Tag: trees

wORDPRESS WOES

Posted on by omordah1

Figuring Out WordPress

I’ve been using WordPress for sometime now, and I’m embarrassed to say that I’m only now discovering how to use different aspects of it. In my defense, I have to say that this platform has never been the easiest to navigate, at least not for me. I’ve used various other platforms and have never had the the kind of issues I’ve had with WP.

For example changing the color or size of the font. It’s taken a while partly because I was so busy, but I had a few minutes so sat down and made a concerted effort to figure some things out. As you can see I have figured out a few. I have not however, figured out how to change the color of the “add title” section. In order to change the font, one has to go to the first “block”.

Changing fonts, in any way, should be easy. And for me, as an artist and highly visual person, this is important to me. But it isn’t easy to navigate to where you do so. Finding where was even harder, and it shouldn’t be. Why isn’t it right there, on the same page, set at the top?

I even googled it, as trying to follow the instructions on the actual platform hasn’t worked. Unfortunately, neither did any instructions on Google. How did I figure this much out, you may ask? Basically, just hunting around, and sheer luck. (I’m sure to some others it was no problem at all. )

So I’m playing around with it a bit. I’ve always considered myself pretty capable when it comes to using computers, so this has been fairly annoying for me. But maybe it is me. Has anyone else had these issues? Maybe I’m just spoiled from using other platforms that are, to me, much more user friendly. For example when writing paragraphs, if I start one, and then decide that I don’t want a new paragraph, it is not easily deleted, leaving a gap and the user info on the page. It’s just not intuitive. On a recent post that was basically just a few photos of my work, I wanted to swap out one of the photos. One is normally able to “replace” photos, which I have done in the past. However, this time, it kept glitching, turning what should have been a quick ten minute post into an aggravating thirty minute, task. And this wasn’t the first time something like this happened. I know that one could always speak to an admin, but I have not found this easy either on this site, haven’t always had the time, and frankly past experience has taught me that this is rarely helpful. I write quickly and am able to get my thoughts down quickly so have just used things as they were.

To be honest, the main reason I’ve stuck with WordPress is that one, I was too busy to try out another site, (“the devil you know”). And two, more importantly because my daughter had designed and put together the main page and font for me early on, and I want to keep it. I also get discouraged with WordPress, because even when I was faithfully posting on here on a regular and often basis, as well as interacting with others, I’ve only ever had a small amount of actual feedback. (I am very grateful to those who do!) But for the effort I put in, it doesn’t feel like much bang for my buck, so to speak.

But for now, I will continue on with WordPress (regaling those few who are paying attention, with my artsy life.) If you’ve read this far, thanks! And see you next time. 🙂

Kindly take a look at my other art sites; @susanm.l.mooreartist on Instagram where you can view many of my art pieces. And etsy.com/shop/omordah where you can purchase some of my art pieces. Thanks! Ciao for now.

An Artist’s Life

Posted on by omordah1

A few weeks ago, I published a story about a recent painting I had done. A few weeks gone by and something just wasn’t sitting right with me about the painting. At one point I had changed something and the more I looked at it, the more I realized that I preferred the original way that I had done it. There were a few small things and one bigger thing I just wasn’t happy with.

This morning I decided to rework it a bit. This is something that I rarely do as I learned a long time ago that it was easy to go too far and completely ruin a painting. I try to work as much in the moment as I can. In this particular case, I am happy that I did. To my eye, it looks more like what I had envisioned.

I give you, (once again 🙂 “LAPDOG”

VS

Let me know what you think! I hope your week is off to a good start. Please like and follow this and my Instagram page at susanm.l.mooreartist as well as etsy.com/shop/omordah .

A Not So Wordless Wednesday

Posted on by omordah1

Hi All! I hope this finds you all well. I normally like to post a “Wordless” Wednesday, but as it has been some time since I last posted I felt that I should bring everyone up to speed first.

About a year ago I began to take solid steps toward moving. For anyone familiar with this process, You know that it sucks the life out of every waking, and sometimes sleeping moment.

As this was about the twenty fourth time in my life to do so, I consider myself an expert. That’s not to say that there weren’t extenuating circumstances. Because there most definitely were. Without getting into all of the excruciating details, suffice to say, there were many circumstances.

This was my ninth time selling/purchasing, and my third on my own. Listing my home, searching for another in the terrible market that is the county I live in, was an exercise in blind faith. As it happened, it did work out for the best.

My last home was in an area recently overrun by, what we refer to, (with eyes rolling), “the baseball people”. If you’ve ever lived in an area where it suddenly becomes a tourist trap revolving around something you have zero interest in, and the folks drawn to it act obnoxiously entitled, and have zero regard for your home or town, you’ll understand the eyeroll. For us, the only good thing that came from this invasion, was the increase in property values.

