Winter is coming...

Hi there!

The weather has been rather wintery these past days. Yesterday morning I realized that the magnolia tree that was still splendidly green a couple of days earlier had profoundly felt the change in temperature. Two images came to mind...one of a lady decked in jewels and the other, much more somber, of a very famous Italian poem about the fragility of life...

Si sta come d'autunno sugli alberi le foglie. Here we are like the leaves, in Autumns. So wrote the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti  referring to the condition of the soldiers in the trenches during WWI. They are really just barely hanging in there...

My in-laws have departed and returned to the warmer shores of Italy, we have had to take care of a few things in the house, and I am cautiously coloring my Sub Rosa drawing.
Soon I'll post what I have been doing so far...

Have a warm weekend everybody!

PS: I just realized I had the wrong title on for a while...I changed my mind half way through about what I wanted to talk about and then forgot to modify the title! ;)

Botanical Garden and another progress report

On saturday we visited theBotanical Garden. That's one of my favorite place to spend the day. The flowers are always so colorful and inviting, even during fall and there are so many fun activities for children. Bella has started appreciating the hay maze, pumpkin mountain and water fountains too. She had a blast running in the fields and looking at the fruit a vegetable gardens, laden with yummy produce. We took many pictures, as always...I am always scouting for references. I have a good library now and I should start using it for some art.

Meanwhile, I progressed a bit more in the coloring of the Gingerbread house. Here is a balance of Brick white, Barely beige, Tan, Dull Ivory for the walls of the building. All of these are Copic markers. While large areas turn our rather better in Prismacolors than in Copics, when it comes to details and front/prominent characters/elements, I still trust more Copics, possibly because I have more experience using them. I need to do something to make the cream of the cannoli fluffier...probably in post-production with pastels..