New Acrylic Paintings ~ Art Journal Pages

6" Acrylic Cactus Square as part of a painting for Canvas by Canvas. (At the request of Karen, the designer of this painting, my initials have been scaled down but I forgot to take a new photo. We try to put our initials on each piece but I agree this was a little overkill.) CBC is working hard getting a show ready for The Fort Worth Community Center and our October show at the Petroleum Club. You may take a sneak peek on the CBC web site to see what's on the easel.
This is my acrylic square for Cindy Y's project of the Texas Flag. This is a pecan leaf on a white background square. The pecan is courtesy of Cindy as I told her I only contracted for the leaf and she is always eager to paint on your square or your square if you'll let her and she always does a beautiful job. The pecan is the Texas state tree.
This is page 20 of my art journal, Canson Montval all media, 9 x 12, with lunch at Hoffbrau, painting boots and pecan leaves at the Upstairs Gallery, a trip to Dallas for the Park Cities Presbyterian Art Festival guidelines, a secret message tucked into a cut up greeting card that may have good news for my friend, and my old bugaboo bills.

I signed up for AT&T U-verse and we've become friends from my many tech support calls but they have been super, my scales are screaming again and I need to eat more veggies instead of Personal Pans and pancakes at I Hop, movie to see Vicky Christina Barcelona, my new notebook from Borders with a lovely design on the front by Laurel Burch.

Trying our two new items, a metal pan of watercolors, Lucas, from ASW and a Raffine sketch book 5.5 x 8.5, Lana paper made in France and it is 100 pound, 48 sheets and it took the watercolor nicely. I decided to use the Laurel Burch design on my first page and used some gold pen outlines.
This is the notebook with the Laurel Burch design from Borders. The design appealed to me so much that I had to try my hand at reproducing it in my art journals.

Cessna 195 ~ 77 Victor ~ Wendell Eckert ~Journal Pages

Acrylic Painting on Canvas 9 x 12 (Nancy)
The completed Canvas by Canvas painting

77 Victor
Acrylic Painting on canvas 6 9”x12”, framed at 40” x 31.5”

Canvas by Canvas became aware of the Wendell Eckert story because of one of our members, Maryann, and some of her many friends. In fact she knows just about anyone ever mentioned in our conversations, and many times we’ve heard her begin a story or interject into one of ours “They Used To Live In My Neighborhood” and we’ve abbreviated it to “Oh, it’s just one of Maryann’s TUTLIMN’s.”

So Wendell Eckert is known to us by way of a Maryann TUTLIMN. His daughter, Gretchen, gave Maryann a photo of his vintage Cessna 195, built in 1949, as a basis of our painting. The call numbers of the plane were 77 Victor and can be seen on the wing and the numbers are unique to that individual plane. It is the call number the towers use to direct the plane for landing or other orders.
The plane was built in 1949 and was used by Wendell as the lead plane for the US Forest service primarily in the Sequoia forest. His job was to strategically lead the bombers into the forest to drop the fire retardant. The US Forest Service referred to Wendell as the “Voice of the Sequoias” since he was the lead plane for forest fires for thirty years.

An admirer of Wendell, William (Tim) McMaster has a video of one of his flights on YouTube and he’s seen taking a beautiful bride for a celebratory flight. Wendell was 79 years old in this clip and he began flying in college in Wooster, Ohio and flew until the age of 82 in California, flying over 24,000 hours in his career. He died at age 91. He was born in 1916 in Youngstown, Ohio. Wendell’s house and the airport can be seen at the beginning of the clip in black and white and the photo was taken right after the war. When the war came, he was chosen to join the Army Air Corp in California and serve as flight instructor to countless cadets preparing for battle.

Mr. McMaster told Gretchen he put the video on YouTube with hopes she might enjoy it someday. He said “We loved your Dad very much”. The Cessna 195 is unique as it is a radial engine tail dragger and few of the planes have survived the years because the planes are very temperamental and require very experienced pilots.

Watch the video to see Wendell with the Cessna 195 and enjoy some good music with the ride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txCstdQpeuE

Gretchen and ZoAnn and Tim thank you for providing the information so that CBC could enjoy painting this work and getting to know your story.

More Art Journal Pages:

Birthdays are happy times but then there's that cake sabotage, framed some of my favorite art by Robert Burridge, Ted Nuttall, and Dan Burt.

