Impressions

You know I love trains, all kinds, including monorails. So naturally, when I got to Seattle, I had to ride the monorail that stops right next to the Space Needle.

This is a view of the interior after everyone else got off at the end of the line. (I stayed on for the return trip.) I had fun manipulating this one in my photo editor, simplifying the detail to make it look more like a painting and super-saturating the colors to bring out my feelings about trains. And Seattle … I love it!

I hope you like the result! xox

PS Prints are available on my print site.

Portland calls itself “The City of Roses,” and there are roses everywhere, nearly year round. I found this cluster in a parking lot down by the river. I love the contrast of the green buds and the peachy-pink blossoms. Peachy-pink. Hmmm. What would you call this color?

Enjoy! xox

PS Portland has lots of other nicknames, too.

PPS Prints are available at my print site and my Facebook shop.

One delightful evening not too long ago, a couple of friends sat around playing and singing some old-time tunes  like “Ookpik Waltz,” “My Own Kind of Hat” and (my favorite) “I Loved You Better than You Knew.” They were very, very good.

I don’t play or sing, so I listened, enjoyed, and took pictures. This artwork is based on one of the photos I caught. Photoshop’s cutout filter created the effect I wanted here.

I feel like I grew a bit today, as this is the first time I ever requested a model release. I usually don’t show recognizable people in my art. So this is a departure for me. I had to add a new blog category for this work: People. I want to do  more of this!

Enjoy! xox

PS Prints are available here.

I’m jumping the gun a bit with this photo of maple leaves in autumn. Maybe I’m starting to long for cooler, crisper days. Are you?

Enjoy! xox

PS Prints are available at my print site.

You know how some artists go through a blue period? Well for me, it’s a pink period. And it’s been going on for years. I just love the color. I just bought a new compact camera to live in my purse. I bought the one with the highest ratings, a Canon PowerShot S90IS, but I was sorely tempted by a much lesser (and cheaper) camera, the Nikon Coolpix S4000. Why? Because it’s PINK! And you can get a pretty pink case for it. There are no pretty pink cases for the S90, just utilitarian black ones. But reason prevailed in the end, and I got the quality black camera and case.

Actually, pink isn’t my only favorite color. I seem to have a signature palette: pink, tangerine, turquoise, and lime. But pink is always #1.

Enjoy! xox

My cat Clark does that spooky cat thing, staring at absolutely nothing on the wall. I really like the lighting in this shot, even the fact that some of the highlights are blown out. I think it helps to emphasize Clark’s beautiful face and fur. I also love the faint reflections on the wood trim.

I didn’t do selective coloring on this one. It’s a full color shot. It’s just that everything is black, gray, or white except for Clark’s pink nose and yellow eyes. OK, I admit it. I punched up the saturation on the nose and eyes a bit.

Enjoy! xox

PS This photo is available on my print site.

PPS That’s not a cobweb under the windowsill. Seriously. OK, it is.

Portland Saturday Market is an amazing place, with everything from high-end art to cheap-o imported doodads. It’s fun to shop and eat there, but it’s just as fun to people and dog watch. I don’t go nearly often as I’d like. (Hint to my daughter.)

I caught sight of display of clay life masks on a blistering hot day. They were tilted up to the bright sun and looked to me like they were sunbathing. This artwork is based on a photo I took that day. Don’t you think the guy on the left looks like Hercules Poirot?

Prints are available on my print site.

Enjoy! xox

I captured this macro of a blue hydrangea at the Japanese Gardens in Portland, OR. I hope you like it. It’s available as a print or card on my print site.

Enjoy! xox

Biking is big in Portland. According to Wikipedia, “Portland has earned multiple ‘bicycle friendly city’ awards, including being awarded platinum status by the League of American Bicyclists. Portland also has the highest rate of bicycle commuting to work of any major American city with 4.2% of workers commuting to work by bicycle in 2006.”

Bridges are also big in Portland. With 10 highway bridges crossing the Willamette River in the downtown area and several more north and south of downtown, one of the city’s nicknames is “Bridgetown.” Many of them are vertical lift draw bridges, where a span of the bridge is raised flat, like an elevator, rather than at an angle. The imaginatively named Steel Bridge carries automobile, bicycle, and light rail traffic on its upper level and railroad and pedestrian traffic on its lower level. The two decks can be raised and lowered independently, so the lower deck can be raised to allow river traffic to pass while not disturbing the flow of traffic on the upper deck.

If you take an Amtrak train to Portland from the south, you’ll cross Steel Bridge on the lower level just before you pull into the station. That’s exactly what I did the day I took this shot, captured from a train window while waiting in Union Station. It was on Amtrak Cascades around 7 am, so bicycle commuter traffic was just starting to cross the bridge to downtown. Light was low, especially under the bridge, so the colors and details in the original shot were murky. That’s why I reduced it to high contrast black and white. I hope you like the result! xox

PS Prints available at my print site.

These were such unusual seeds! I’ve never seen pure white ones before. We used to call these kinds of seed carriers Santa Clauses, but my grandkids call them wishes. Hence, the quotation and the title. I thought this artwork just begged for a quotation or poem. At first I wanted to use  “Dreams are wishes your heart makes.” But it turns out to be from Disney’s Cinderella in a slightly different form: “A dream is a wish your heart makes.” I don’t want to tread on any copyrights, so I went looking for something else and found this proverb, which I like even better. I hope you do too! xox

PS Available on my print site.