The Tea Cup Tea Room Gray Copic Ink & Watercolor 5.5" x 5.5" Pineapple Sketchbook

I met my new business partner at a tea house for a business lunch today.

Since I arrived 10 minutes early, I checked email and with nothing else to do, dug out my sketchbook and drew the fountain sitting out in the garden. I was about half way through painting it when she arrived.

We were seated in a back corner table where we could to begin discussions on a new project—one that will involve art, beauty, encouragement, inspiration, traveling, writing and maybe some tea!

I had left the sketchbook open on the table so the page could dry. After lunch, I pulled the sketchbook over to finish the garden sketch and decided to add the lovely tea pot. We had two pots of tea, one was a white tea called Wedding Tea and smelled like wedding cake. The other was caramel.

Yummmm! Even better when we mixed them together! Double yummmm!

Before I could finish the teapot, our scones arrived with Devonshire cream. Just delicious! I couldn't leave them out, so on the page they went.

We also had a wonderful conversation with the proprietress of The Tea Cup about realizing dreams and enjoying the gifts of each day.

A most un-business like lunch that was a wonderful way to do business!

Because time was short, I drew directly on the page with a gray Copic multiliner pen. It reads a bit like pencil. I figured for china and pale, pastel colors, I wasn't sure I wanted to use black ink.

That fact that I captured a few quick sketches was the icing on a fun day.

What did you do fun today????!!

I have to say that yesterday was one of the wildest days I've experienced in quite some time. It's a tale of woe and redemption. I went over to the Apple store yesterday with my Mac for my one-on-one appointment. When I arrived with my desktop computer on a rollie cart, they couldn't find my appointment. Being that it was 9:00 o'clock in the morning, this was not a good sign.

Turns out the ditz had struck again - I had scheduled for the 23rd and not yesterday, the 16th. Argh! Jessica, the young woman that was helping me, rescheduled me for noon. Yay! I went off to run errands - which is another story for a different post - and came back at noon to work with Carl. Carl's expertise is video and that's where I needed help. We worked through some of the issues I've been having with my computer and came up with a work around - working on the video files from an external hard drive.

Carl had to move on to his next appointment, so Ben was going to help me set up the external drive. He asked me to power up my Mac so we could map the new external drive and . . . . . . . . . . the internal hard drive would not mount. Now Nick enters the scene - Nick is one of Apple's technicians, an outstanding one too, in my opinion! He worked his magic and was able to get the drive working again. Checked some directories and arrived at the opinion was probably a software issue that was causing the problems.

He stepped away and we fired the computer up again because we still need to set up the external drive. No drive. Nada. Nothing. This time, they had to take the computer in the back and pull the drive out of it to extract my data, but extract it they did. Whew! CLOSE CALL! My entire business is/was on that computer. Do I back up? Yes, but. We've been having a whole lot of storms lately and I had turned the hard drive off to protect it and had not turned it back on since late August . . . . .


What do you think I should name her? Suggestions?

1st FLOOR FLAT: PINK SATURDAY - MAKING BLOGGER BLOGGING A HAPPIER EXPERIENCE

Sometimes thinking outside of the box, or in this case, the closet, can be a very good thing! I want to share an inexpensive marketing idea that my husband, Chris, came up with - I have an opportunity to display my work at a local business, The Compounding Shop of Riverview, but space is a bit limited. They have one of my paintings on display, but I wanted to make more of an impact than just the one painting.

If you've ever tried to paint cherries, or any fruit for that matter, then you know they're not flat on the bottom. This means they tend to wander off. Most annoying when they're in a line-up and posing for a painting. But I suppose they don't know that.

Over the weekend I was able to finish up this small watercolor, Summer Jewel! It is painted on Ampersand's Aquabord® and is my first painting on this support. (UPDATE: The size is 4" x 4" and this is an original watercolor!) I have to say, I rather like the Aquabord and I'm going to be doing some more work on it to see what this stuff can handle. (If you're interested, check tomorrow's post where I'll offer my observations on this product.)

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Original Sunflower Watercolor Painting

I'm busy painting mistakes as fast as I can and I'm getting better with every one! At the moment I don't really have anything to share art wise. Perhaps tomorrow. What prompted this post was a recent (yesterday) conversation with someone who asked, "Does it bother you to post your mistakes on your blog?" To which my immediate response was "Nope! Means I'm learning!"

Here it is the end of the day on Monday and I still don't have any art to post! I've been fighting it out with a competition painting as I write this and at the moment, I'm not winning. Don't you hate that? When a painting gets the best of you? Arrrgh! Which means I'll probably have to start over. Sigh. That's not good, but what else am I gonna do?! It's for a competition painting for pete's sake! And I think, no, scratch that, I know that's part of the problem - I'm trying too hard. 

I hope everyone has had or is having a fabulous weekend! I am seriously considering taking an online art class this summer. There seems to be quite a few classes out there and I'm hoping to hear from some folks with hands-on experience as to what the classes are or were like. So, I am reaching out to everyone in the blogsphere for info and help on choosing a class. Could you please tell me: 

. . . . and sometimes it doesn't! I started a portrait of a baby tonight as my daily practice. It was a bad choice and I knew it before I ever made the first pencil mark, let alone brush stroke, but if I don't get out of those comfort zones . . . . 

I have just added two new sets of notecards to my online store Painted Thoughts!
The second set is also a set of four (4) notecards of the sweet little nest found in a friend's neighbor's yard in North Carolina:

For those of you following along on the printer conundrum, it has finally resolved itself. I ordered an Epson Stylus Pro 3800 printer this morning. The main reasons I've chosen this one is that it comes the closest to replacing the printer that recently died, and it gives me far more versatility. I can print up to 16" x 20" prints and as small as 4" x 6".  It will go larger - 17" x 37" if necessary.

It seems there aren't too many folks out there that are happy with their printers. Lots of people could tell me what hadn't worked well for them, but no one had strong ideas about what to get in the way of a new printer. I still have not purchased one, but I have narrowed down the information somewhat:

My old trusty Epson wide-format (17") printer has died, and I am deep into the research of trying to replace it. The technology has changed considerably since I last purchased a printer and Epson was leader in the field. Now, that doesn't appear to be the case, as Canon and HP are both putting out great products. If you are interested in printing fine photography, the reviews are plentiful. If you are interested in fine art printing, look hard, there are no reviews. I rarely print anything gloss and most of the reviews focus on how brilliant the gloss is!