A Special Day

Good evening y'all!    I hope and pray that this update finds each and every one of y'all filled with joy and that you are happy to have been a part of such a great and wonderful day.    The weather has been picture perfect, absolutely beautiful.   I just thank God for all the beauty of this day.    I hope you do too.    I just thank Him and praise Him for this day.

Today has been a special day for me.    I had on my agenda to do something today that I had not done since high school.    That's been more years than I really care to remember or admit.   gggg    What did that crazy woman do today, you ask?     I took an oil painting class.     Oh yeah, yes I did!!!   I went to this class today with "NO" expectations of myself, other than to have a great time!     To be honest, I didn't even know if I could hold a paintbrush long enough to get a painting done.    So, that's why I set my goal for fun, nothing more, nothing less.    It really helped too that one of my friends joined me.    There was gonna be another one of my friends taking the class too, but she had some things that came up and she needed to take care of family.    So, hopefully, next time she can get to paint too.  

After we got started with the painting and gotten to about the fourth step, I realized I was gonna have enough time between steps to take a pic before we moved on to the next step, so I took out my new cell phone that my wonderful husband had gotten for me recently and snapped away.    So, without further a due, here is my pics.    Now, for all you pro's out there, remember, this is my first oil painting, so, no judgements, ok......

The above pic is painted with liquid white so everything else would flow on the canvas good.

This pic has the sky put in first, then the sand up front, then we went back in to the middle and put the water in.    We put the sand in second so we would not run out of space for the beach while putting in the water.

Then we added our rocks on the right hand side.

I forgot to take a pic here, so there are two things added to this one.   The first thing, we used a clean flat brush and went in under the rock formation and drew the brush straight down, creating the shadow that the rock cast.   Then we took the knife blade and loaded it with a small bead of white paint and drew it down under the rocks,  creating the foam that water rolling back off the beach and lapping into the rocks create.

This one, we painted in our palm trees.    I started getting a shaky hand on this and almost messed it up, but I did manage to get it worked out.

Ok, here, I missed another step.   We took our green and the fan brush and just laid in the rough palm branches.   After getting them roughed in, we then took the fan brush and laid it on the first part of the branches we had painted and then pulled down, creating the palm fronds.

I just now realized that I forgot to take another pic back earlier before we painted in our palm trees.    Before the trees, we took our knife blade and again, we loaded a small roll of white paint on the edge and then went into the blue of the water and made waves and then smoothed them out just a bit with a brush.

Here, we took our fan brush and a mixture of brown and green and laid in a tiny plot of soil around the base of the trees.    We then took just a small amount of yellow and created little bits of texture in the grass.    You can look real closely and see that we took our fan brushes and went up the canvas just a bit, creating the look of grass on the little hillside.    We also laid in a bit of brown just at the base of the trees, creating more of a shadow.

Next, we took our tiny little brush and swirled it in the brown paint and rolled it to a point and then laid it at the top of the hill and pulled up, making taller grass. We then dipped the tiny brush in just a bit of yellow and touched it to the top of some of the grass to make the little seed pods that you see at the top of grass.

I was really happy with the end result of my painting.    I don't know when I have had as much fun and was so relaxed and just had a euphoric feeling when I left.   I had wanted to do something like this for such a long time, but I was afraid to take the step and go for it.    I was afraid of failure.    Hey, I'm just being real with y'all.    I had let fear of failure keep me from doing a lot of fun and good stuff in my life.    Watch out world, here I come!!!     The fun thing is, I can do this every month now, because the class is offered once a month.    Yay!!!!

As I leave you this evening, I leave you with a favorite scripture of mine: Philippians 4:13  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Paul was a man who had been there, done that, so to speak.    At one point in time, he had been a chief persecutor of the church.    He was in the crowd that stoned Stephen.  He was probably the ring leader of those that stoned Stephen.    But, when he had his encounter with the risen Savior, Jesus Christ, on the road to Damascus, his life was forever changed.    He went from chief persecutor of the church, to the chief proclaimer of Jesus Christ.    Read the small book of Philippians and you will see how Paul has learned to trust Jesus in every aspect of his life.    Paul had come to the conclusion, that if Christ asked him to do it, he knew he would be able to do it, because his strength came from Jesus Christ. 

What ever Jesus Christ asks us to do, we can do it.    God's intention is to "never" set us up for failure.     God always has our best interests at heart.    The enemy is the one that bombards our minds with, "I can't do that; I will fail at that; what makes you think you can do that; you really think that God will help you do that."

I don't know about you, but the enemy has told me every one of those things and many more.    I bought in to his lies, and I'll bet that at some point in time, you have bought it to them also.    When we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we were set free from the condemnation that we had once been in.    There is "NO CONDEMNATION IN CHRIST!"     When the enemy comes knocking on your door, just say, "Jesus, would you please get the door for me?"

We can't fight the enemy on our own and we don't even need to try.   We just turn it over to Jesus Christ, He has already won every battle we'll ever be in, we just need to claim the victory!!!!   And say as Paul said,  " I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!"

Oh, I had almost forgot.    The title for today's update was "A Special Day".    Did y'all wonder what was special about today?     Well, it is my Birthday!     This is the day that my Mother gave birth to me, 55 years ago.    Thanks, Mom!!!!     I love you more than you could possibly know!    I pray for you every day!     And I am praying for the days to come.     I am praying for God's blessings on you!

I hope you have enjoyed your visit today.    I hope and pray that y'all come back again in the near future.   If you enjoyed your visit here today, share it with someone.     Until next time, God loves y'all and so do I!    hugs, Patty