Tag: Watercolor painting

Back to School Golden Shovel

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted hosted by poet Rose Capelli HERE. Thank you, Rose, for hosting. I look forward to what you share. Also I wish all teachers and librarians the best as they begin a new year of teaching. And so are students.

Last week on my neighborhood walk, I passed our local high school and found messages in chalk on the sidewalk. School started this week. These words expresses the hope that beginnings are about, that anyone who has ever begun something, or loved a clean slate, understands. I thought it would be a good phrase for a golden shovel poem.


A NEW SCHOOL YEAR 


Everyone hopes for this:

that we might will

this year to be

an unusual one. The

year when the best

of us is revealed and seen. A year

that we might remember forever.


©Janice Scully 2025

As I wrote this I thought of my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Belsten, who saw, I believed, the best in me and encouraged me to read and read.

We could all use a boost of hope given all the worries adults and kids might be sharing this September.

I missed Poetry Friday last week. I’ve catching up with routine appointments that I put off all summer and attending a family wedding, etc. . But I have taken the time here and there to practice painting watercolor birds. I am a total beginner but I have enjoyed these simple exercises. It does give my mind a mini-vacation when I sit and think only of a bird, or the color of feathers.

Chicken, of course.

This hummingbird illustrated what can happen if you paint close to a flower I didn’t let dry enough. I love the colors. Is there a hummingbird that looks like this? I have no idea.

Have a great weekend and I hope you have some lovely fall weather to enjoy, like I do here in Upstate NY. Thank you, Rose, for hosting!

A Picture, Stolen, and a Poem

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by the wonderful and talented Heidi Mordhorst HERE. I look forward to seeing what she will be sharing with us. This week felt like a good week to keep busy doing things that bring you joy.. I am cherishing my principals in the light of the Smithsonian news and so much else, and try my best to be kind to others. It’s hard to fathom the kind of people who would remove Harriet Tubman’s prayer book from the Museum of African American History.

I sat on my porch earlier this week. It was about 90 degrees and I was looking for a poem. I found this and drew this picture:

.

THE BRINK

My pen is heavy, full of ink,
while on a shady porch I think.
Ice in my coffee melts and clinks,
and a poem peeks across the brink. 

Janice Scully 2025

For some reason I was trying to write a quatrain with the end of each line rhyming. Something fun, trying to create images.

I mentioned I love the work of Wayne Thiebaud. In the book WAYNE THIEBAUD: Art Comes From Art, published by the the De Young and Legion of Honor fine arts museums in San Francisco. He painted with oil. I found this painting entitled “Coffee” from 1961:

So I painted a small watercolor copy which didn’t turn out well but tried again, remembering to wet my paper first, which I’d forgotten to do on my first try.

But I liked my second try:

I’ve feeling a bit on the brink, and finding even a small poem helps me feel more positive.

Thanks for this place of community. Have a great weekend! Thank you, Heidi!