Riverside play

Camping at the river is all about playing in the water, especially when the temperatures soar.   And that's pretty much what we spent our camping trip doing.  Our campsite was right beside the river and Callie and the dogs spent every available moment there.  Callie just adores dogs and Maggie loves little girls so they had a lot of fun together playing catch the water drops, fetch the stick, and swimming together in the pools.

Geordie loves to wade in the pools (always on a leash for safety reasons), Maggie loves anything to do with water and  Callie loves to swim any time so it was a perfect spot.

We spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning there and then headed down to a birthday party at Shawnigan Lake in the afternoon.  Guess what Callie spent her time doing there?  You're right--swimming in the lake.

Gone camping

We're heading up to the Chemainus River with our 7-year old niece Callie and our two dogs for a few days of camping.  The weather is perfect.  Sunshine and warm temperatures.  We're going to be camping right beside the slow-flowing river so we can keep cool.  And have fun.  I'll post some pictures when we get back.

Hydrangea

The Hydrangea in my front yard has come to beautiful life this year.

In a colour rut

I knew I was in a colour rut when I talked to my son Jamie on the phone. I said: I'm painting the kitchen.  And Jamie said: Oh yeah. Let me guess. It's green.

What could I say? It is green--a soft warm grayed creamy green, but still it's green. And now I realize that every room in my house (with the exception of the laundry room and Harry's workshop) is some tone of green.

Well, I tried with the kitchen. I chose a colour that was more of a pale brown (well, ok, beige.) But when I put it on the walls it looked wrong. Too brown. So i headed out to the shed to find some leftover paint to make it right. What was right was... well I guess we can call it Joanna's creamy green.

This is what it looked like when it was finished.  The kitchen was a rich ochre before and it had worn thin. Too dark, too intense. The soft green works for me. It's restful and fresh and it  shows off the art work nicely. So what if I'm in a colour rut. I like green.

Moses Point Picnic

It's surprising how you can live in a place for decades and never get to some of the special places.  Moses Point has been here all these years but I've never visited it before.  And it's just a lovely spot for an evening picnic. 

 Linette gave us directions and we joined a few other compatible people for a picnic, complete with white wine and conversation. Our two dogs were lucky enough to come along and had a lovely time swimming out after sticks.

We enjoyed our food and then watched the sailboats and the fishermen and then sat peacefully as the sun sank into the west. 

  

For sure we'll be going there again.  It's a most peaceful and beautiful place to spend a summer evening. I am so grateful to live in such a beautiful part of the world.

An art school disappointment

Last week I spent four days at an intensive drawing class at Emily Carr University in Vancouver.  It was advertised to be a creative drawing class with a variety of creative freehand techniques, figurative and perspective drawing, and figure-ground and sketch concepts.  In fact we spent 7 hours tracing maps, and a day and a half drawing grids and working on graph paper.  This was very different from Kath's and my approach to making art. It was an intense and stressful course taught by a self-aggrandizing architect--actually grueling and somewhat of a disappointment.

Of course, there is learning available in any situation and I did find out something about designing with overlays and tracing paper.  Plus the people in the class were interesting.  It was a very international group: there were five beautiful young women from Iran, plus people from Shanghai, Japan, Korea and Vienna.  Most of them were studying architecture or engineering.

The two photos here show some of their work.  It's actually very interesting and well done.  It's just that I wouldn't actually call it creative drawing.  More of an architectural graphic design course.



In any case I got to visit with my dear friend Kath and we had a good time together,  but the class itself was very intense and  and I'm only now recovering my energy from a learning experience that was not what it was advertised as.  If I had the energy I'd contact the school to let them know about this discrepancy. I think next time I'll stick to painting classes.