"Wanderlust" a challenge painting.
The title for this challenge painting for November on facebook page- " Monthly Painter's Challenge was 'Wanderlust".
Now whatever does that mean. I went through the various thoughts about this topic , first deciding on a picture of a person looking out to an open landscape with many paths but couldn't quite visualize painting that.
Then I thought it probably meant always wanting to move on somewhere else and to see more and more but how do you paint that feeling unless you do a purely abstract kind of painting. Don't have much experience of abstract painting.
Then I thought of all the places you could go to or wish to visit and started sketching and before I knew it I had filled out my allotted space!
So this is really a painted sketch rather than a real painting.
I think I put just too much in but that's how it goes sometimes.
Anyhow it was fun to do and it made me think which can't be all that bad.
Chase Malone is a very successful artist that has made good livelihood from selling paintings that are sold in successful galleries. He is living the good life until an international arms dealer called Bellasar wants Chase to paint a portrait of his beautiful new wife Sienna. At first Chase is reluctant to do this but his friend from the CIA pushes Chase into the assignment to spy on Bellasar. The arms dealer is developing a monstrous new biological weapon and it is essential that he is stopped
Chase goes with Sienna and Bellasar to his very secluded French Riviera stronghold. He discovers that as soon as the painting is done Sienna will be murdered. He realizes he must save her and find out just what Bella
sar is up to and then flee the island.In the process he realizes he has fallen in love with Sienna.( Kind of obvious right from the start that this would happen!)
This is a fast-moving action type thriller, not the kind of thing I usually read and not altogether believable but all works out well in the end as these stories usually do after a lot of excitement,
I can see this would make fairly good action movie with handsome actors, beautiful women and lots of chases in wonderful countryside.
Look Again by Lisa Scottoline
I realized that I haven't been keeping up with my reviews of books that I have read. I've certainly been reading a lot lately as the weather was pretty cold and we stayed inside a LOT!
I really enjoyed this book and have read a few others by this author. She writes well and it is easy to read and she weaves a good story.
A journalist called Ellen adopts a young baby when she finds him in a hospital in bad condition and no one seems to want him. He is now three years old and healthy and she loves Will the baby very much. Then one day she sees a flyer in the mail and on it is a photo of a missing child which looks exactly like Will. Ellen knows that Will's adoption was perfectly legal but she cannot help wondering about this child that has gone missing. Being a journalist she decides to look into it and then she finds clues that might mean she will lose Will and she wishes she hadn't started looking..
This is a very emotional story and she has to decide whether to ignore her finding and to keep Will or to do the honest thing and give the baby back to the original family. Quite a dilemma and one that no one would like to face.
But the whole story is far more complicated than that and that is where the mystery lies.
Will Ellen keep Will? You won't know until you get to almost the end of the book.
This is the challenge I do every six weeks or so in which a photo is given and then each artist produces their version inspired by the photo.
I found the topic a little bit dull to paint except for the reflection in the jug. This painting was fine in watercolor but getting the depth of the red for the tomato was a challenge. I think also now looking at it I should have made a better shadow under the tomatoes as they appear to be floating!!
Here is the original photo.
if you want to see what the other artists did go to
http://paintanddrawtogether.blogspot.com/
Transhuman byBen Bova
Angela is an eight-year-old child that is gradually dying from an in operable brain tumor. The medical staff and even her parents have decided she finally needs to go into hospice care. Her grandfather Luke Abramson who is a cellular biologist is determined to cure her. He has been working on an experimental therapy which he knows may cure her but no one will agree to let him try this. So Luke, even though he is 75 years old takes matters into his own hands, and with the help of a friendly glamorous young doctor abducts Angela and decides to drive her across the country and to perform the therapy at a friend's clinic.
Luke realizes fairly soon that he is really too old to drive across the country without being caught and so decides to perform an untried therapy on himself at the same time to reverse his aging process.
The alert goes out that he has kidnapped his granddaughter and so the chase is on. Will they get stopped before they reach the clinic? Will Luke be able to make the journey? Will Angela get cured?
This was an interesting book to read with all the medical information involved but somewhat unbelievable especially when the government and the high powered pharma business executive who is funding the experiments, gets involved and enters the chase.
Can you guess the title of this song?
I ask this because this was the painting from the Monthly Painters Challenge on Facebook for October this month. The challenge was given to paint a song.
That led to some interesting thoughts and discussions about which would be a good song to paint.
I started out by thinking it had better be a subject from a well known song . So I chose "Somewhere over the rainbow" but after I had painted it , it was fairly uninspiring so I dumped it.
So then I thought as it will be Halloween when I enter ,what about a Halloween song. But no Halloween song came to mind. I settled on "Witchy Woman" , a song by the Eagles and had fun painting it. Lots of bright colors but something not quite right about it especially the part 'Sparks fly from her finger tips' . The finger tips looked most peculiar and I changed them to a weird collar.
So then I chose a song which I really like ,
"Diamonds on the soles of her feet" by Paul Simon. I liked the simplicity of this painting but the diamonds were a real challenge to paint.
The Survivors Club by Lisa Gardener
This was a very interesting book and although it is classified as a thriller I found it more to be a mystery/detective story.
It tells the story of three ladies that have been sexually assaulted and raped by the same man. The ladies form a support group which they call the survivors club. The rapist is apprehended and the book opens as he is being driven to court for the first day of the trial. Suddenly he is shot and killed.
One would think the book should finish there. Bad man got his reward!
But who killed Eddie the rapist? All the ladies are now under suspicion. Did they arrange this killing?
That night a new rape takes place but it looks very similar to the circumstances of the rape of the original three ladies but Eddie is now dead. Has the wrong man been killed? Are the members of the survivors club now in danger again?
A well-written book that is most intriguing and thought-out and developed.
I enjoyed this one.
