Obviously the heat wave of the past week has eased and my creative instincts have come out of torpor.

The photo shows my solution for repairing a favorite paintbrush that broke where the ferrule attaches to the handle. I splinted the break with two sections of a wooden skewer and taped it all together tightly. The new orange-handled fan next to it is ready in the event that the repair does not hold. That is called covering your bases.

Odorless Neutral Thin, a product of Eco House, has arrived in the mail. I washed a few canvases with a mix of the new thinner and Transparent Earth Red oil paint. We are getting ready to paint! 

A heavy gilt oval frame came out of the doll bins for a new life in its intended role; framing a piece of art. I cut some canvas board to fit, and am planning to paint a floral oil on a dark ground. This is called putting the cart before the horse.  

 My button basket got a thorough rummaging this morning as I looked for a round on which to paint a missing miniature for my elaborate antique chair. I gessoed a button of the right size.

Everything is drying and setting up preparatory to a fine painting session.

Twice a day, each time I work at Maria’s gallery, I make a point of looking at this lovely creek that I have painted once in fall and will paint again. This is a view at sunset in late summer.

Early in the morning, my arrangement of poppies against the sunshine.

This morning I will be sewing heads for soft-sculpt dolls to present at the Cumberland Craft Fair in mid-August. This afternoon I have a voice lesson. I have memorized Hugo Wolf’s Begegnung. After that, Nadia wants to paint.

This morning I completed this painting of sailboats at anchor in Boothbay Harbor.

Next I want to paint one of the windjammers that  I photographed by walking out to the end of the pier off the footbridge.

An image of the reflection in the water at high tide was worth the walk around the cove, past the little shack hung with lobster buoys, past the clumps of ripening rose hips. I want to paint this view, reminiscent of a castle and a moat.

These are the colors I am longing to paint. My Jumeau “Eugenie” sits in her chair  surrounded with elegant fabrics. She is waiting for me to choose from the selection of yellow silks, match them with an antique silk brocade vest and an old lace fichu, and design an elegant gown for her very soon.

On Friday I drove to Boothbay Harbor to pick up four square canvases to paint for the BRAF show opening in November. One of the new canvases has a very smooth surface, good for portraits. What do I know about painting, about canvases, about paints? Absolutely zero! I had the audacity to begin painting with no knowledge, only a love for the art gained from books about the lives of artists, and from numerous visits to the Metropolitan when I lived closer to New York City. Yesterday I did a search on what the labeling “permanent” means on a tube of paint. It seems to signify high quality; a paint that is stable and lasting; a good thing to know. What do you have to think about when you use transparent or opaque paints?  What are glazes? And what do they mean by undercoats? I find many interesting painting lessons available online.  Last night I read through the March American Art Collector. The artists I like are Marci Oleszkiewicz and Robert Johnson and Dan Gerhartz.  Bring on the springtime! I want to paint something with splashes of wonderful light!

Recently I finished this oil painting from a photo.

Today I bought a book as old as I am, a Random House publication from 1940. Attracted by the illustrations, I paid $3.50 for a copy formerly owned by Clarence V. Blake, Jr. of Cumberland Foreside. The title page informs the reader that the original color plates reproduced in the volume are in the State Museum at Albany, N.Y.  The artist’s name does not appear but he is Louis Agassiz Fuertes, an ornithologist, illustrator and artist. His signatures appear on the reproduced watercolors. The text of the work is by  science writer and conservationist Maitland A. Edey. I am astonished to learn that in 1957, at the age of 47, Maitland Edey served as a working crew member on the Mayflower II! I have poignant memories of boarding that tiny ship when it lay anchored in New York City.

Arriving home with my songbird book this afternoon, I noticed an unfamiliar bird at the suet feeder. Help me out if you recognize this bird from my description. From my Audubon Field Guide, I would guess it was a Bay-breasted Warbler, attracting my attention with its almost-robin-colored underbody. Larger and rounder than a goldfinch, it had a goldfinch-look to its wings, with perhaps two light-colored bars. I thought at first that I might have seen a Kinglet, but they are tiny, smaller than goldfinches.

In the photo, my antique book lies open to the Kinglet and Wood Thrush page. The flowers in the lower right corner are petunias in one of my porch pots, now thriving indoors in a sunny south window.

Last fall I painted this scene in fog and sold it at the BRAF Gallery. Here is the scene a year later, without fog.  I’m thinking of painting it again.