Remembering the sound of the surf lulling one to sleep at night. We walked this beach every day and got our sun fix.  

Mexico 435

A long but fun trip to Rosarito Mexico and back with many stops along the way. On the return we wandered up the coastline of California.  

  to Hearst Castle and for those who have not been there I have to

 put in a few shots of that amazing place. The outside pool is something else but then the inside pool is breathtaking with the walls and pool bottom covered in inlaid gold designs (the real stuff )

We took the trip up to the castle from our home base at Morrow Bay which served as our base camp for several days. Then we went up the coast route to Carmel which was a slow winding road but with fantastic views like this one below.  

We have been given a break on the return to Edmonds as the weather has not been all that bad with sun shine even though a bit cold. That we can manage. I really have not had time to prepare something for this newsletter so I am patching some ideas together for you. I showed you my attempt last month to do a straw painting, but I thought I would show you some that were done by the artist we met.  Here are two of his paintings.   His gallery is located in Puerto Nuevo called by the same name. Octavio A Morales Rodriguez and his brother Oscar both do this art form. If you are ever there go see them at his gallery and then go upstairs for a great meal and ocean view.

These are so wonderful and I will try to put together a show for him here in Edmonds if that is at all possible. Crossing the border with art may be an issue.

Upon arrival  home a friend gave me two pieces of pottery sculpture and said to wax them to see what they would look like. I just finished this one today so thought I would add it here as this may give one of you an idea.   I have had students ask me about pottery and wax and this is my first go at it. 

I just used a brush and a hot plate.  Melting the wax and then painting with the brush. Afterwards rubbing to buff the wax.  

This second image was my first attempt and is sort of crazy looking, but was fun to play with anyway. Sometimes you just have to go for the fun of it and not worry about the end result.   This way you can learn and develop your style. You go from sorta gross like this fellow below to something better next time like our fellow above. You just can not get put off by an effort that does not please you the first time around. 

 Here is a link to Michael Bossoms March Newsletter: With some of his ideas for card making. Michael of course is the man I learned from to begin with and I am always impress with his painting abilities.  

                                  Michaels Newsletter 

               Michael Bossoms Image from his March Newsletter.  

For those of you who are interested in drawing with ink and combining it with wax consider the tangle patterns.   Here is one.   

You might want to go to Tanglepatterns.com for more of these ideas. You could take your card stock and use permanent fine tip ink pens to draw and then wax over them with transparent wax colors.  The musical notes in Michaels painting above were inked and show up through the wax.   Just to tease you some more here are two more of these patterns.  Someone just asked me about ink and wax so here is one way to go about it. 

Ok I think you got the idea about these.. go have some fun... Remember you can right click on any image you see on your monitor and then (save as) to paste it on your desktop or file for your use later.  

I was going off a link from another wax painters site and started watching some videos with encaustics on You-Tube.  I thought this idea was so interesting that I am going to spend some time seeing what I can come up with using rusted images.  Check this out for yourself from waxworkswest.com. 

Encaustic + Paper: New DVD from Wax Works West

  If I had seen this last month I would have stopped to visit when I was in their area. Have to save it for another time.  

 Here is a card I did in Mexico... don't think I showed you this one.

 Many of you have asked me where I get my photo insert cards and I jump between different vendors but here is my latest one in case you are looking to do cards. Cards can be a great door opener for your work. Also in this economy a good sales item that does well in galleries, coffee shops or just selling to friends.    

 Studio Style link to white photo insert cards

  The Japan disaster is worth noting. A friend of mine (Susan Blalock ) works for the http://peacewindsamerica.org/  and 100% of their fund raising at the moment goes to the relief effort. This is very unusual and I wanted to point that out in case you are looking for a way to have all of your donation dollars  being spent directly.

  As a way to help out myself I am donating one of my framed paintings to be used in a fundraiser with them. It was done a few months ago and almost a prophetic painting considering what has happened. I called it Hope Returning.  My intention is to help raise at least $10,000.00 more through an individual or corporate sponsor that would receive my painting as my gift to the giver and a reminder of the wonderful support they offered to this effort of returning hope to a land and people. This is an A2 size mixed media of wax, metallic paper and tissue. I will keep you posted on the outcome.  

This also brings up an issue that I have been thinking about and that is being prepared ourselves with food and supplies in case of any disaster. In those cases we really have only ourselves to rely upon as governments can not do the job 100%, and when they do it may be way to late to help you. So I have started to look around as no doubt you have also. Here is one supplier I thought worth looking at. It is gourmet dried foods that can last many years, some up to 25years. Compact and easy to store an use or share.  They will give away 6 or 12  portions for you to try with just a shipping fee. I just got mine and I tried them out and they were very tasty and filling. I am going to put away some for us and some to share. 

              On that note I think I will wrap it up for this month. I hope there are a few ideas here for you to play with. Keep waxing as joy is something you just can not get enough of and it goes into your cells and transforms your whole being.  John