Tree of Life

I almost forgot to upload the drawing Gary did for the Mystery Tree in the previous post.
Leslie Hawes guessed it!
I thought Autumn Leaves guess of Fiber Cereal was funny. I probably would have guessed something similar since I never ate Life cereal. As you can see the drawing would have given it away.
Gary's been busy. I'm waiting for a new drawing and a comment on Mystery Tree. Hint, hint.

I've been busy also doing late clean up in the yard and garden and other general around the house maintenance stuff. The things I hate to do until I actually get started. I haven't painted for about a week and I'm feeling it. Tomorrow I'll be scheduling time to paint again. It definitely keeps me centered and sometimes afloat when life stuff gets a little crazy.
My daughter and I took my parents out for an anniversary lunch last week and I got some good photos of a club sandwich to paint. That one will go in my daily painting blog.

Have a great turkey day everyone and thanks for stopping by!

mystery tree

This week I'm going to show you the painting first to see if you can guess what Play on Words phrase this represents.

Gary gave me two rebus drawings for this one and both of them didn't quite work for me so I combined the two and came up with this. So far it's my favorite in the series of Play on Words.

Once someone guesses it I'll post Gary's drawing. I think it might be too obvious if I post it now. I'm having so much fun with this blog.
So please, let the fun begin and comment with a guess!

7" x 7" pastel painting, unframed
You can purchase this painting for $120 with free shipping and handling in the US. Please email me for International shipping rates or other inquiries.

Lobster Roll

Gary's drawing was so great that I was thinking a painting couldn't compete. But that's what I do and the intention of this blog is to interpret his drawings.

At first I wanted to go for a live lobster but I was hooked on using red so cooked it is. I kept the details down to a minimum, just enough to suggest the lobster and the roll. Ok . . maybe a bit more.

I'm anxiously awaiting more "play on words" drawings. My goal is to paint one a week, providing that the drawings are supplied. (Hint, hint)

Did I mention in the last post that Gary makes the best lobster chowder? I can't eat a whole lobster but put it in soups or stuff it in a fish and I totally enjoy it.

Tonight we'll be going to the first anniversary of the gallery that offered to represent my work. Six of my paintings will be part of the exhibit. I always want to go incognito. That's impossible if the gallery owner is there or if you invite friends. One of these days I will find a way.

6" x 6" pastel painting, unframed
You can purchase this painting for $120 with free shipping and handling in the US. Please email me for International shipping rates or other inquiries.

Crab Cake

To read about how this blog started click here.
Here's the first drawing Gary gave me. I love it. As you can see in the painting below I carried it a step further by using an actual cake for the composition.

Then I had to decide what kind of crab to use. Blue, hermit, coral . . . did you know that there are 45,000 types of crabs?!

So I went for blue since they are so colorful, and delicious.

I showed the painting to Gary and he said, "Where are the eyes and antennae?"
Hmmm . . .I really tried but it didn't work well compositionally. Besides, hermit crabs have the cutest pop-out eyes and large antennae. The blue crab's eyes are tucked inside the head.
Maybe I'll try a version with a hermit crab also.
Speaking of crustaceans, Gary cooked an excellent lobster chowder for dinner tonight. He cooks three days a week on average so I can devote more time to painting. Besides that he loves cooking.

Lobster for the next painting?

5" x 7" pastel painting, unframed
You can purchase this painting for $120 with free shipping and handling in the US. Please email me for International shipping rates or other inquiries.

Gary's thoughts - crab cake

Good job, Ria.
This is working for me!

Oh what fun it is to ride in a 1 whore soap, and slay! (Getting holidayish, watch that punctuation, now. More word play, but don't take it personally! I don't have a sketch for that one, yet, but if Europe 4 the challenge . . .) Obviously, in my sketch (which took all of 30 seconds), the eyes and antennae are on the near side of the cake. The squiggles on the top are icing, but I can live with the top edge thing. I am an engineer, after all. I can't wait for more.

~ Gary

The Inspiration

I am a professional pastel painter. My husband Gary who is an engineer by profession, handed me a piece of paper the other day with a couple of sketches on it. He thought I might be able to use them as ideas for new paintings. At first I had a touch of ego and thought, "I'll come up with my own ideas, thank you!" But the sketches were too good to pass and each represented a "play on words".

The ideas started churning immediately and I came up with the concept for this blog. I'm not quite sure how often we will be posting. It depends on the frequency of Gary's inspired drawings. Every time he comes up with one I will represent it in a painting. The sketch and painting will be posted once I've done my part.
This is going to be so much fun!

Please bookmark this site so you can check back for the first sketch and painting! Better yet you can become a "follower" of this blog in the right hand column.