Sunset on Rbician

Was poking around on Flickr studying shapes in the thumbnails. Found one of some minarets, but that's not what my mind saw. I morphed the shapes into a kinda futuristic sci-fi landscape. Thought it came out kinda cool.

Dubbed the new planet "Rbician."

Poverty Point

Hubby, Mr. Hotdog and I took a road trip down to the steamy Mississippi Delta territory of southern Arkansas and Northern Louisiana. We feel compelled to take at least one educational roadtrip to a historic site each summer.

Most are just interesting for the day then quickly forgotten. Not so with Poverty Point. It gave me a *lot* of brain candy to chew on. They have lots of interesting puzzle pieces out there and not a lot of answers. It's like the culture developed time travel but forgot to invent the wheel. Yep, lots of questions still remain.

Journaling:

Poverty Point in Epps, Louisiana is a massive pre-historic earthworks site dating to around 1500 BC. The advanced society who lived here were primarily hunter-gatherers. No evidence of domesticated crops have been found. That's amazing since it is estimated that over 1,000 people occupied this site at any given time.

Highly decorated clay objects have been found as well as intricate stone carvings, yet no trace of pottery has been uncovered.

It seems that a people with the engineering skills to design and build this site would figure out to put a thumbprint into a clay ball and keep going, turning it into a bowl...doncha think?

Passport & Palette Marathon

Was a couch potato all day today after I discovered a Passport & Palette marathon on Create TV. It's a series about en plein air painting. Watched the same 12 episodes over and over again. Heard a lot about shadow shapes, color notes, puzzle pieces and atmospherics.

All but one of the artists were painting with oils. Kinda gave me heart palpitations to watch them start a painting by smearing it over with color as an underpainting. My inner watercolorist was yelling, "Save the lights! Save the lights!"

I liked the freedom and abandon with which they slopped on the paint without having to worry about saving the lights - even the guy who used watercolors.

Kinda gave me an itch to paint with oils.

A Day at the Lake

Hubby and I loaded up Estelle to take her for a test drive. Hubby was tense during the drive to the lake because it was his first time to tow something as large as Estelle. He white-knuckled it for two and a half hours at 45 MPH over narrow, winding backroads with little or no shoulder. Our little 4-cylinder truck was really straining to make it up some of the hills. I was hoping we didn't throw a rod.

We arrived at the lake in one piece where we met up with Mr. Hotdog and Cindy Lou. Cindy Lou had set up a very nice day camp at a picnic table by the boat ramp. Hubby and Mr. Hotdog got Estelle unloaded without a problem and zoomed off down the lake to put her through her paces. Cindy Lou and I retreated to the campsite to read and draw.

Journaling:

Cindy Lou and I were sitting at the campsite minding our own business when two mallard drakes made a beeline across the lake towards us. They climbed the rocky hill and stood three feet in front of us demanding a handout. We obliged. Later that afternoon another drake with a purpley-blue head did the same.

For this sketch I only got the outline of the head and beak before the boys returned to collect us for a lake tour. I tried to remember what the ducks looked like, and really studied the blue-headed guy when he visited. Drew the rest of the duck and painted him at home from memory.

I was surprised that the ducks' bills weren't yellow or orange. They were a weird, murky greenish yellow. Was also surprised to find they each had a sharp tooth-like thingy hanging from the end of their upper bill. The wild little curl on their tails made me smile.

We ate lunch and swam in the lake, then the boys headed back out on the boat to do he-man things at fast speeds. Cindy Lou and I got in some quiet time at the camp site.

Realized there isn't much interesting to draw at this lake. Around me was rock scrabble with a few tufts of weeds poking through or tree trunks. In the distance was a band of blue sky, a band of green trees, then a band of greeny-gray water. The view doesn't lend itself to sketching.

The only thing interesting (to me at least) was Cindy Lou, or the activities at the boat ramp. Cindy Lou hides when she sees me coming with the sketchbook, so the boat ramp won.

Journaling:

Sitting in a campsite with Cindy Lou watching fools who can't back trailers try to launch and load boats they can't operate.

A never-ending comedy of errors.

After a long day of fun in the sun we parked the boat locally, ate some dinner, and parted company with Cindy Lou and Mr. Hotdog. It only took an hour and a half to get home since we weren't towing the boat.