What have I been doooing!? The ugly truth

Hi! It was my mom's birthday! It was fun to get to hang with her and my family. Other than that I've been working on some water color projects:

There are inspired by a book called Watercolor- painting outside the lines by Linda Kemp. A very cool book! She walks you through exercises to get familiar with your preferred medium. I use Dr. Martin's Hydrus. A totally liquid water color. It feels more like dye to me, which I love.

These two works are hot messes, but it's easy for me to get flustered. I'm not quite grasping her method, but practice practice practice*! Here experimented with more abstract shapes, and want to keep working with the idea but I've got to set it down and move on. The method is really fun, and these are my getting-to-know-the-technique works. I'll stick with something a little less ambitious next ;)

(*raspberry noise!)

koi fish!

We went to the Japanese garden in town. Very pretty. Most everything had bloomed and was fading because it's summer now and a bit hot. But there was enough fun stuff still going on!

These poor fish! The last inhabitants of the pond got ick and died, bless. All systems were cleaned up and new fish were brought in. No public feeding, though. The last fish were greedy little beggars. They would beach themselves to get treats and wobble back into the water. These guys just coasted around. They looked like they were flying underwater.

It was more peaceful this day.

Much less fish frenzy.

More blossoms.

PS congrats to Katharine for winning the summer scarf! As soon as your address is emailed to me you will get your scarf... toe is tapping... ;)