I shot these when out with Chris John for a walk with the dogs. I really like these shots, however, they are not print worthy (I didn't use a tripod). So I'll just call them preliminaries for future shots.

This took me four nights to complete. The last night I had it just the graphite and thought to add color pencil to make it clear that it is a cap gun and not a real pistol. In retrospect, I wish I had left it without the colored pencil.

This is a quick sketch with pencil, ink and brush, and colored pencil on watercolor paper. This is Stormy napping in his new favorite place, on the futon in my studio where he can keep his eye on the duckling (Charlie).

This was taken this morning at about 8:15am outside my kitchen door. The sun poking through the warm mist really stuck me, it didn't transpose in this image as well as I'd hoped. However, it still holds the strength of those first warm spring mornings after a light rain. (Smells like earth.)

Getting the Garden Going...

So, last weekend I started planting cold weather friendly plants in the garden. We have a little plot by the "barn" (a.k.a. motorcycle shop) that I put cilantro, fennel, parsley, spinach, swiss chard, kale, arugula, butterhead lettuce and a salad bowl lettuce. I attempted to mulch it with shredded newspaper... which back fired - it's all over the yard, oh, and the rest of the neighborhood, now.


The main plot was also started last weekend. I plotted out where I'd be planting and put in beets, radishes, broccoli, carrots, onions, leeks, more kale, and more spinach around the garlic I started last fall. The garlic, by the way, is doing great. Most seem to have emerged and are about 8 inches high already.


This morning, I was surprised and happy to see that Josh had started to build me a fence around the garden (with the help of our good friend, Justin). We've been talking about doing this due to the dogs always pooping in and around the garden, and the chickens love to find their ways in when we let them roam. The chickens tend to do a little damage. While Josh finished off the fence, I started the mulching around the garden plots, with straw this time - I'm not messing around. Once the plants start to emerge I'll mulch some more around them to minimize the weeds.