WIP - Cougar 3rd Update

Update #3 on the Cougar.

The rocks are looking pretty solid now and am moving on to ...

more rocks.

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

New settings

Hello to all my friends and readers out there. I have begun to get a lot of automated spam on my blog which is most annoying. So, to help reduce unwanted solicitors cluttering up my Blog, I have activated some new settings. One of which is word verification. I never understood how this was helpful, and always found it annoying to have to type in the letters and numbers on a graphic, but now know that the step takes a human to type in the "code" and automatic spam just can't read or type.

Those of you who have a subscription to my Blog will not be affected by this, and you will continue receiving your updates as I post something new. (The subscription form is below my profile on the left side, and only requires your e-mail address to activate.) Since I have no way of knowing who all my subscribers are, You might be receiving two of these messages. My apologies in advance.

For the rest of you, thank you for taking the time to take a look and comment from time to time. It makes my day to know that you enjoy my Blog enough to say hi.

Western Regards,

Judith Angell Meyer

WIP - Cougar

Okay, I'm pooped. I have been working on the cougar all day. Took a couple of breaks. Gizmo instisted on it!

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Except for softening the cougar's outline so he appears to be coming out of the cave and not just a "cookie cutter" effect on top of the darkness, I think he is finished.

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The rocks have only begun to take form, so bear with me on this.

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If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Happy to help if I can.

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Enjoy!

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~J~

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

Cougar

When I last wrote I was expecting to be in surgery Tuesday the 22nd. That's been three days ago already. Jeez. Anyway, that was canceled. Seems not all the test results were in, nor even completed. So my primary Dr. took care of that. By Thursday all the reports were in and I was given the okay to get the surgery. My Dr. was going to have to explain to the surgeon and the anesthesiologist, why the bifascicular block in my heart wasn't going to be a problem. He suggested that without the explanation, when the anesthesiologist read the ECG, he'd just throw up! So now I wait for surgery to be rescheduled.

In the meantime, the little piece I'm painting for the SAA's "Small Art, BIG Impressions" show this fall, opening at the Wildlife Experience in Parker, Colorado on November 4th, is finally beginning to look right. The cougar is so small that even my magnifying light is barely enough. But I'm finally getting the watercolor to mold its body.

Have done nothing but pencil illustrations for a long time, and I guess it's just taking a while to get the watercolor brush going again. Too much time away from the work I should be doing.

The whole painting is 5" x 7" making the cougar about an 1 3/4" high x 2 1/4" wide. The cougar is the watercolor start, and the source picture of the rocks and cave is where the cougar will be walking out of.

I'm pleased with the start now, took a while. Now to get it finished in time. It has to be entered by August 17th.

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We actually got one heck of a thunder and lightening storm tonight and with it came this real cool wet stuff. Took me a while to remember it was rain. It was a nice one too, and cool! I took my popcorn and sat out on the porch to enjoy the wind and cool and the wonderful fresh smell of the rain.

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Delicious.

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Good night all.

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

New Old Motor Home

I have forgotten completely to show off "my" motor home. Took a while to get the engine back up to snuff, and of course cleaning the years of dust. It was Mom and Dad's since 1985, and they toured all over in it. They bought it for an ambitious trip through Canada to Alaska, and then back down the coast to Washington, then back to Colorado.

It is a 1984/5 Toyota pickup with a 1985 Dolphin camper on its back. Mom and Dad always took good care of their things, and passed that on to me, but I cannot believe how well this little camper is preserved. I know my parents, and camped with them all my childhood, so I know for a fact that Mom cooked three times a day for Dad. Sandwiches for lunch maybe, but I'm sure there was always coffee and probably soup. Then the catch of the day for supper. So, when you see the stove you will not believe that she spent years of camping trips cooking in that camper.

In this one I am standing at the door looking toward the back of the camper. The galley on the left, the bed in the rear across the back, closet over and to the right of the bed, then the bench and table on the right side.

This one looks the other way. Back to front. The driver's seats are all the way front and a step down. The overhead bunk is low, so I usually go out of the camper to get into the driver's seat. You can see the over the cab bunk bed, where I'll be storing my easel and art supplies. To the left and beyond the table is the bathroom, which has a potty, shower and sink. (Not a large space.) It is my hope that I can drive someplace in Colorado and just sit there for several days. Hiking, taking sketches and pictures. Maybe read a book. Mostly just being outside in our beautiful state. (And higher than here. It is currently 3:20 p.m. and 101 degrees.)

