art

What’s In My Cityscape?

cityscape

This edition of What Do You See is once again brought to you by my six-year-old daughter. So, what do you see?

Thursday Challenge: Delicate

Pottery by Leora Wenger (done in the 1990's)
Pottery by Leora Wenger (done in the 1990's)

One day I will get back to doing pottery again, which I did for about ten years and stopped around the time my middle son was two. I took the opportunity to photograph some of my pottery today against a black blanket, as this week’s Thursday Challenge is DELICATE (Glass, Lace, Jewelry, Plants, Breakable Things,…).

Landscape Workshop

Landscape in crayons, markers and a bit of watercolor on paper
Landscape in crayons, markers and a bit of watercolor on paper

On Sunday my daughter and I had the pleasure of attending a Yoga and Art Workshop with Jill Caporlingua. You can see my post about a workshop Jill conducted last year. You sign up your child for the workshops with Jill, but if you are one of the parents who stay (and not all parents do), you can see the adults are having a wonderful time as well.

Jill showed the group a landscape by Vincent Van Gogh as an inspiration for the children to create their own landscapes. My daughter created a cityscape, and I plan to show it as my next “What Do You See” post. Then she said “and parents feel free to do your own.” I happily took a piece of paper and created the above scene. My daughter wanted to help out, and she added her own embellishments to the painting. I wonder if you can figure out what parts she contributed?

workshop0309

workshop0309_jill

A Squooshy Cabin

Four Cups, watercolor by Leora Wenger, 2007
Jack hosts this week’s Haveil Havalim, the weekly blog carnival of the Jewish Blogosphere. He compares Haveil Havalim to the famous scene from Night at the Opera, when Harpo, Chico, Groucho and too many others crowd into an ocean liner cabin.

And I updated my Pics of the Month page. The page features some of my favorite paintings, photos or Flash creations. Featured in this post is a watercolor I did in 2007. Any ideas why I chose it for this post?

What Do You See?

roseforsale
Yes! It’s another round of “What Do You See?,” brought to you by my daughter. I stole this homework out of her hands before her teacher could write “So pretty!” in big bright red marker on top. (Can anyone relate?)

So, what do you see?

Be Happy Adar Is Coming

Purim is Coming, watercolor by Leora Wenger, 2009
Purim is Coming, watercolor by Leora Wenger, 2009
The Jewish month of Adar starts this week. When Adar comes, our sages tell us, we increase in happiness. Just as in the Purim story that we will read in the middle of Adar our fortunes turned from bad to good, so we should turn around our sadness into happiness.

Two thoughts on how this happiness needs to be tempered:
1) This year marks the first anniversary of the terrible murder of 8 teenage students from Merkaz HaRav in Jerusalem.

2) It is a custom to drink alcohol on Purim. However, one must always take care of one’s health and the health of others. Therefore, if you or family members do not know how to drink responsibly, don’t. We don’t need the happy day of Purim to turn to tragedy.

Sea Vegetables

Mekabu: Tiny Sea Vegetable to Sprinkle in Your Food, watercolor by Leora
Mekabu: Tiny Sea Vegetable to Sprinkle in Your Food, watercolor by Leora

Have you ever eaten a sea vegetable? If you’ve had sushi, then you have. The nori wrapper on the outside of the sushi is seaweed; it comes from the sea. Recently, I’ve been working at adding some seaweed into my diet. I bought some Eden© Mekabu, a wakame sea vegetable sporophyll, and every now and then I sprinkle it into soup or rice or noodles. Seaweed takes a while to get used to, but I am beginning to enjoy its distinct flavor.

Because I ask Klara so many questions about macrobiotics, she suggested I subscribe to the Macrobiotic Guide. Here’s how they answered a question of mine:

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Q: Why is it so important to add sea vegetables to one’s diet? Leora

A: Sea vegetables are nutrient-rich, unlike any other food I have discovered. They provide essential vitamins and minerals I cannot find in other foods I choose to incorporate into my diet. I think of them as the nerve center for my body. Without them, I feel lacking. I can fill my belly with volumes of food but without incorporating sea vegetables into my diet, my hunger will continue unabated until I provide it with those essential nutrients found in sea vegetables. (That is the purpose of “hunger.” It is the natural impulse that drives us; when rightly understood, it guides us toward the right foods, in the right quantity, at the right time.)

Without sea vegetables, I grope for foods that fill but do not satisfy. Organic foods are wonderful and vitally important – for many reasons – but even organic foods might be grown in deficient soil, yielding deficient plants.

Denudation is the natural process where minerals are carried off by wind and water from land into the sea. As a result, over millions of years of this geological process, we find a rich depository of nutrients in our oceans. For this reason, sea vegetables have become nutrient-rich unlike all other foods.

This is how sea vegetables affect me personally. This is not to say people cannot live well without them. Historically, traditional diets around the globe have provided healthful foods without the incorporation of sea vegetables. But looking around me today, traditional diets have all but vanished, and soil quality has become impoverished through poor soil/farming practices, making sea vegetables all the more important. There are medicinal values to them as well. Jeffrey Reel

Find out more about sea vegetables at http://macrobiotics.co.uk/seavegetables.htm.

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So, do you think you might try some sea vegetables? More on seaweed soon.

What Do You See?

drawing_what
Welcome to another round of “What Do You See?” with a drawing by my daughter. So, nu, what’s in this illustration? Thanks for playing!

Who is Helping Whom?

A drawing by my daughter:  What do you see?
A drawing by my daughter: What do you see?
This week’s edition of “What do you see?” is brought to you by my daughter. My daughter’s hint is that there is a mitzvah (a good deed) going on in this illustration. So, what do you see? Who is helping whom?

A note from Jill, her art teacher:
“My art professor suggested coloring books are the worst thing for a child, because they feel they can’t live up to the pre-made/adult created outline. That they come up with such interesting and wonderful things when given ‘permission’ to explore. ”

What Do You See?

perspective
My daughter is learning one point perspective with Jill, her art teacher. What do you see in my daughter’s painting? (click to enlarge)

jill_daughter
Here are Jill and my daughter in Jill’s studio. What do you see in Jill’s paintings?

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