made by a slightly bluish tint (the droplets and light in the air, atmosphere, contribute to this).  This bluish shade can really be seen when we look at the shadow of the trees on that far hill.

Of course, the way the sun is shining and where it is hitting when we look also can decide how bright what we are looking at will be and where the shadows will fall.

Notice the picture below is the same picture as the one above but just up a slight distance:

the sun here is behind the treeline,

making the grass have a darker shade than the grass in the distance that is highlighted by the sun.

There is much to keep in mind when painting a picture, isn't there?

It is what makes the world so beautiful and full of liveliness:

the many colors, hues, and shades.

As I am still working on some coloring/teaching pages for the Ten Commandments, I thought I would use this lesson to color one of the pages with my Copic markers.

 I used a light yellow green to start.

 This was followed by more greens.

I find I use the most variety in the greens.

For the sand, I started with a skin white...

 followed by light suntan on the sand 

and dark suntan and sepia on the tree trunks.

 I started with the yellow to the tips of some of the tree's leaves,

 with more greens in the areas where the marker caps are placed,

and a warm gray for some shading,

 Some darker browns and a darker gray finished the tree trunk,

and some neutral gray on the sandy banks edging and rocks.

Pale moss was used again to double up some layers.

 A darker shade, Moss, was used for the first hill in the background.

a darker brown Caribe Cocoa on the sand banks,

and Pea Green for shading in/around the grasses.

 More greens for shading and variety.

 Finally, for the mountains in the background, I chose Ice Ocean, a light bluish green

and Blue Berry, a light bluish purple.

More shading and darkening of areas near the marker caps, using those colors.

 Shading on the mountains as well as a second layer of Ice Ocean to deepen it.

 The colors from the mountains were then randomly squiggled in the stream.

 I used a bright Tahitian Blue to squiggle in some cloud edges, Pale Porcelain Blue stretched out beside them,

and a touch of a light neutral gray in the clouds.

The blender pen helped wash away the hard lines.

The grass looked too flat to me,

so I added a final touch of some greens to stipple in some grass,

and then the blender pen helped blend everything the way I felt was needed.

I love the blender pen.

I am enjoying experimenting with my Copic markers,

but am always amazed at how many colors cannot even begin to compare to the beauty

of God's world.

I hope you can go out for a pleasant walk soon and notice the colors.  If you think of it, see if you can see the bluish tint in the distant view.

Thank you for stopping by!

(I am sorry that I never posted a craft this past weekend.  I had a root canal that got infected and was well-nigh worthless to anything but a hot water bottle and the couch until it was fixed.)


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