Listening to Dutch Sheets recently, I picked up on his idea of arrowheads as symbolic of a divine assignment. It is said that if you find an arrowhead, you should attach it to an arrow shaft, because it is symbolic of an assignment from God. The shaft represents you taking on the assignment, ready to nock your bow and take aim with purpose and skill.
Rock cairns mark The Way we are to go. Could rock cairns be how the messenger “prepares The Way”? They are the signs in the wilderness that I picture for the Gospel of Mark to “prepare The Way.” I have heard that “preparing the way of the Lord” actually means that the road is cleaned up, potholes filled, and the path itself is widened and straightened out. That sounds more like the broad-way that the world follows
Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
Matthew 7:13-14 New American Standard Update
Most of the first chapter of Mark takes place in the wilderness were I imagine there are pathways to follow, The Way of YHVH. It is not a highway through or to the city of men. I imagine it marked by the messenger spoken of in Isaiah who, “prepares your Way”. In Greek (as far as I can tell from translation tools, I do not speak Greek), it should read, “prepares THE Way” in the wilderness. As if he set up Rock Cairns for us to follow. We might have a pastor who is seminary trained, or was mentored by a seminary graduate. He may honestly believe that we should prepare a smooth straight road for the king to come to us. They may be right, don’t take my word for The Way being the path through the wilderness that we follow by faith, with signs (rock cairns) to follow along The Way. But do study for yourself. You do not want to miss The Way of righteousness.
As for “make His way straight,” it isn’t what you might think it is.
Debs in Montana, September 18, 2023
…My path may lead through woods at night, Where neither moon nor any light Of guiding star or beacon shines; He will not let me miss my signs.
Yesterday (9/5/23) I tried to write about painting with the colors that I am drawn to in the season that transitions from the heat of summer into the month of September. Yesterday’s blog took off, almost with a spirit of its own. I’ll try this again.
It isn’t quite autumn yet, but mornings are crisp and afternoons are uncomfortably warm in the long sleeve pull-over I chose while getting dressed in the cold, cold morning. It is time for different clothes then I wear in summer and a different palette of watercolor for the new season.
There isn’t a solid orange in this palette that includes the tag “pumpkin.” I have not chosen any serious earth tones for my pumpkin spice palette yet, but they are coming. I loosely choose my colors based on the colors of a wild pheasant. There will be browns. I just did not need them for this first sketch.
The name, pumpkin spice, comes from coffee shoppes in my native Pacific Northwest. They all offer pumpkin spice coffee and goodies to celebrate back to school. The season includes new clothes, books, pencil bouquets, pumpkin spice snicker-doodles and coffee with friends in a loud coffee shop or at a park with the preschoolers. Maybe best of all is the restart of local bible studies with children safely at school or busy in the nursery touching bases with other home-school friends while moms and neighbor ladies study.
I do not have children to buy school clothes and stationary for, but I do go back to Bible Study during pumpkin spice season. I admit, pumpkin spice everything is easier to find in western Washington State then it is in my new state of Montana. I am guessing that beef jerky spice is what my Montana neighbors favor. I do have an autumn study, the Gospel of Mark. Mark is said to have collected the testimonies of early believers and organized them into a book of the Good News of Jesus the Messiah. Mark put his own testimony in the first verse of his gospel. That was the last he spoke of anything to do with himself.
He was with both Peter and Paul as they brought the gospel to the non-Jewish world. Despite being famous for failing Paul, he was still educated at his side. He and Paul eventually settled their differences and became close soldiers of the cross toward the end of Paul’s life. Mark became so humble that if you don’t know that you just read his testimony in the first verse of his gospel than you might miss it. Next up is Isaiah’s prophecy and an introduction to the most misunderstood word in Mark’s gospel. But that is a message for another day.
Deb in Montana, September 6, 2023
“You see every child of God overcomes the world, for our faith is the victorious power that triumphs over the world.” 1 John 5:4
I read this verse from the Passion Translation while listening to a pod cast with an OUR rescuer. He told the world that abused children recover completely in a home with a loving father & functioning family. The church should be the functioning family for us. THAT is what religion is meant to be.
