Friday, July 20, 2012

Artwork from Zion Trip and a Lovely Birthday Present

My very close friend Barbara gave me a lovely gift for my birthday this week and reminded me that I never took good photos of the artwork I created on the Zion retreat trip.

First I will show you a few shots of the wonderful remembrance book she made for me of that trip, for my birthday. It is truly a work of art. Every detail was planned to reflect me or the trip. She stole pics from my blog postings to use within this booklet. The photos I took of the landscapes were good resolution, but she had to use the only shot I took of my artwork – which included all of them in one shot - so she had to crop each of the paintings to include it in the booklet.

This shows the neat dust cover she created with the map of the area of Zion National Park:

The booklet itself, is all handmade, with a tiny medallion of my initial, and a lovely texture to the paper which looks like tooled leather:

On the inside of the cover:

I can’t photograph all the many pages, but they all included my photographs:

Here is one of my favorite shots of me and my new friend Liz. Liz’s husband Mason took this great shot of the two of use as we were painting along the river together:

Look at the attention to detail – it is amazing! She thought of everything! It is spectacular!

So this spurred me to get all the artwork photographed right away. (I have never named this paintings)
















Tuesday, July 10, 2012

MCJ Original

I finally got around to framing the Michael Chesley Johnson oil painting I purchased from Michael in April. I watched Michael paint this view from the patio of the vacation home we rented for the retreat. This is 7"x10", Gamblin FastMatte oil paint on Arches Oil paper. I really like this painting and it brings back so many wonderful memories of that fantastic retreat!