Back from Vacation! I need another!

Sunset view from my balcony.
View of resort from beach walk-over.

View of resort pier entrance.

My son in the pool! He was throwing a water bomb toy, and I was playing with the sports setting on my digital camera. It is supposed to make you able to take action shots without blurring.

My son walking on the beach. I love to take shots like this showing the subject having their back to the camera.

We returned from our vacation on July 3rd, and I already need another vacation! I have been slammed at work and playing catch-up to get all of my work done. We moved our offices around so I couldn't schedule any appointments for that day. I schedule at least 5 appointments per day for an hour each but I have so many drop-ins that I was not expecting that it is almost impossible to keep up.

On the artistic front I have not been doing anything as I am exhausted when I get home from work but I did take some reference photos at the beach and have many ideas.

I am also trying to get caught up on all of my blog reading, so if I haven't got to you yet I am heading there!

Difficult Week

This past week it just seemed more bad news followed bad news. I work with individuals who are unemployed and looking for work and this past week around 200 people in our county lost their jobs. We also learned of over 50 more that had lost their jobs in the previous week that we had not heard about. January has been a bad month in our county.

Our unemployment rate for December was 8.9 percent and I wouldn't be surprised if it topped double digits for January. It is hard to hear all of the stories these people tell and very sad. We offer all of the assistance and referrals we can but what they need most is employment and unfortunately there is just not much available.

I know the entire country is being affected, not just our county but these are the people I interact with and am working with on a daily basis. I can only hope that things begin to improve soon but I fear that will be a long time coming.

With all of this going on it was hard to get into the mood to produce any art work but on the other hand I knew I needed to do something because creating art is good therapy for me. It relaxes me and improves my mood and I always feel better after I create.

One of the artist's forums I belong to had a drawing challenge for January. I selected a photo and used that. It is an OSWOA (original small work of art) 4x6, colored pencil on bristol board. It did not come out quite as well as I had hoped but it is OK.

I have become addicted to this form of art as with my busy schedule of working and raising a family I can complete one of these pieces in an evening with very little mess. I believe this type of art work is becoming more popular as more and more works show up on the internet for sale. When I first began researching this type of artwork, there would be around 90 works for sale on Ebay. Now there is continuously over 130 offered on Ebay at any time for sale and many more on other places on the web such as Etsy.

Anyway here is the latest:

Butterfly

By: Lori Talbert

1/29/09

I have also been searching for other artist's blogs on the internet, especially artists from North Carolina. I have made some new friends this way and have viewed some really great works of art. I hope to add links to these blogs on my site soon so stay tuned!