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…

First I make the coffee. The day begins with the earliest light, and I love being alert to it. My morning coffee is my companion, offering its warmth and taste to a new me. Or at least me on a fresh slate. Over coffee, my mind gets ready to think…

I like the mornings. I can trust them to show up, on time, and serve up the promise of a whole new day. It’s up to me of course, to grab the promise and make it mine. Life doesn’t happen on its own. It passes. But without my pursuit of its promise, nothing gets done.

As too often happens to me…

What’s planned for today? Am I ready for it, organized for it?

I pull out books and papers to work from, which I neatly stack at the edge of my workspace.  It’s fast and efficient to put my hands on a resource when that’s the only resource there.

This works fine until my neat stack grows… and grows, and I begin another stack off to the side. And another.

And I lose track of what’s in the stacks.

If I can’t see it, it’s not there!

I’m not even certain what it is I’m trying to accomplish today. There are so many things running through my mind, all revolving around family and painting and writing. I know I wrote down a list of goals last January, and updated the list on my birthday.

And I know I’ve accomplished some things — but what’s next? What’s important to do today? For which goal?

Where’s that list?

Without my goals in front of me, specific and doable, I can get lost in a forest of things-to-do…

So I paint something… or draw.

This day I grabbed my liquid pencils, small brush, and a pad of watercolor paper, and drove a mile up the road into our village. I found a seat on a public concrete bench and lost the next hour to sketching. This is one of the sketches…

Next time I’ll tell you how my blogging instructor at LVSonline, Bean Fairbanks, is helping me… Her blog post explains a little of what I’m doing. I’ll be writing more on my experiences with getting organized enough to follow my own passions.

Meanwhile, if you have suggestions for me, I’ll love to hear them! Over coffee, of course. And thank you ahead of time.

Barb

Etched onto two large wooden tiles and mounted on an even larger fireplace at a Craftsman Inn somewhere in upstate New York is this writing: “The Lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.”

My husband and I had spent the night at this Inn one crisp fall weekend, and since I like my morning coffee before the sun rises, I got up early, dressed quickly and headed to the Inn’s lobby-lounge — big, old-fashioned, and just plain cozy with its fireplace lighted and its cushy couches and chairs beckoning. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »