My Adventures in Painting Roses and Other Fluff!

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

I am one who can poke fun at myself and not worry. I have a pretty good sense of self-worth so I can do this. I rarely care much what other people think of me. In other words, I’m pretty confident of my abilities. No, I’m not prideful, just confident. I know what I can do and what I cannot do. And there is much I cannot do. Trust me!

Anyway, today I’m going to tell you my adventures in trying to paint, in particular—roses. Please don’t laugh; it’s not funny that I am a total flop at painting.

I saw this image on the internet and it brought back memories of my pathetic attempt at trying to learn rose painting. While this painting doesn’t show frustration, which I felt, it shows the beginning of a beautiful painting. Mine never did. Sigh.

This is about as good as I ever got. You’d think I’d be embarrassed to show it, but nope, I’m proud of how far I had come before I decided I’d never be a rose painter.

Then I thought about painting bird nests. I wasn’t much better at that. However, these two paintings hang on my front porch. They may not be sellable but I sure as heck tried and I’m proud that I did.

Okay, here’s the story on this one.

I bought two folding wooden chairs for our patio out back and painted these roses on the back. One of the chairs broke and I wasn’t about to let my “art” go to waste as these roses were rather pretty. So I took the back piece off the chair to salvage the roses and they now hang in my laundry room.

This rose turned out pretty well so I made some decals out of them. My granddaughter wanted some to put on her place cards for her wedding dinner several years ago and we did. She loves me much you understand, so I think she was just being kind to me, but they were used and for that alone, I’m eternally grateful to her. Caroline is the other thing for which I’m grateful to her. ;-) And if you look at the URL at the top of your screen if you’re reading my blog, you’ll see I made it my avatar also. Pretty unique, huh?

Now, here you can see I’m truly NOT an artist by this little caricature I drew of me. It’s my place-holder. What is a place-holder you ask? Well, I work with templates. When I make one for a person to use, I color code them for text and photos. In other words, when they see red they put their text in there. When they see blue, they put the photos in that space where the html is. Makes it much easier for them when using the template. So my place holder is this little caricature of me. If that pops up, they know they need to change it to the photo they want instead of my photo. This is what I see all the time when I’m creating a blog post. If I see that little caricature, I know I need to change it to another photo. But this is in here to show you my creative endeavor. Stop laughing!

This is another shade of pink I really like. More of an orchid color, but beautiful.

Another sweet thatched cottage in the UK somewhere. I believe they are allowed in certain places in the U.S. as I’ve seen them, but I doubt many places would allow them. In Ireland, one of the B&Bs we stayed in didn’t allow me to use my blow dryer. You should have seen me. I got under the electric blanket and just started running my fingers vigorously through my hair until it dried. Turned out pretty dang good though!