Mushroom Fantasy

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
–Mark Twain

Boy, isn’t that the truth!

 

Mushroom Fantasy
6″ x 9″ Watercolor on Yupo

This little painting reminds me of a fantasy.  Dreamy and a little distorted.  I had a piece of Yupo that I had previously played with.  Then I just had fun with color and a little imagination.
Here is the background, before I painted the mushrooms.  There is a little difference in color, due to the bad lighting when the photo was taken of the background.  I scanned the final painting.





Mark Twain

On Nov. 30, 1835, the small town of Florida, Mo. witnessed the birth of its most famous son. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was welcomed into the world as the sixth child of John Marshall and Jane Lampton Clemens. Little did John and Jane know, their son Samuel would one day be known as Mark Twain – America’s most famous literary icon.
Approximately four years after his birth, in 1839, the Clemens family moved 35 miles east to the town of Hannibal. A growing port city that lie along the banks of the Mississippi, Hannibal was a frequent stop for steam boats arriving by both day and night from St. Louis and New Orleans.
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Another great quote:

“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

–Mark Twain

Mushroom Field

“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Mushroom Field
9″ x 6″ Mixed Media on Yes!

I painted these little mushrooms on Yes! Primed Cotton.  I remember Yes! being more absorbent, but I have had this pad for quite a while and it was not accepting my watercolor very well.   Since I was unable to get the affect I wanted, I outlined it in Sharpie and then splashed some acrylic on it.  It ended up being fun to do.  This is the first of three paintings I did from this same reference.

Okay, now I want to show you what it looked like on Lake Eufaula, Oklahoma on Saturday evening.  The weather was perfect and I believe we had record crowds for the Memorial Day weekend.  This is just one little part of the lake, but there was a Cross Canadian Ragweed concert about to start at the outdoor amphitheater next to the marina.    These folks saved between $25 and $75 a head.    I took this picture from our boat (as we were heading in to the dock, to put it away and go home).   We just aren’t tough enough to hang with the twenty-something crowd.   

About Friedrich Nietzsche

Controversial German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is best known for his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Born in 1844 near Leipzig, he renounced Prussian citizenship in 1869, remaining stateless the rest of his life. In his work, he argued against the concept of an omnipotent deity, believing in a “will to power,” a drive toward creativity that could explain everything from natural phenomena to human behavior. He suffered from insanity, possibly syphilis-induced, for his last ten years. He died in 1900.

Angora Rabbit

“I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.”
– Leo Rosten

 

Angora Rabbit
4″ x 6″ Watercolor Postcard

I painted this little bunny last night, while I was waiting for my husband to get home from an adventure he was on.  He brought me the most unusual gift when he came in.  Uhgggg, have you ever seen a baggie full of fresh picked morel mushrooms?  The are really gross.  They looked like sponges fresh picked from the dark, colorless bottom of the sea.  They didn’t look pretty, like Ryan’s painting on his blog.  

But, when Duane looked at me with that “pretty please” look, I quickly looked up Ryan’s instructions on how to cook them.   Ryan, you saved my butt!  Although I didn’t have time to soak them overnight in salt water, I followed the rest of your instructions to a tee.  They were delicious!!

Our friend Brad, who picked these morels, thought I might want to join him to pick more today.  No thanks, Brad.  I’ll leave the ticks to you, but they were wonderful!  Thank you! 

About Leo Rosten

Leo Rosten, the Polish-American academic and author, is best known for his seminal The Joys of Yiddish, an amusing look at Yiddish words that have entered the American vernacular. Born in Lodz, Poland, in 1908, he immigrated to Chicago as a child. He wrote dozens of books, including a set of extremely popular humorous stories about Hyman Kaplan, a night-school student struggling with English. Under the pseudonym Leonard Q. Ross, he wrote mysteries and film noir screenplays. He died in 1997.