More happy days when we deliver some CBC commissions, maybe I need more drawing practice on my car, and buying jewelry at Sam Moon's, especially big old hoops.

Got rid of my barely limping along freezer + $50.00 reward and a yearly physical and I don't have red hair but red hair is more fun to paint than mousy gray brown, Dr. Sarmini's hand is not that ugly and my nemesis - bills and cake.
First trip to IKEA and now I'm limping along with freezer (so many steps), hot old August, shopping for new Flax to wear to Class of 1954 class reunion in De Leon, pop. 2400, during the Peach and Melon Festival. We decided at our 50th we'd better meet every year thereafter. Thanks Harold, Marie and Naomi for getting us organized and for the great watermelon. Oh, yes and the Beijing Games started, but I was eating burgers out under the stars in De Leon and telling tales. The hangers show I've started closet clean out and why didn't I just close the door, forget it and paint? Clothes are multiplying, boxes overflowing ...

Square "D" ~ Kinky 2 ~ Sketchbook/Journaling ~ In Bruges

Square "D"
"Save a seat for Kinky 2" for Canvas by Canvas
This is a commission for a larger version of our "Kinky" painting and you can see it On the Easel in progress.
Our easel paintings will be moved out to our paintings when finished so you might need to just check the Paintings menu if the link doesn't work. It depends on the time factor when you read this post. I finished this yesterday at TUG and we are starting another painting of an old Mercury. (We will have a show there in July and more to come.)
The CBC painters ate Mexican food at El Gabacho and for the second time (yeah, for us) we tucked our sketch books in our bags and sketched something in the restaurant while we waited for our food. The owner loves John Wayne and now I wish I'd tried to sketch something about "The Duke" but just stayed with a pepper shaker (last week it was the salt) and the menu holder and a torn Sweet and Low packet. No, I'm not posting it yet. El Gabacho means Gringo and it's located at The Shoppes at Brownstone Village in Arlington. Good service and good food.
My wish is that we'd started this routine of "lunch sketching" years ago but we always have a lot to discuss and it's a challenge to quieten down and just draw for a few minutes. This whole process has inspired me to get out some of my sketch books and start making entries again. I love sketchbook journaling and blogging has taken up journaling time but there's great joy to me to look through old journals and remember the activities and on some entries I actually quoted short conversations and that is a hoot.
This entry was made in October, 2003, after I purchased Dory Kanter's Art Escapes and there is no telling how many people she has inspired with this book. I wanted some of my painting friends to join me going through this book and thought the best way was to entice them with food. I prepared a lunch with candles!! (probably haven't used them since), found some red backpacks on sale and bought each guest one, invited them over and said no talking, we're having journal school before lunch, and asked them to join me in going through the book, taking turns hosting with a sack lunch, and teaching some of the exercises. The group eventually came to be know as "The Red Bag Ladies", the school exercises idea flailed around for awhile as others didn't like playing "school" like I did, but it evolved into another level of commitment. Thanks, Dory, for a great book and I'm joining you for a Mexico trip one of these days.

The Red Bag Lady Journal Entry 9 x 12 Canson All-Media Journal


The photo below is a favorite way of journal keeping from January 2006 and it is not an original idea and it uses the comic book page look. A quick sketch about the day or week's activity, and color can be added later. You can mention the weather, music, a DVD watched or a New Year's Eve resolution or I see here I glued in information about a medical procedure. Yuk! And I made it through about February before tackling another project. I see I mentioned Robert Burridge "batons", sticks I'd gathered up at a painting retreat in east Texas in preparation for my first Burridge workshop. Since then I'm preparing for my 4th workshop with him in Cloudcroft, NM.


And speaking of DVD's, I watched "In Bruges" this week and would suggest you read about it in the Internet Movie Database in the trivia section if four letter words are a problem and it's rated R. It is a different kind of movie and they're calling it a dark comedy, a morality play filled with symbolism, churches and a religious painting, "The Last Judgment" by Hieronymus Bosch figures prominently.
The Bruges tourist office (www.brugge.be) has produced a movie map and an “In Bruges” package at several hotels in the city.
After viewing the painting "The Last Judgment" my little sketchbook/journaling pages looks pretty benign. But I did learn a little more about Belgium and Bruges and Bosch.