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…
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 »
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 »
I originally posted this tutorial — portrait of a little boy, painted using Painter X software and a Wacom Tablet — in the doodle threads at Painter Talk, a digital painting forum online. Not because it was a doodle, but because I wanted the company of friends who were in and out of that forum during the day, every day. Their encouragement got me through to my deadline on this commissioned portrait, and the tutorial helped portrait artists among them as well. Read the rest of this entry »
An old crockery pot lay against a crooked stone wall. Dusty and hot in the sun. Chipped just a tiny piece in the back. I nudged it with my toe, and while I knocked loose part of the stone behind it, nothing crawled out, so I considered it safe to pick up. I blew off some of the dust, wiped a bit of the grime away, and thought I might have found a treasure. How old? Who was to say, and what difference did it make? What I saw was beautiful… and I had a use for it. It was brand new to me. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s through story that we understand truth… a truth that is bigger than we are, and bigger than we are able to tell. But various artists try for pieces of it… using the tools of language, or canvas, paper and pigments, or notes, half-notes and cadence, even dance. Read the rest of this entry »
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