…if you confess with your mouth that Y’shua-Jesus is king (Lord) and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Remember the thief (terrorist actually), crucified with Christ, who went from taunting Y’shua from his own cross, to asking Him to “remember me when you come into your kingdom” Luke 23:39-43 Was the terrorist saved at that moment? I am confident he was, but we who believe will find out when we get there (heaven).
I believe that the most difficult assignment in all eternity that Y’shua, bene-elohim (Jesus the Son of God) accepted and completed, was for Him to hang by nails in His hands and feet, naked (to further humiliate Him), taunted by the terrorists on the other near-by crosses, sneered at by the “strong bulls of Bashan Psalm 22:12-13 (whom I believe to be the highest rank of the spirit creation also known as bene-elohim, of which the dark spirit we commonly refer to as “Satan” is one, but that is a study for another day) and most heartbreaking of all, He felt utterly forsaken of God, who sent Him on this assignment to save you, to save me. What Y’shua-Jesus did on that day fulfilled YOUR fate. That is YOUR bill, your debt, for the rebellious, godless life you have lived. You earned that horror, that cost for sin, Jesus, who loves you, accepted your terrifying, horrible debt as His assignment, to set you free!
What quest must you go on to accept what He did for you?, to embrace your freedom from the terrifying eternity of death that otherwise is yours?
Believe.
We add so much with our religion. All He asks is that you believe and you will be saved. That is it. What will that look like in your life? You cannot know the answer until you believe. We walk by faith not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:6-8). For the terrorist (thief) on the cross next to Him, it was a simple confession that He is Lord, given at the absolute worst moment of his life. For the demon-possessed man of Gerasenes Mark 5:19-20 it was to “go to his friends and tell them what the Lord had done for him”. For the first disciples, there was a call to follow Jesus, leaving behind everything else Mark 1:16-20, just the opposite of the man of Gerasenes.
Salvation is that simple! Believe. You may come to faith on your death bed, you may come to faith as a child and be challenged to be faithful through difficulty in your earthly life. What ever your “quest” or calling, Jesus will be with you through it all. To believe is to trust Him to get you through whatever you face.
When you believe, the bulls of Bashan (Psalm 22) may go to war with you (they thought you belonged to them, but you belong to Jesus once you believe… keep your eyes on Jesus who loves you!
Debs in Montana …who had a completely different idea about what she wanted to blog today, thus the title, Days of Pumpkin Spice. but this will hunt. September 5, 2023
Just finished flamingo month (August) and entering Pumpkin Spice season as a theme of my watercolor.
In the tiny village of Troy, Montana, I am preparing to start a Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark, a book of the testimonies of men and women who believed Y’shua-Jesus, with the assignments He gave to them, their struggles and the testimonies of victory they have because they believed Jesus.
What did they believe? …I’ll save those details for the study. DH
I love the results I get with cerulean blue (PB35). Summer sky, spring flowers, birds, all manner of a bright blue for watercolor. Why would I consider replacing it on my palette?
I also like to plein-air paint (fancy-schmancy word for painting live, outside).
Why is that a problem? Cerulean Blue is toxic. It is one thing to paint with it in my studio (really, a spare bedroom that is also my fish room, plant room and office,) but to take cerulean into nature does not seem responsible. Putting pigment on paper does not harm the environment, but because I paint with watercolor, there is always a pan (tiny as it may be) of dirty water after painting. Note: even with nontoxic pigment, I NEVER dump my water on the ground, but spills can happen. In my plein-air kit I bring a sandwich size zipper bag with a paper towel folded up inside. That is where I pour my dirty water to dispose of later.
Replacing Cerulean…
MangaLuzuli is the custom blue I’ve come up with after trying a few different, less or nontoxic light blues. Following Sarah Burns lead, I pulled out my tube of Manganese Blue Hue which I usually use for an under-painting (that is how impressed I was with this pigment before). It wasn’t working for me. I love a granulating sky color. If Manganese granulates, it isn’t as obvious as Cerulean. Fail.