Of course I'll have Gizmo with me. It will be interesting to see where he will settle and call his own. It will be different. I don't plan on, or especially intend on using KOA's. Will first set my sights on the valley where Hans is and settle in there for a while.

I guess this it. Hope you like my little home away from home. I'm sure it will give me a lot of pleasure, as it did for Mom and Dad. Now if I can just take as good a care of it as they did ...

Good intentions

"Good intentions just don’t get the job done, like procrastination doesn’t do the job .... " That would be me getting my blog started for the past two weeks. Still no rain here. My son mowed the lawn and took care of trimming the long tree branches. The brown "lawn" crunches!

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My writing is off at the moment. Writing down ideas, but not taking the time to put it all together. However, I have been working on the cat portrait commission, and it is going well. Her cat was blind, so I am painting her just as she was. She is a pretty cat. I have been a long time with this commission. So, it is time. I will stop on this one for a while to finish a small piece for entry in the SAA "Small works, BIG Impressions" show. I also have a pencil portrait on my drawing board. It has been laid out and is ready to go, so I will advance on it as soon as the small SAA piece is done, and then go back and forth between the two portraits as I need a break from one or the other. The system works out pretty well, and I don’t generally get so tired of one media that I have to take a week off, say. I can just keep on going.
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I seem to be getting slower by the day. Only I’m not just slower, but the joints take longer to smooth out so I can walk more like a humanoid and not a primate! My eyes are getting old too, and I have the beginnings of a cataract on my right eye. Dr. says it isn’t going to cause me any trouble for a long time, but I have him check it once a year anyway!
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Yesterday was quite a day. My friend had called me to come help him get his printer to work. I ended up having to bring it home here to get on line to download the newer printer drivers he needed and it all worked out well. I think I got lucky. I wasn’t done with that until about 3 in the p.m.. When I got home I checked my messages. I had calls from both the Women’s Clinic, and from the hospital. I expected that the Women’s Clinic was calling to confirm my Monday appointment. One of the calls did that, but the other one was more vague, so called back and the gal said that as near as she could find, the call must have been to confirm that the procedure they were going to do Monday was approved by Medicare. So ... Then I returned the call from the hospital, which was a gal in Pre-Op. She had called to go over my medical history for my surgery on Tuesday the 22nd. I sort of asked her what surgery. She had all the right information, and while I had hoped that the surgery could be done ASAP, this was really fast. I figured that since it had been two weeks between appointments with the Dr. who would be doing the surgery, that I wouldn’t have a surgical appointment until the end of July. SO!! I will have my surgery on this coming Tuesday at 9:40 a.m. This could be changed. At the time of my call they hadn’t gotten the confirmation back from the whole surgical team, but barring any problems ... I guess I’m on my way. With this timing, I’ll definitely have the time to heal before fall/winter chores.
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This year the cotton off the cotton wood trees was as bad as I have ever seen it. It drifted against the house, and along the driveway. I didn’t think the stuff was ever going to quit coming down. Now if I’d been 7 or 8 years old, I’d have delighted in the wind fall, (so to speak), so I could fill the pillows for my dollies! Can you believe me playing with dolls? Filling the pillows for my sister yes, but me ... ol’ Tomboy me! Well, I remember doing that none the less.
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I have finally changed my house insurance. Have been with the company for 37 years. They just did an upgrade, or reevaluation of the cost to rebuild and was able to lower the monthly payment some. I have, for the same many years, had my car insurance with the same, other, company and when I went to add the motor home to it, they suggested I give them the opportunity to price my home insurance with them as it looked like they could also lower my car payments. So I did that, and I’ll be saving right at $41.00 a month on the house, and about $30.00 a year on each of the vehicles. And, I was able to add benefits/coverage I couldn’t afford before. My insurance was already fairly low because of no accidents and because the cars are all older and, of course, because I am older and because I have enough vehicles to be under "fleet" insurance. This gives my kids a great giggle. So looks like I’m set for a while in the insurance department. Actually at the price of gas these days, I could probably take the insurance off all but one and they would become my mothball fleet.
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Best get busy. I have a few things to do before going into completely helpless mode for a while. Maybe I’ll be better at Blogging, do you think? What I’d have to say might be oatmeal, but then you never know. It might get pretty funny with me trying to do things around here, under the restriction not to lift anything over 10 lbs. (Gizmo is really not going to like that one!) (He is 11 lbs!)
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"We are all different expressions of one reality, different songs of one singer,different dances of one dancer, different paintings - but the painter is one." -- Osho, Indian Spiritual Leader