DweezelJazz Art Blog » summer

Summertime Activities

DweezelJazz — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:43:20 +0000

Wheat almost ready to harvest

It has been a long time since the last post here on DweezelJazz Art blog. There have been a combination of things that made this so. What started it was that we lost our Internet connection for six weeks. Our Internet Service Provider, who will remain nameless here, upgraded their service, but unfortunately they lost our connection altogether and never found it again! So we switched providers. In France it takes a long time for a new provider to set up the line. But we’ve been back online for a few weeks now and everything is working very nicely.

Green Summer Countryside

We’ve had a very unusual summer here – it has rained so much that everything has stayed green and it looks like the high Alps in summertime. It’s absolutely beautiful. The air has been cleaned every few days by another downpour and lots of wind, but we’ve also had a lot of bright, shiny sunshine. It has been idyllic.

Corn Field

We’ve watched and heard the sparrows nesting in the eaves of our house. The swallows and house martins, also living around here, are cleaning up all of the mosquitoes in the area – we haven’t been bitten once at home! The swallows are fantastic to watch as they swoop gracefully back and forth, nearly colliding with the walls when they get close to the house. The roosters and chickens in the large open field next to us have been announcing themselves loudly and are a real joy to watch as they bound and run across the tall grass, always busy.

Jet D'Eau Geneva Switzerland

It has also been an eventful summer, as a result of something that happened way back in February. I went to the dentist to have a fixed orthodontic retainer glued back on. (Visits to the dentist have taken me frequently into Geneva and so I’ve witnessed summer in town too, as you can see in the photos.) This simple goal turned out to be far more involved than I at first thought. The dentist took one look at me, asked me all about any symptoms I experienced and then he announced that he thought he might be able to largely remove those symptoms: migraines, nausea, dizziness, blurred vision, extreme fatigue, difficulty breathing, lung discomfort, neck and back muscle cramps, lack of sleep, and so on.

And, to my utmost amazement, in addition to the removal of these symptoms, I found that I no longer had reactions to being around perfumes, cleaning products and other toxic chemicals I have hitherto found increasingly difficult to endure. I didn’t rush out to put these things in my environment, but it was fabulous not to feel like someone had laid out kryptonite around me every time I went out somewhere.

Place du Bourg de Four, Old Town Geneva, Switzerland

I’ve lived with these difficulties all my life and had come to accept them as part of life, at least my life. So it has been with amazement that I’ve discovered that these myriad symptoms are indeed entirely due to jaw misalignment. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about this in the last months; it hasn’t been easy and has taken a huge amount of thinking and observing on my part, all the while trying to learn fast enough so as not to fall back into the abyss of pain-ridden exhaustion. Life rarely offers a magic bullet. My situation isn’t totally resolved and I’m still trying to find out if there’s a long-term solution to correct the jaw alignment.

Parc des Bastions, Geneva, Switzerland

The great thing is that along the way, there have been times during the last months that I’ve been the most pain-free I’ve ever been – in fact, I didn’t know what it was like to be that pain-free – didn’t know what it was like to have energy, and long, deep nights of sleep. Fantastic! So I took advantage of it!

Looking up at back of Old Town Geneva from opposite the Parc des Bastions

In June I finished the Total Training Online Course on Adobe Dreamweaver, and within a couple of weeks I designed a completely new look for DweezelJazz Art site, with new galleries and descriptive content for the paintings.

Then I worked on a number of drawings for paintings in egg tempera, inked them…

Inked drawings ready to glue onto the tempered glass.

and then glued them onto tempered glass.

Drawings ready to be underpainted, and then prepped for painting with egg tempera.

As I was doing this, and also preparing some drawings for painting in watercolor, Tony came up with a brilliant idea: what about creating a book of paintings? Well, I have wanted to do something of that kind for a long time, dreaming about it. I decided to bite the bullet. I chose the subject, in fact, if I survive the first book, I plan to do a series of them: each book dedicated to a town and area in the Pays de Gex, France / Geneva, Switzerland area.

I started with a plan to fill a 60-page book, large format. So I created a storyboard for the entire book, including image sizes and placement.

Storyboard for the first book.

Then I started drawing and drawing and drawing.

A drawing for the book.

I’m including scenes in towns and in the countryside around them, so that the book will give the feel of the place as a whole.

This is what I call a "cow bus".

Quite often at the beginning of summer, you can see tractors hauling a trailer full of cows out to the fields, and again in fall taking them back to the warmth of the barns. It almost seems like the cows are being transported to school or something, so I call it a ‘cow bus’.

I’ve completed 64 drawings and have 18 left to do. Then, all I have to do is paint them! I’ll paint them probably using a combination of ink and watercolor. And of course add text to accompany the paintings.

Sunflower

So, if you’ve managed to read this entire post and have reached this far: thank you! Thank you for reading this blog, and if you’ve been a reader for some time, thank you for continuing to read DweezelJazz Art blog. I don’t post as often as I used to because I’ve had to prioritize the precious commodity of time, but I do plan to continue posting and have some photos of pretty places and countryside ready for future posts. I’m very happy if you find it interesting and fun. Life is full of beautiful things, to cherish and enjoy, and I try to share a little of that here.