Even in this economy, my little house was a rare commodity, in good shape, with a nice private yard, close to the happening venue.

With the small windfall, I was able to purchase a house in a cute, artsy village not too far from some of my family. The ‘artsy’ part is especially good for me, and the bonus is I was able to semi-retire. It also happens that Nikki and her guy love it here too.

The sale and purchase as always took longer than we would have liked and at the time I was still working. This made “creating” nearly impossible as I was exhausted.

I’ve been in my “new” (200+) year old cottage for seven months now, and officially retired for four months.

About two months ago I began to feel settled enough to start painting and sketching again.

Here are a few of my recent works, I hope you enjoy them.

Autumn Morning Ride
“Two Months Tuesday”
Tree of Time -Based on a large, ancient topiary tree, this is not bonsai as it is about 20′ tall!

There are a few more, but I’ll save them for next time. Best to you all, catch you next time!

‘DOWNTOWN USA’

Posted on by omordah1

Well, it’s been a while since I posted here, and I hope all is well for all of you. I had returned to work, (a new job), and although it is a better job, it is very tiring both mentally and physically, as well as having a regular work week, as opposed to four ten hour days that I had before. That “extra” day a week really made a difference when it came to painting. Finding the energy to create as well as post about my art, has been difficult, but I’m happy to say that I’m slowly getting back on track! So for all of my awesome fellow creators and followers, here is a watercolor I just finished along with some photos from it as a WIP, to get things rolling.

“DOWNTOWN USA”
“DOWNTOWN USA”

Brown Eyes Blue, Some Musings On Life

Posted on by omordah1

Color has always been important to me. Even as a small child, the aesthetic of color was something I paid attention to. Growing up, we were one of the last families that I know of to get a color TV. After constant pleas to get one, my father finally asked me why it was such a big deal to me. I looked at him and said, ‘real life is in color daddy’. I was four. I guess I was precocious. The reason I remember this exchange, is because my dad found it funny, and would repeat the story to whoever would listen. We still didn’t get a color TV.

I have brown eyes. Occasionally throughout my life, I have wondered how different my life would have been if they had been blue. We all know that blue eyed people have more fun. That’s not to say that for most of my life I ever really wished for that. At least not until recently in my waning years, and being alone so much due to covid19, and ruminating in my own mind about “what could have been”. For most of my life I actually found blue eyes, especially really light ones, creepy, almost devilish. Heheheh. I know, I know, how dumb that is. It may have come about from something I may have heard when I was young, who knows? It did seem that a lot of people that seemed insincere had blue eyes, and often actors with light blue eyes played the “bad guy”. It occurs to me that this is how unreasonable attitudes can arise. I definitely don’t want to add to that shite show. For a long time the only people that I personally knew with blue eyes were my grandmother on my Mom’s side and her second husband who I knew as Grandpa, and I never felt that way about them, so weird.

Here’s my theory on this, as I grew older, it became very obvious that people with blue eyes had the world on a string. Just like blondes, blue eyed people seemed to get away with a lot that the rest of us schmucks couldn’t. And I get it, now. (Watch Republic of Doyle, you’ll see what I mean). So here’s my theory on “spoiled” blue eyed people; people can be very superficial, particularly here in the US. Historically blue eyes have been revered. Songs that played on our heartstrings. Movies and how those blue eyed ones are treated, usually being chosen for the main protagonist, even if not the best actor for the part. I suppose that in this case, the lack of a color TV did me a favor. I know many may disagree, but as I grew up, it was obvious to me that kids at school got treated better, often learning very young to play the cloyingly adorable golden child. Then regarding songs, there are a few that I can think of, that highlight or praise brown eyes, one is Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue”, which is a beautiful song, and another is “Beautiful Brown Eyes” by Rosemary Clooney. But for the most part, it’s those blue eyes people sing of. Oddly enough, I don’t have a lot of portraits that I’ve done, where the subject has blue eyes. I don’t think that that is a conscious thing.

I did have a childhood neighbor, who had blue eyes, and she was the typical middle class princess. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything in her room, and everything was precious, and dolls were it for her. I played with dolls, but I also liked climbing trees, drawing, building forts, and riding horses. Also she only had to bat those blue eyes to get what she wanted, while, I only had to do nothing to suddenly be in trouble. Go figure. I know this is bordering on whining about things that can’t be changed, but it is, to me, one of those things that just seemed to happen a lot. That’s not to say I thought about it much, or even at all. I was a naturally happy kid, and things always seemed to roll off my back. And even as a small kid, I knew that I preferred things the way they were for me. Somewhere in my kid brain, I knew that I was good with the status quo, and just got bored with her. I was what people called back in the day, a “tom-boy”. I wore that like a badge of honor, completely clueless that they didn’t necessarily mean that in a good way. I think that there was only one time that it brought me to tears. I had an older cousin, and he saw that I was upset. I remember to this day what he said to me. He knelt down to my level, and said, “don’t worry, tom boys make the best women.” Then he winked at me. And he was right, heheheh.

