I really had no particular intentions with this month's card.
I was initially inspired by this little summer vignette:
And the Nasturtiums:
Suns:
Calendula and Nasties:
Pyrethrum Daisies:
But it all morphed into this stylized composition of circles and garden stakes/'crosses':
The 'cross' aspect - that it kinda looks like a cemetery - was not at all intentional,
but definitely could have surfaced from my subconscious, as the day of my mother's interment
in the Nelson, NH cemetery draws nigh this month.*
I did a couple of things this month that I don't usually do with the monthly postcards:
I (again, though one of the few times) made the sketch - which served as my prototype;
and: I used some paint (to outline the circles),** which I have rarely, if ever, done.
I made a Nasturtium leaf 'stamp' by carving into this wine cork:
I tend to try to always incorporate 3 things in my monthly cards:
Something stamped/printed
Something shiny
Sheet music or notes
The Fixin's
Steps: The Movie
The Steps
(@37 this month - Would have been 48, if I'd counted each outlining of circles as a step...)
Differently configured panels of 12 of August's postcards:
Fin.
*My mother's Celebration of Life gathering is scheduled for Thursday, August 16th. Nelson, NH is the place nearest and dearest to our family's hearts: My mother's father lived in an old old house, with an even older barn (purportedly the oldest standing barn in NH), that we fondly referred to as The Farm all our lives. We all spent as much time there as we possibly could. The Nelson Town Hall is where we all grew up going to contra dances. Nelson was once known as the center of contra-dancing in New England, and we danced to many a dance called by the legendary Dudley Laufman. I even skipped my high school prom to be in Nelson for a square dance instead. :-) And the Nelson cemetery is where the family burial plots are. My mother's name was Joan, and I will be singing this beautiful old Gordon Bok song at our gathering.
The chorus starts: Oh my Joanie don't you know that the stars are swinging slow..."
**Ha! In the studio pack up/move out I lost track of my paint brushes, and while I did eventually find them - in one of my TWELVE totes of studio supplies! - I never did find a nice fine-tipped one. So outlining with a relatively fine line was a challenge! I tried other small brushes, but they were too fat. I tried using one of my watercolor pencils dipped in water to make the line flow smoothly, but the fine tip quickly softened and turned fat and pasty. So I ended up dipping a toothpick in the paint, and outlining with that!
