Prayer For Safe Travel

God's Angels guard and keep you

All the way that you must travel

Till earth's days are past

When blossoms fade and

Time is fleeting fast

In times of purest joy

Or pain and fear

God's Angels guard

And keep you safe.

Mroolon

This is a charcoal drawing of my cat Mroolon. The name is a combination of two words: "mrooo" which is our cat's vocal answer to everything we say, and "rulon" that in polish means tube. Mroolon looks like that when he lays down. He is a sweetheart and good a companion.

The drawing was done from the photograph I took while the cat enjoyed a sunset at the backyard. A smudging property of charcoal gives the cat dirty appearence which reminds me how he looked when I found him. 

Gladiolas

Gladioli in my garden are in full bloom. I enjoy them a lot because they have all possible colours. Unfortunatly we have a lot of inclement weather leatly and wind is banding some of these tall flowers down. They are ending as decoration in my home.

The drawing of gladiolas was done with color pencils on beidge tinted paper.

Loch Raven

Loch Raven is a largest water reservoir for Baltimore. My family and I often visit this place. On weekends a road along the lake is closed for motor vehicles and it is our favorite spot to walk, bike or roller-skate. When we're tired of the bitten path, there are beautiful trails throughout the woods there too. In case we're lazy we simply sit near the shore and watch birds. Sometimes because of a drought, the water level is so low that we can walk to this small island.
In my painting a fog is covering the other shore of the lake. The fog can make this place really enchanted and simplify my composition a lot :)

Blooming Summer

When I was a kid I used to spend my Sumner vacation with my relatives at villages near Krakow in Poland. To get there I had to take a train and then a bus. After jumping out of the bus, the first thing I always noticed were the wild flowers in the meadows. With their various colors they welcomed me to the back country paradise. 

For a long time I didn't know why farmers didn't like poppy flowers blooming on their fields and why called them weeds.  I recently learnt why. If poppy seeds mixed up with corn seeds, the flour would have yellowish tint and it gets rotten faster. Lately I haven't seen any weeds in the crops. I guess now we have herbicides that completely eliminate all wild plants. Well, I miss them a lot.

Last year my neighbor gave me a small poppy plant and this year I had my first poppy flower in my garden. I was so happy to watch it develop its bud and finally bloom. I took a few pictures, sketched, and painted it with watercolors. The original painting was sent to Poland to my dear cousin who has the same admiration for these wild flowers as I do.

The painting process is on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84uHkM_EBUA 

If you'd like to paint it too you can copy my sketch. Happy painting