A Rose by any other name. . .

A few months ago, a lovely lady did something for me that really helped pick me up during a difficult time. Today, I wanted to send her a thank you so I painted this. I'm not mentioning who it is since she hasn't received it yet. It's a surprise! This is actually a view of my front fence, with the roses spilling out over it and the lovely rocks that my husband placed out there. 5x7 WC painting on wc paper.

Exploring

This past weekend my family and I took a drive to explore the surrounding area and to get some sun and fresh air. We went to the hills around Paskenta, southwest of our home. Sadly, I have lived here for 18 years and don't recall ever visiting this area before. Paskenta is a small town on the edge of the Mendocino National Forest. This time of year the rolling hills are green with gorgeous purple, white and orange flowers sprinkled about and plenty of young calves and lambs in the fields. It was a perfect day to explore.
We continued our drive up the mountain to find a camp ground that was mentioned on a sign earlier. Always on the look out for a fun place to camp, we decided to visit it. We were able to get to within a mile of it before the road was completely blocked with snow! 70 degrees and sunny at our home less then 45 minutes away and cold and snow on the mountain. We couldn't pass it. We couldn't visit the camp ground. Guess we will try again later in the spring.
The sketch above is of an old country store in Paskenta. It was done with WC pencils and ink on my new Raffine Sketchbook. There will be many more sketches from our little adventure. Just goes to show that one doesn't have to visit exotic locations to find beauty and interesting sites.
Thanks for visiting!

Monet

Did a quick card today for the Wet Canvas Masters Post Card exchange. It is sketched after Monet's Hay Stacks. This was done quite quickly using Oil Pastels on WC paper. The paper really wasn't toothy enough to hold the pastels as I would have liked. But for a quick sketch, it isn't too bad. Since I rarely use Oil Pastels, this forced me out of my comfort zone, which is good for me. I will need to try more of these.
Thanks for looking!