Nashville’s Railroad Station

Is this a beautiful place or what?  It used to be the railroad station in Nashville and has been restored (to the tune of $14 million) and is now a hotel.  It was a delight wandering around and enjoying the architecture.  I grew up riding trains and have spent a lot of time in stations, many of them just beautiful. 

I finally plopped down on a comfy couch to soak up the atmosphere and do a little sketch, as shown below.  Did you know... statistics have proven that if you stop to make a sketch you remember more than if you snap a photo?  I didn’t need statistics to know that! 

When I travel, I’ll prep some pages in my little sketchpad with paint.  All the paint on this page was applied BEFORE I had any idea what I was going to draw.  When I want to draw something, I just scroll through my sketchpad and find the painted pages that seem to fit the mood. :). Sometimes I’ll paint further but not often.  As for this one, I like it the way it is.

What a place.  Although I’ve never been in this particular station, it brought back a lot of memories. ❤️ 

Traveling Artist, The Parthenon (Nashville)

Did you even know there’s a Parthenon in Nashville?  Nashville’s called the ‘Athens of the South,’ so they built a plaster Parthenon to celebrate.  It was so popular but plaster doesn’t last so they built this beautiful Parthenon exactly like the original!  It is truly beautiful.  Who knew? 

And can I just comment about the cirrus clouds? It seems like Nashville has an abundance of them.  Light, dry, breezy conditions.  Houston being so humid has an abundance of cumulus clouds, which I also love.  But we sure are enjoying the cool, fresh air and deep blue skies!

Remember, it’s exactly to scale.  Nice to see one that’s not been aged for thousands of years, huh? :)

Traveling Artist, Nashville

Some pics from Nashville.  We went to the Country Music Hall of Fame.  This is me and my friend playing some guitar...

This is me standing by a wall of art posters from Austin, TX.  Keep Austin weird!!

The next two are just gorgeous shots I took looking up at a staircase in the museum.

This last one is Elvis’ gold plated car. :)

Grand Ole Oprey Painting

An artist’s life is ALWAYS interesting, and one never knows what one will be doing next!  Here I recruited Melody of Refine Arts to help me paint the Grand Ole Oprey for a very special event the choir and orchestra had at church. What fun that was!  Ladders again.  It’s always ladders. #afraidofheightsoverhere

We only painted on paper that had been taped up.  VERY quick job for a temporary ‘installation.’ Yet I think it turned out really well for the time everyone spent on it!

You can see that this was a quick job.  I used to be a perfectionist.  I learned a long time ago that you do the best work you can in the amount of time you have.  We had very little time for this and it was for a one-night event.  It fit the bill perfectly and I think it turned out great.

This is how the final looked under lights.