The final version of lion attacking. horse on the to with stronger color and the black ground now surrounding the club-wielding central figure.

  Yesterday's work - adding the jellyfish frieze to the top of the piece. First I sketch in the shapes, then I fill in the dark sea, next I decide it overwhelms the image below so I erase and then paint over the dark areas. Now, as I look at the different stages, I like the inky effect the best. It's so easy to erase marks on the Yupo paper with water and paper towel, scrubbing with a Q tip if necessary. Sometimes it's a disadvantage. Maybe it's best to let the image rest for a while before deciding. I base my decisions on the little image I see on the back of my camera. I'm intrigued to notice the same pattern while working on the last image I made( of Artemis and the Egyptian boatmen). Courage and patience are needed in equal measure, it seems.

Just figured out how to download photos from my iPhone into my computer- too bad I didn't figure it out before my beautiful new iPhone was stolen with all my great photos from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Now I can record and post my current work.

    First stage of my most recent painting - Artemis statue from Ephesus in Turkey with an ancient Egyptian frieze of the Pharoah's boatmen docking on the Nile.
    The finished piece is at right. Luckily, enough traces of the original detailed sketch remain, though I tried to delete them for a paler effect. It's fairly simple to recapture the dense patterns that are so alluring to the eye. The saturated color enhances the beauty of the image as well.

I'm off to New York on Valentine's Day to see the Matisse exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum-http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/11/30/arts/design/20121130-MATISSE.html?ref=design#2. I hope to come home inspired to create new work

http://www.wimp.com/dolphinseeks/

This is an amazing video of a dolphin seeking help from divers to untangle itself from hook and line.

"> I hope this link works- it's a lovely video of bottle nose dolphins interacting with a very friendly cat !

    It feels wonderful to be painting again after a month's pause - I'm grateful to have a deadline, art class on Thursday night. The image is based on photos taken at the British Museum in London of the Elgin Marbles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles and the Egyptian collection - as a child,  I spent hours at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City devouring Egyptian art.
  I'll be teaching a children's art class next Sunday; it's been a year since the last one. It will be an hour long to accomodate their different age/interest ; he wants active play after an hour while his sister would camp out on my floor if she could,  her mother told me at Open Studio .
   I got an interesting link from a fellow San Francisco ArtSpan artist  Greg McKenna http://www.flickr.com/photos/valleylist/ .