another option

 

This used travel trailer, a Gulf Stream Vintage Cruiser, was actually for sale at an affordable price, located near us. So we took a drive to Conroe to look it over. It had already sold but we were still able to go inside and check it out.

We LOVED the retro feel! This one had sea foam green trim inside and out, including a huge refrigerator/freezer in the same color. It also comes with teal or red trim, or an old-fashioned “woody” look. But this one’s floor plan included a queen-size bed plus bunk beds — sleeping a total of 6. More than we need . . . I found other floor plans on line and drew one we thought we’d prefer.

We are not seriously ready to buy at this time, but I’m jotting down what we find and like in my sketchbook to refer to later.

travel possibilities

 

For a couple of weeks now we have been talking “pros and cons” of getting a small travel trailer. Then on the drive towards Hillsboro last week, we saw this Scamp 16’ Casita — LOVE❣️

Unfortunately they are very hard to find. We’d prefer to buy used — Scamp owners tend to hold on to them. One very good reason is that the repair parts stay the same; if something on an old model needs fixing, parts can easily be found. And even before the recent market shortages, the factory only make a limited number each year. Buyers might be on a waiting list for well over a year or more. A bit pricey too. But so darned cute, very lightweight to pull and fits under the existing carport. This model’s floor plan has a dry bathroom and separate dinette so we could leave the one on the end in “bed mode”. (My scale is off; the end dinette turns into a full-sized bed.)

chuck wagon building

 

This sketch is from last week, but we have had very spotty internet. Options are extremely limited here in the country, and what service there is has maxed out on capacity with so many doing work and school from home, and tv streaming.

We took an unexpected road trip north to bring Michael and Mikala home. They had flown to Kansas for a cousin’s graduation but their flight home was cancelled. So Michael’s father drove them down; we met him part-way to bring them on home.

Early in the drive, Bill stopped at this convenience store for coffee — overpriced and bitter, but the building murals were cool. In my view, a covered chuck wagon; on the other side, Texas Longhorns!

a new (to me) wildflower

 

As I was mucking donkey poo in the north pasture yesterday, I checked on the progress of a recent wildflower find growing there. When I first saw it, I wondered how a squash came to be planted in the middle of the enclosure. Not being sure of what it was, I waited and watched, hoping the goats would not eat it.

Near as I can tell in my Texas wildflower field guides, I think this is a buffalo gourd. Still waiting to see if gourds actually form.

Bill brought me the first ripe grape tomato from his garden — I quickly sketched it with my pen and ate it before adding color. (If you look closely, you’ll see a pencil reminder to smudge the lightly-penciled-in white highlights that I forgot to erase!)

weekend sketching

 

This morning I added watercolor to this random sketch done yesterday on the back patio — I was talking with my mom on the phone while swinging slowly on a porch swing (just to make things interesting?). The bags of plant food and garden gloves are sitting on a plant stand next to the swing but I left that out — keeping it simple!

And this unfinished sketch is on the back of the page — from Saturday, I had just started to sketch 2 boys playing corn hole when they left. Our daughter and son-in-law were hosting a party for the senior FFA kids since the school cancelled their regular banquet.

what’s in front of me

 

Back to simply drawing whatever is in front of me in a continuous contour line.

Also known as avoiding cat grooming time.

a beautiful “new” book

 

After what seemed a very long wait, I received this beautiful book today, from a used book seller here in Texas. (It took longer for them to mail it to me from Dallas than it takes for ordered items to arrive from the UK!)

Published in 2011 by The Daughters of the Republic of Texas, this book contains lithograph copies of over 100 watercolors of native Texas wildflowers, painted in the 1840s and 1850s and bound in a book by Eliza Griffin Johnston as a birthday gift to her husband.

Below are 3 of my favorites: white prickly poppy, Western Indian paintbrush, and of course, Texas bluebonnet.

after playing . . .

 

My desk and palettes are a bit of a mess after playing . . . so I sketched it.

I also jotted down a quote that I found on Favian Ee’s Facebook page because I wanted to remember it to think on later.

mixing triads demo

 

Yesterday I joined Lisa Spangler and Maria Cornell-Martin on their YouTube demo (HERE) on mixing triads. Mostly on using a CMYK palette (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). At first, I was using phthalo blue GS, quinacridone magenta (Winsor & Newton’s PR122), Hansa yellow light, and Jane’s grey. But then I switched the phthalo blue to phthalo turquoise — a much nicer “cyan” and a great mixer! 

Lisa supplied a gorgeous photo on Instagram of a purple prickly pear cactus from Big Bend National Park. I did a quick ink sketch while she demonstrated how to make a simple folded sketchbook. I love the “desert green” she achieved by mixing the blue and yellow plus a bit of black. And dropping a purple mix into the wet green is brilliant!

For the final demo, I used a different triad: ultramarine, quinacridone red, and Hansa yellow medium. It was a bit of a disaster, with unwanted greens in the sky wash and my not allowing that wash to dry before adding the distant rock formations. Still, it was fun!

slender stem bitterweed

When we lived in our log cabin in Washington County, we were surrounded by all manner of wildflowers, mostly bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush. The wildflower growing most abundantly in our new location, where a wee finger of the piney woods meets the post oak prairie, is this spindly yellow one. More often growing singly rather than in a cluster with "pinked" edged petals, I had trouble identifying what it actually was. 

At first I thought it was Stiff Greenthread -- the flower bit looked right but the basal leaves did not. Greenthread has whispy string-like strands of multi-branched leaves, hence the name. Now I have decided that this is Slender Stem Bitterweed. At least that's my best guess.

* UPDATE: Through Facebook converstations, I found that this might be a form of Coreopsis. That's what I was calling it last year but all my Texas field guides show photos of Coreopsis with a red splotch near the center of each petal. But apparently there is a variety without the red; this might be Coreopsis lanceolata, named for those lance-like basal leaves.