This sunflower, for example, just wouldn’t pose correctly for the photo – I reckon it was a bit drunk out there in the fresh air – couldn’t focus on having it’s photo taken! But it is beautiful, nonetheless.

Summer Clouds in the Geneva Valley

DweezelJazz — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:00:00 +0000

The cloud scenery in the Geneva valley is totally spectacular and ever-changing. Sometimes it looks like the clouds have exploded.On the way into Geneva I took this photograph from inside the bus.About an hour or two later I returned to find the cloud like this.Clouds like these can be seen bubbling on hot summer afternoons. They either develop into dramatic thunder and lightning rainstorms or evaporate in a quiet puff.The clouds seem to come over the Jura mountains in waves.Sometimes the cloud wave is big and seems completely continuous; it feels like it’s going to keep flowing until it has engulfed everything below it.At other times the clouds appear in discontinuous strips, popping over the mountains one by one.The most impressive funneling effect I’ve seen was looking out the window one evening recently to see this.

Walking in the Pays de Gex, France

DweezelJazz — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:00:00 +0000

The Pays de Gex is an extraordinarily beautiful place. Walking, almost anywhere you care to choose will lead you to something exciting to see. Even when walking the same places repeatedly there is always something new and breathtaking. On clear days it’s possible to look across the valley to see the majesty of Mont Blanc.There are quaint villages nestled in the hills, visible across picturesque fields.Large numbers of hawks have come down from the mountains to hunt among the harvested fields.I love to hear their high pitched cries as they circle above. Jazzy (our African Grey parrot) has learned how to imitate these cries perfectly and she does them at home.Very often their presence causes consternation among the smaller birds, who take it in turns to circle their nests in an attempt to ward off these predators.Sometimes they circle the same area in pairs and they perform all sorts of mutual manouevres, but it’s not clear to me whether they are friendly or in competition.The public county flowerbeds are very colorful and often elaborate arrangements. Here’s one out on a country road.There are so many critters to meet out along the road – all sorts of characters. This horse has been named “Woofy” by our family, and we call the road he lives on “Woofy Way”.There are loads of pretty flowers too. Here are a pair of so-called weeds, but they sure are lovely.The cows almost always stare and sometimes glare as you pass by. They’re always accompanied by the tinkling sound of the bells hanging round their necks.This fella, or gal, looks so cute and fuzzy.There are so many insects – too many to count. And many of them are surprisingly beautiful and even colorful. Some aren’t to my liking at all – I’m not big on being close and personal with buglife, even though I know they’re vitally important to have around.Here’s a bee going about his business. It’s great to see bees out and about.A horse lives in this house. We met while he was in a field close to the road when it was cooler back in the Spring. I’m actually currently working on painting his portrait. But now he’s staying cool in his house as far away from the flies as he can get.Here are some geese that were hanging out under this tractor. Just after I took this photo a couple of them went and stuck their heads in the bucket you can see on the right, splashing water everywhere and making a great honking racket.There are huge fields of sunflowers all around the Pays de Gex, and so here and there are stray sunflowers brightening the landscape even more. This is one I found in a cleared lot – a place where very likely soon will be built a new house.Everywhere there are amazing scenes and things to look at.

Whispering Corn Fields In Mourex, Ain, France

DweezelJazz — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:00:00 +0000

We went somewhere different for a picnic on Saturday; we sat amongst the corn fields. Everywhere the corn is growing tall and it’s very pretty to see.We can almost measure the passing of the summer days by their height. It’s interesting to see how the corn that’s planted in more shady spots grows much more slowly than those that are in direct sunlight for most of the day.It was a beautiful day, as you can see from the sillouette of the corn against the sky.The greens are fantastic especially in contrast with the touches of red.Plants are fascinating – it always seems to me that if they could walk around (I guess I read “Day of the Triffids” at an impressionable age!) they would be even more spectacular.As it is, I find them somewhat intimidating – they may not walk, but they do move. And sometimes they move a considerable distance either by growing or when they follow the movement of the sun. They do so much right before our eyes and yet we don’t usually perceive them to be moving at all. And if they can do that, it makes me wonder what they do when we’re not looking at all.We had a nice picnic, listening to the breeze rustling among the corn stalks – or was that the plants really whispering to one another?

Summer Fields In The Pays de Gex, France

DweezelJazz — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 07:00:00 +0000

The wheat in the Pays de Gex, France, is a shimmering gold color that’s very lovely to look at in the summer.With the heavy rains here recently many of the fields have been damaged.Everywhere in the valley right now there are tractors coming and going from the fields.Many can be seen at work in the fields even today, on a Sunday.Where there aren’t tractors, there’s often a clear trail left behind of where they have been.There are vineyards……fields of sunflowers……and corn.With the cool weather the poppies have lasted a long time.In places, the corn is growing tall.It’s all very picturesque with Mt. Blanc in the distance.