Then there are those with green eyes. They always seemed more mysterious and just didn’t have that same shallow vibe. My kids have eyes that change from green to hazel to almost yellow/gold depending on the light. And it’s awesome, I may be a bit biased. Funny how our different experiences in life can “color” the way we think. and By the time we did get a color TV in my childhood home, life had hit us pretty hard, and it just didn’t seem as important.

As an artist, I bounce back and forth between sketching, black and white inking, and vibrant color, and enjoy using all of these styles of art. But I also know my four year old self was right, life is definitely better in color.

“Freddy and The Boys”

Thank you for joining me, and I hope everyone is staying safe and well.

Inktober In Review; Week Two, “Sixty’s Style, Giants and Legends”.

Posted on by omordah1

For those of you who are following along, I won’t go into the whole description of Inktober again. I will just mention for those who don’t know about it, to please visit my last two blog posts, or head on over to Inktober on Twitter. So I’ll jump right in here about my first ink drawing for week two. The prompt word for the day, was “frail”. As I do, I didn’t want to go with anything cliche’, and unfortunately this led me to procrastinate until I basically had no time, energy or desire to draw anything. But not wanting to skip a day, I did a very quick drawing of earth. Yes, I know it is not accurate in any way, which further on in this post, you’ll see was humorously pointed out to me. However I do feel it gives an OK representation. My idea here was to point out the fragility of our one and only earth. I hoped that people would pick up on that, otherwise, my “frail” image, is mostly a “fail”. Ah well, such is the exciting and dangerous world of art.

For day nine of our little adventure, the prompt word is “Swing”. Thinking out of the box and into the dark of Halloween, I thought an image of a child in a red cape, (wink), who decided to swing her lantern into the dark of night in search of, ahem, her grandmother as a large unfriendly, (though he came out looking more wise then “bad”) wolf followed her would be appropriate. I had a little more time to play with this, and I was happy with the shadowing, and how the composition generally came out.

Day ten, the prompt was “pattern”. I wanted to get an elephant or two into the mix this week, so playing around a bit, while also watching TV and “chill”, this is what I came up with. This whole thing was just an exercise in doodling. But it’s not too bad. My older brother, pointed out that it reminded him of 1960’s art. So there you go. This was a much better reaction than his about my “earth” drawing, where-in he inquired as to if “Australia, (where he mostly resides), was in the mix?”

The prompt word for day eleven, is “snow”. I decided to go with an image I had from a ride “up the road” out of our little college town, to a Christmas tree farm. The day we went it was bitterly cold, but very beautiful. There had been a fresh coat of fallen snow, and the trees and fields through the woods, were pristine, and just wonderfully quiet.

Finding that day twelve was “Dragon”, was fun. For a few years, in between jobs, I took a part time position at what was known as a “head shop”. It was actually two separate stores owned by one person. I worked on the side that sold a lot of hippie style clothing, rings, incense and things along that line. The owner also graciously “allowed” me to sell some of my hand made crochet bags, and other things I made, for the low low price of 40% ! (I have never since, worked with anyone who expected to make more than 10% off of my work. and neither should you.) Anyway, for some reason I got into drawing dragons, (I may have had it in mind to do a kid’s book.) In any case, it brought back some funny and sometimes odd memories (perhaps a story for another day), as I worked on this drawing.

I have to confess that I was actually at work when I did this quick sketch for the day 13 prompt, “Ash”. So I was interrupted a lot, and tried to get it done as fast as I could. This is why it may not be the best for a number of reasons. (I won’t point them out, as I learned a long time ago, with one’s looks, and art, it’s best not to point out what you perceive as problem areas, because most of the time no one notices anyway.) Where was I, oh, yes, I think depicting Ash from “Ash vs Evil Dead” probably fits the prompt and the whole Halloween vibe perfectly.

This last little drawing is for both the day fourteen and fifteen prompts; “Overgrown” and “Legend”. I pictured a story about a young boy, completely overgrown to giant proportions, who was the object of ridicule by his peers, until one day a great tsunami hit their seaside village. He saved them all, and was then a hero. I literally wrote a sort of sing song-y story to draw this picture for, which turns out, was for me anyway, a good way to make the picture evolve. So there you have it, week two of Inktober in review. I hope you enjoyed this post, and have maybe been inspired to try an art challenge. Thank you for reading my blog! see you next time!