Monday, March 30, 2009

Yellow House, March

Yellow House, March
11x14, acrylics on canvas
SOLD

I was hoping for a nice weekend so I could go out with my Canon SX-10 and get some nice shots. Alas, the weatherman lied. Saturday, which should have been sunny and in the high fifties, was cold and raw and gloomy. Sunday was even worse. I went out anyway, cruising the back roads in search of something to paint. I'm not even sure where this house was; somewhere on Route 105 or 220 between Camden and Washington. In other words, out in the the boonies. It's beautiful country, lots of old farmhouses and fields. In better weather, I'm going back. I got almost no shots coming back from Camden because it was raining, and it's nearly impossible to shoot through the windshield with the wipers on. In Appleton, I saw a big flock of turkeys, and stopped to take a few shots, but they came out blurry because of the rain and the wipers. They used to be nearly extinct here in Maine, but in the last twenty years, the wild turkey population in Maine has skyrocketed. Now they're everywhere. I've even seen them in my driveway, and I live almost across the street from Barnes & Noble. On the other hand, we also have woodchucks, foxes, deer, and a wide assortment of birds, so I guess the turkeys were inevitable.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Hard Drive Update

There's good news and good news. The good news is that my awesome former son-in-law, Rob, has managed to save my 40,000 photos and god-knows-how-many mp3 files. The other good news is that I bought a 500 gig hard drive for $99 at Best Buy, and Rob is going to install it and get the computer back up and running. Do I need to mention that he's my hero?

Now that I've spent all my spare time dealing with computer issues, looks like I should probably get back to painting....

Friday, March 13, 2009

New Mills Winter

New Mills Winter
11x14, acrylics on canvas
SOLD

This is a scene straight out of my childhood. The building on the right, currently an apartment building, used to be New Mills School, where I attended first and second grades many, many years ago. The blank front used to have two doors, as every proper schoolhouse used to have. Behind those doors, permeated by the smell of wet wool on winter mornings, were two cloakrooms that opened to the downstairs classrooms. Times change, and most of the older schools like this one have been closed down. At least the building is being utilized instead of dying of neglect. I liked this school.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Lost My Hard Drive

This has not been a good week for me. In addition to being on crazy deadlines at the day job, my cell phone died on Friday and I had to replace it on Saturday. Then, last night when I got home from work, my computer was flashing a message saying:

HARD DISK FAILURE IMMINENT! YOU SHOULD BACK UP YOUR FILES AND TAKE YOUR COMPUTER TO THE REPAIR SHOP FOR A NEW HARD DRIVE.

OMG.

I know zilch about these things, but I tried to follow directions and back it up to the backup drive, but of course that would only hold about a tenth of what's on my hard drive. I then tried "restore." The computer rebooted and my desktop was still there, but since I didn't dare to play around with it, I shut it down and called my daughter, who suggested I run to Best Buy and pick up an external hard drive and try to save my photos and music to it before the computer died completely. So I ran to Best Buy and bought the external drive (my credit cards are taking a real beating this week). But I shouldn't have shut down the computer, because it wouldn't boot back up. I could get to the DOS menu with the screaming message about the IMMINENT FAILURE. But Windows would not come up. It would just sit there loading, and loading, and loading, but never getting anywhere. So I now have the external drive and my photo printer attached to my laptop (thank God I still have that!) and my poor desktop unit is waiting until I can afford to take it to the shop where, hopefully, they can salvage my 40,000 photos and nearly 1,000 mp3 music files.

I am quite impressed by my own ability not to panic. Many of the photos I took on my long drives, photos I eventually might have used for paintings. Not a big deal; I can always take more long drives with my camera. There's no shortage of available material for paintings. It's the personal stuff I'm concerned with: photos of the grandchildren on holidays, photos of camping trips, four or five years of digital photos we've taken. And of course, there's my entire iTunes library which represents not only the music I love, but hundreds of dollars I invested, paying for those songs.

Sigh.

Looks like I've learned a hard lesson: always back up everything one way or another.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

February Dawn

February Dawn
11x14, acrylics on canvas
AVAILABLE

Early morning on I-295. The mood is blue, but tiny threads of pink are woven into the sky. Just finished this one tonight. I wanted to do something a little bit different, and I've been eyeing the original photo since I took it back in early February.

Monday, March 9, 2009

UPDATE - Red House, Chapel Street


UPDATE: Last night (3/8/09) there was a bad fire at the white house in the center of this painting. It spread to the red house and there was some damage there, as well. Fortunately, everybody escaped safely, but there's no word yet on the fate of the houses. I drove by on my lunch hour today, and the white house looked really bad. Probably a total loss. The red one appeared to only have external damage. How sad!

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Winter, Linden Street

Winter, Linden Street
8x10, acrylics on canvas
SOLD

Today's painting. Looking across Bangor Street, near the Tim Horton's parking lot, this is actually the back side of these houses. The blue one has always fascinated me.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Winter Afternoon, Bridge Street

Winter Afternoon, Bridge Street
12x12, acrylics on canvas
NOT FOR SALE

Finished!

Painting in Progress

WORK IN PROGRESS
Working Title: Winter, Bridge Street
12x12, acrylics on canvas


This is what's on my easel right now. Bridge Street on a winter afternoon, looking toward the intersection with busy State Street. This street marks the border of Augusta's historic district, not far from where I used to live. Years ago, when my son was in junior high school, one of his friends lived in the house with the sunporch. It was light green then, but it was painted white a few years ago.

I was up until 11:00 last night, working on this. Urgh. Now I have to work all day, then drive sixty miles each way to have dinner with my daughter. By the time I get home, I'll be half-dead. Thank God tomorrow is Saturday. Of course, I'll be up at the crack of dawn anyway, because I'll want to get back to this painting.

It's coming along nicely. I still need to add the trees and the power lines, and do a little bit of detail work here and there. But I can already tell that this is going to be one of my favorites. It's just flooded with light!

Monday, March 2, 2009

Washday

Washday
8x10, acrylics on canvas
NOT FOR SALE

Here's the new one. I had a snow day today, but kept busy with other things and didn't get around to painting until late afternoon. This is a house in Livermore that I snapped a photo of a couple of years ago. Finally got around to painting it.

I also have news today. I have opened a second Etsy shop called CityscapesbyBreton. I wanted a shop that not only had my name in it, but that was more descriptive of what I actually do. I've moved most of my original paintings over to the new shop. I intend to keep ViridianArt open, but will sell mostly prints there. I just felt that it was time for a change. It will be interesting to see how it works out.