"Four Horse Power"

This painting is a watercolor and from the series from the Pagosa Junction area lumber camp operation. I call this "Four Horse Power." These work horses did a lot of heavy hauling. Without the modern equipment of today, logging was a very hard and dangerous job.

Trains were used to bring supplies into camp, and they also brought up temporary housing. They looked like railroad cars converted to housing, but were smaller. In one of the photos an engine was off the track. Possibly the rails spread from the rains and heavy mud, or just got top heavy with the load. The men got the horse teams out and managed to pull the train back up onto the tracks. Amazing what a few men and a few horses can accomplish. Without cranes!
Time to sleep. Will try to get more up soon.

All art, poetry and writings are copyright & cannot be reproduced in any form without written permission from Judith Angell Meyer

"Bless the Beasts and the Children"

Enough with the snake already. Time to get out another painting. This one is "Bless the Beasts and the Children." It is a watercolor painting. My reference source is a photograph taken in about 1917, at a lumber camp in the Pagosa Junction area of south west Colorado.

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What drew me to this woman were her hands. You can look at her and see a young, or maybe more accurately, a naive or unworldly person, but her hands are very worse for wear. They show an incredibly hard life. Yet she holds the kid goat with a gentleness that belies her age.

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This might have been a Sunday or a special occasion as she is wearing a dress made with fabric with designs on it, and a home made shawl. Not quite a shawl, but a decorative shoulder drape to accent the occasion.

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Other pictures in the series have her three sons. They have to be her children as they wear the same bowl hair cut. They are showing off new Montgomery Wards overalls, with the youngest wearing the newest of the hand-me-downs.

All art, poetry and writings are copyright & cannot be reproduced in any form without written permission from Judith Angell Meyer

A new guest

Sorry this guy is a little blurry. He is a beautiful King snake who actually startled the heck out of me. I had stepped out of the barn door with a stack of hay in front of my face, (feeding time at the zoo), and almost stepped on him. At the time, he was stretched out full length on the driveway, soaking up the sun on a very warm day. It took up almost half the width. Really long, but skinny and his skin was still loose. Clearly out for the first time, and maybe hoping to pick up a meal. By the time I got back from the house with the camera, he had moved to what he thought would be the safety of the grass. I hope he hangs around. We had a King snake here before that was really large. Around his middle had to have been about 14". He was out sunning himself and my son's wife didn't see him, and she tripped over him. I'm thinking it took days for her to stop shivering after that.

Well, this being Mother's Day and all. I have things to do before I go to the kid's for dinner. Hope all you mothers out there have a wonderful day.

My Lilacs are in full fragrance!

This first photo is the front of the Studio.

This is the back of the Studio. In close for the fragrance.

This one is closer yet! Close enough to draw from!!

I'm sure I have gone over board with the photos here. But you have no idea how hard it was to wait so long for my lilacs to bloom. The late frost took them at the bud for the last two years. And I just love sitting on the porch taking in their wonderful fragrance.

This of course is the back of the Studio, but you can see both of the bushes.

I got all three of them on Mother's Day as my little kids could afford to get a starter bush. It was always fun to pick out the next spot. They all took to their locations just fine. I think the reason that the kids stopped getting them for me was that we decided to start a long row of them across the front. But the front is north, and the bushes didn't do well, until they finally quit trying. These remaining three are the light of my spring!

I just have to make a comment

I feel I just have to comment .. This is the first time blogspot has allowed me to sign in for days now, and I finally found a work around that worked. Usually I can go to my friends blog and click on her link to my blog, and I can at least get the sign on link. From there sometimes I can get the sign on box and sometimes I can't. Today the box came up with the error message that the page could not be found. So knowing it was looking for a different page than I was on, I did a right click on the blank sign on box and refreshed the page. It worked!! Probably only this once, but since I actually got in, I knew I had to write something. Let me add a picture for you ... hang on!

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Okay, this is a pencil drawing that I did while participating in a challenge draw on WetCanvas.com I call this "The pout." I loved doing this drawing and it was a good practice for me to get back into drawing. Also, it was so well received that I ended up with the job of choosing photos and running the monthly challenge myself. I guess that was to take me out of the competition! (Not really!) The photos are copyright free donations to the Wet Canvas library.

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Okay now, any questions be sure to ask.

All art, poetry and writings are copyright & cannot be reproduced in any form without written permission from Judith Angell Meyer