Photo Madness and Finished Painting

I spent the better part of yesterday working on posting photos. After the Hughes.net person told me to check with "my host." I posted a comment to Blogger – fix it. Since Blogger is free, how can I expect them to help me quickly or have a real person come to my aid? There is no such thing as a free lunch.

I was really hoping to have an intelligent conversation with Daniel the Hughes person about how Hughes satellite works and what the possibilities could be concerning my photo upload problem. The conversation did not go well. Daniel said everything was fine on his end. I told him that I thought the problem was my end, and I thought, "it being severely chapped at the moment". You should know that I did use my teacher voice with Daniel, but I did not yell. That is the voice that Jesse hates. She says she can hear me perfectly fine without me using the teacher voice. But for some reason it seems to me that if your voice gets more serious, maybe a bit louder, slower, and direct, a person might think you mean business. It always worked in the classroom. Maybe it was the look in my eye that said, "you are about to die" that really worked. If only Daniel could have seen my eyes. I did not cuss or throw anything.

Toby came home early today feeling lousy with the beginnings of a cold. After letting him rest for a while, he listened patiently as I explained my conversation with Hughes and the frustration I felt. Toby asked if we still had Hughes as our server. Yes, we do, because it is all I have right now connecting me to the world (this shows that I have grown and do have control of my temperJ . Toby sat down and we went through the process of uploading on Blogger. I picked a random photo. Of course, it worked perfectly while he was watching. So I picked the photo that I had been trying to upload all day. It did not work. After looking at the properties, Toby opened my photo using something different, made the photo smaller in size, and it uploaded. I did this twice more and it worked both times.

My blonde head cannot quite wrap around the concept of why I was able to upload photos two months ago and then suddenly I was not able to. Why is one photo in my EasyShare a 20 KB and the next one 500 KB when they both come from the same camera and were handled the same way on my computer. They are both JPEGs. And I am able to upload the larger photos using other internet services. Jesse has a new computer with totally different settings and programs and we cannot upload easily from her computer either or my laptop. I still think it is Hughes. Who know? Only the Shadow knows!

The Painting:
My mom wanted a painting for her guest bedroom. She bought me a 24"x36" canvas and frame. I chose the subject matter as a surprise for her. This is Crathes Castle in Scotland. We toured through the castle and garden with Mom while she and Jesse were in Scotland with us last year. Mom loved the castle, but the gardens were dead in February. Although we took a photo from the same vantagepoint, the garden was just brown and dead. Later we saw postcards of what it would look like in the spring/summer. I used a couple of photos off of the internet to put together this painting.

Step one was to paint a background and cover the canvas completely with color - very simple. I used acrylic so that it would dry quickly, and I could move on to oils.

SStep two was to paint the darker areas and start establishing the trees and bushes. I also did a bit more work on the castle all using oils.

Step 3 was to add the lighter colors and also to paint the flowers and details – a few days after the dark under-painting had dried.

Step 4 would be to wait a few days, look at the painting again, and think, "what is going on there" and fix it. Or you could call this step refining the painting. At this point, you could jick with the painting forever. You have to call it quits sometime. I painted the Scottish flag on the top of the castle and gave it to mom. I think she liked it.