Sacramento Living

I don't usually think about chickens when I think of Sacramento, but my girlfriend Joanie has a veritable miniature farm in her beautiful back yard.

Everything in her yard grows so beautifully, I have no hopes of ever attaining this kind of thing. I'm much better at painting plants than tending them, but I can admire their beauty.





I think this french pumpkin was trying to make its escape.

Angry chicken.
She's got her eye on you!

Northern California Farmers Market Love

I have been staying with my parents in Davis and a friend in Sacramento, really getting a feel for the area, since this is where I'll be moving in the fall. Can you tell I am in love with the farmers markets?

I love the amazing variety of fresh, ripe fruits and vegetables available in the central valley where pretty much everything is grown and you can see plenty of seafood and things like grass-fed beef, it's not so plentiful in Chicago.

This Sacramento market is under the freeway! Excellent use of space and shady and cool too!

I want to try everything, like these baseball sized melons!


Tomatoes!!! of every shape and variety.


I want to cook this two color squash!

So much color!


and texture! I love the way these bitter melon look, such an interesting vegetable.

Texture and color in the city

To change things up a bit I'm posting images from a photo safari I took with my daughter Indigo to an area just west of my neighborhood in Chicago, underneath the Metra train tracks.

I like how this graffiti artist worked with the structure of the staggered block wall.

I am particularly entranced by the layering of type and imagery that create such beautiful complex images when cropped.

It's this concept of layering imagery that I've been exploring for the last couple years with my painting.

 These ones were really pretty with metallic bronze paint.

A discarded metal tree sculpture added another point of interest.

Suddenly a train went over head.

Rusty Bits
The massive chandelier was another interesting addition to this urban space. It's probably about 8 feet across with silk flowers entwined around it.

There were a lot of these weird little stalactites.

Believe it or not this is the base of one of the support columns of the overhead track. Most of the column is not as deteriorated, but quite a few of the other columns also looked like this.

I love these colors. I see things like this and want to remember it for a color palette for painting.

I love this texture and all the beautiful reds.

What fun to come across this blue heart with my initial on it. 

I hope you find these images as inspiring as I do and see there can be artistic beauty hidden in plain site.

Unusual clouds over Chicago

Last week we had some amazing clouds pass over Chicago, they were very ominous and threatening and had that slight greenish tinge that no one feels comfortable seeing, unless maybe you're a storm chaser.

It was really wild to see the undulations and circular rotations in the clouds. I couldn't help wondering what might come next, considering the night before we had a storm that brought golf ball size hail that blew out the 100 year old skylights in the Garfield Park Conservatory.

The wind picked up considerably with the clouds and it was a little intimidating going out on the roof of our building to get a good view, but it was too fascinating to resist. Oddly enough the clouds just kept moving east at a pretty fast pace and never let out a drop of rain.

Happy 4th of July!

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An Urban Naturescape

I have lived just west of downtown Chicago almost 5 years now and I am always amazed by the things I see. While walking my dog this butterfly flew right into my hands then fluttered out and landed on me, staying there for several minutes.

My neighborhood is an industrial area of old brick factory buildings with lofts, galleries, restaurants, food processors and butchers, there is a lot of concrete and not so much in the way of grass, besides the little strip along the sidewalk behind Harpo studios, so of course that is dog paradise.

This is one of the few gardens in the neighborhood, it is just beautiful and attracts lots of butterflies.

My dog Abby refused to look at the camera/phone,  while standing next to all these bright pink petunias. You can tell by those pulled back ears she was very annoyed about it.

I was taken by surprise when I saw this tiny baby bunny running across the sidewalk ahead of me. He was so cute, you wonder where does a little guy like that sleep around here.

More Vintage Illusion- a mini tutorial

In the last week or two I have seen a lot of these butterflies in my neighborhood.  This one landed on the side of our building and I love the way the orange matched perfectly with the brick.

I snapped this photo with the camera on my phone and threw it into photoshop to crop it square. I decided to play around with adding the illusion of making it look like it was taken with an old camera using a ttv (through the lense) filter. You can find a few here that blogger Hush Mama has generously uploaded to share.

If you have photoshop or a similar program that allows you to work with layers you can create this effect by starting with one of your photos.

Then take a jpg of a ttv lense

and layer it over your image in photoshop and stretch it to fit the same size as your photo, then go over to the layers menu on the right side of your screen and select multiply.

That will merge the two images together to make this vintage looking photo.

Signs of fall in Michigan

This weekend my son and I went on a teen retreat with several other families in Michigan.

The weather was cold and rainy, but there were wonderful breaks in the rain for peaceful walks with camera in hand.

I really enjoy living in downtown Chicago, but I do miss the sound of crickets, rustling leaves and soft springy grass under my feet. I found that I was more conscious of the sights, sounds and smells of the natural world than the times when I have lived with it on a daily basis.

I guess my love of fairy tales also makes me want to see into the other worlds that exist around us, like the microscopic ones on the forest floor.

These lovely little ball shaped mushrooms in the moss caught my eye after a full day of rain.

Then I saw these little mushrooms and this gooey looking toadstool.



Most of these photos were taken on my Cannon elph but the vibrant photos of the mushrooms below were taken on my iphone and then I altered the photos with a free HDR app on my iphone.

Now, it's time to get back to the real world, organize supplies, pack my bags and make preparations to head for Houston next Tuesday for International Quilt Festival.