Why would anyone come to read my blog Over Coffee? Or any blog for that matter?

The question was the first in my blogging class homework assignment, and it has kept me wondering for the past two weeks. Why indeed?

Why read my blog? For the same reasons I read those similar to mine, I suppose. I read them for:

• Stories I can relate to.
• The art work, occasional tips or tutorials.
• Upbeat approach to life without being overbearing.
• A comfy place to come and listen and look.
• A sense of community and conversation.
• A safe environment to think, maybe widen my perceptions, apply a new technique or principle to my life or to my own art(s).
• An invitation to participate, to share a thought.

Over Coffee is a place to tell my stories in order to remind my readers of their own. Then invite them, encourage them, to share those stories in the comment section, or perhaps on their own blogs, as a post. I want my readers to leave feeling validated, so they’ll come back.

Today I discovered and spent a bit of time in Jane Brocket’s Yarnstorm Blog. Reading it is like sitting with the writer over a cup of steaming tea (hers) and a mug of hot coffee (mine), listening to her tales and walking through her experiences as she shares her thoughts and photos. It’s memoir-like, and fascinating.

Her interests are varied — from books she’s reading and photos she’s taken, to yarns and fabrics she creates with, to foods as an art form, to paintings and the stories they evoke, to her home and family.

She appreciates many things, as might a precocious child full of wonder, and she writes well about all of them.

I created this painting from a blank canvas using Painter X, playing with various brushes in the program just to see what they would do. I called it Fabrics and Trims — but maybe there’s a yarn or too in the mix.

It’s a snowy, blustery day in northern Ohio. Thank you for coming by.

Please help yourself to coffee (there are chocolates in the Old World treasure box), and tell me, What do you look for (want to find) in a blog? Can you add to my list?

Barb

More paintings in my galleries…

I drew and colored my baby announcements. Fall leaves on the front, the insides blank for a few more days until my Terri’s arrival on the 23rd of that October morning. I had washed and folded the spanking-new diapers, laid them on the bassinet’s lower shelf, next to the Carter infant sleepers and tiny wash cloths, towels, and baby blankets. Johnson’s products lined a dresser top nearby. Read the rest of this entry »

It smells like the beginning of fall — you know, that smell of half-summer, half fall. Oh, I can’t explain it… but it’s nice.  It smells like something new is coming…

So said my twenty-year-old granddaughter Lyssa, as she opened the door to the morning on the way to her college classes for the day. Her comment was a gift.

…the beginning of… the end of… Something new is coming… Read the rest of this entry »

My best people paintings come from photos that suggest a story to me. Nothing spectacular. Usually not posed, and with no special lighting. Even photos taken on a grey day with little color can tell a story so poignant it begs to be painted.

I found such a photo two years ago among my daughter’s snap shots of their summer vacation. Kali, then 8 years old, caught my eye, and I immediately captioned the shot Just a Moment to Myself… Please!, copied it to take with me, and eventually painted it. Read the rest of this entry »

My friend The Purple Owl says:

Getting creative ideas is not something you do.

It’s something you allow to happen.

My best ideas for solutions often come with time; they rarely present themselves immediately.

For instance, in Chris Price’s Painter Lab at the Digital Art Academy, the first week’s assignment this fall was to paint bold.

What is my bold? I asked me… Read the rest of this entry »

As a little girl, a favorite chore of mine was erasing and washing the chalkboards at the end of each school week. With a big bucket of cold water and a fat sponge, I could wash away all the math problems, diagrammed sentences, drawn-out music scores, lists of spelling words… On Fridays the green slate was wiped clean, the last chore of the school week. Signaling the beginning of two days of freedom. I loved Fridays!

As a working adult, Read the rest of this entry »

One teacher, the kind of teacher we hope our kids and their kids can have at least once in their classrooms, writes a blog called Teacher Time.

She paints such wonderful stories with her words, her poetry. Stories that move in the mind. Like paintings that trigger a memory, we can say Yes! I’ve been there! either as writers or teachers or parents or grandparents… even as students who once had wobbly teeth and forgot things… Read the rest of this entry »

Do you ever get me time?

Do you ever set aside a calendar day just to become more of who you are?

When I know I have a day with no outside appointments scheduled, nothing looming that screams for my attention — that’s a day I covet and treasure and protect. I can dress in my jeans and denim shirt, and I can paint, or write, read or think. (Or all of those…) These are my play — as well as my work. These are what I do — and I do them best uninterrupted.

But it’s a rare day that goes uninterrupted…

Yesterday as I painted this watercolor, I remembered a  blurb I’d written after one such day… I named the painting after the blurb: Gone Fishin’.

You can read it here…

I hope your day is as you want it…  Feel free to share your own “Gone Fishin’‘” thoughts here. Over Coffee, of course.

Barb

You can see more of my paintings here.

Seems like August never happened.  I know it must have — I had a birthday.

At the end of July I collected a blue ribbon and my paintings that didn’t sell from one art show, and hustled them to another town a few miles east of me for a month-long exhibit. In September I moved the non-sold ones again. To a main street storefront window in yet another nearby town, where they’ll stay another month.

These things do not take up large amounts of time, but Read the rest of this entry »