Birthday Bash

Celebrated my 50th birthday by helping with my brother's roof in Calgary. He had cedar shakes on top of asphalt; the weather was hot and most of the bodies old or inexperienced so tear-off took a couple of days. TwinB worked valiantly for the first morning, developed heatstroke as usual and took a good 36 hours to fully recover.
Found some interesting things up there such as an old bone probably from a cow (just a small section that some bird had lifted from someone's garbage) and the hind leg from a very young jack rabbit. There was so much good composty dirt under the shakes that ('nother)brother Alex and I agreed that the simplest solution would be to start a roof top garden right there with the supplies at hand.

The 'elite' crew

2 grade 7s (French Immersion...I love them!!) carefully apply their finishing touches to the main kites. I drew the designs on it myself in chalk and Erin and I have been painting and touching up various parts of it. I rigourously maintained a 'students only' policy for the boards representing the different classrooms but the 2 large kites were a different matter (partly to save time).

Grade 7 examples

this is a partial section of one of the 2' squares that the older grades worked on. That over there at left would be an English rose, then a Japanese carp and on bottom are 2 options from the Portuguese image menu.

newly hatched art

This is one of the boards for the Kildala Elementary mural with sections painted by K's and 1's. (1 foot square - each student was given 6" to paint their image). The grade ones in this class had been researching birds and so were eager to paint their chosen bird in their area. I remember 'an eagle' and 'a yellow warbler' and 'a robin'...their teacher told me how astonished she was with how her assignment had grabbed hold of everyone's imagination and that they'd been studying the living daylights out of their subject. The flowers were painted by the K's as their contribution to our Kildala garden.

Influences (b)

yesterday was the final class for the after school kids at the rec centre.
One girl thought it would be lots of fun to try a Picasso style painting so I ran with it. Didn't have any examples or oil pastels with me so everyone ended up veering off into surrealism. A teeny, tiny grade 4 - grand master of the Garfield - pieced together an intentionally mangled character (reveled in the twinges of discomfort it elicited from a couple classmates) and when she'd completed that proceeded to draw a skull.
I ask how often she draws skulls-
'this is my first one' she peeps.
How could she go from Garfield to skulls and mangle-ment so abruptly? Just as I was starting to get a little alarmed it suddenly came to me...
Right...Guest Artist Erin

And I think we just created a kindred soul who will crave that little thrill you get when
you know you're making the viewer squirm.

Influences (a)

Invited Guest Artist Erin to my Thurs afternoon art class for kids last week because we were exploring cartooning.
A week or 2 before that I noticed one of the girls drawing a very good Garfield and noted that since she could draw Garfield that well it was time to develop her own character (and this pleased her immensely!)
The gals came up with all sorts of cute and clever concepts and Erin entertained them with her classic Erin style
< see there??

Married Forever

Mr. Hutson and I just celebrated our wedding anniversary. I think it's been about 800 years but we both agreed that it only feels like 200.
;)
The actual number is 29 - yes - twenty nine years.
yikes

At this stage of the game if I catch him gazing intently at me I know it's only because the earrings I'm wearing look like they'd make such darn good fishing lures.