Another paint I briefly considered was a primatek, LapisLazuli. This expensive paint is well known for being extremely difficult to rewet and hardly brings anything to the paper. That doesn’t work for me when I paint in the wild. I need paint that springs to life at my whim. This primatek fails. My A.Gallo Lapis has been mixed with honey so it does rewet quickly, but my plein-air kit puts my palette at all angles. Honey based paints tend to move in the palette and it needs to be laid flat to keep it in the pan. Another fail.
Almost by accident, I mixed to fails and came up with a winner. A 50/50 mix of Manganese Blue Hue and LapisLazuli Genuine gave me the granulation and color I was looking for. It isn’t Cerulean but it is close enough, maybe better. The awesome part is that it is easy to rewet! Just a spritz or drop of water brings it back to life. Perfect!
MangaLazuli is the blue at the top of the cabin painting in the photo. It is a pretty stand alone. But does it play well with others?
I tried it with some cool yellows I use, it acted as expected, adding a little granulation without speckling the color green (it does make green, just not speckled). This is important to me because my horizon often meets a yellow field in Autumn, bringing the field back to an unwanted spring green. Still, it was plesent to look at.
I’ve learned to use a Sienna to avoid green. M.A.N.S is my favorite. All three of mine work well with my new blue.
Finally, flamingo month is only a couple of weeks away so I tried a few pinks instead of reds with my custom blue. They turn purple quickly. A lovely color, but something to keep in mind when flamingo pink is what I am looking for. Flamingos are a studio painting. To the best of my knowledge there are no flamingos in western Montana. This shouldn’t be an issue while sitting in front of a crashing waterfall.
If you paint Plien-air, do you worry about toxic pigments and how to dispose of them? Should I even worry? (tell me not to worry about this and I still will). What is your solution?
Debs on the edge of Montana July 19, 2023 Now, get out and splash some colors!
Ray and I knew the North Cascades. We had hiked, jeeped, hunted and kayaked nearly everywhere we could in Washington State. Born, raised, educated, married, born again, became parents and earned all kinds of money in Western Washington. We knew where we wanted our ashes scattered at the end of our days. Governor Jay Insley changed our minds about our beloved Washington. If not for Governor Insley, we would have never known how much we love Montana. The trouble is, we do not know Montana very well. Heck, I’m not even sure what the Governor’s name is.
We took a little more then a year to settle into our Montana home. We found a church we like. It seems like it is time to get to know Montana. On Friday after ladies Bible Study, Ray and I packed a lunch and my Plein Air kit (basically a watercolor travel kit that includes travel brushes, tiny water spray bottle, small sketchbook, tiny water cups and a Portable Painter pallet packed into a small pink purse). Ray chose a rout, programed it into the GPS thing and off we went. Wispy, Canadian Smoke highlighted the mountains instead of obscuring them. A long ride up a logging road brought us to a popular campground called “Bad Medicine Lake” A very short walk to picnic tables where our only companions were mosquitos.
Chicken in one hand, paintbrush in the other, I did a ten minute splish splash of a very common wild flower… mostly because I could not see the dock and the children fishing on it from our table.
Away from the mosquitos and on down the road to Spar Lake. We did not even get out of the truck (short story about poor Ray’s feet giving out on him). I tried to paint the little lake sitting in the mountains, tried to rush it. Struggled to get the values right and ended up with everything being too dark. At home I tried to fix the mountains with gouache, Perhaps I should have just turned the page and started over. If nothing else, it was a fun day.
Seduced again. So there I was, watching another color swatch video when the artist dipped his brush into Da Vinci’s ‘Terra Cotta’ to bend a bright color to his liking. He suddenly had my full attention. I’m a nut for natural pigments. This artist was blending with PR102. When it comes to mixing earth tones into primaries, I’ve never gone outside of the comfortable safety of burnt umber PBr7. That was usually with my even safer ultramarine.
Hello, Cheap Joe’s? I’ll take a tube of Terra Cotta with that little flat brush I’ve been lusting after…. oh? The brush? Another surprise. I thought my favorite flat brush came with the label ‘silver black velvet’ and it’s true, I do like their flat brushes, but I get a lot of shedding from them. As much as I avoid my DaVinci Cosmotop-spin round brush (I adore a tight point) I still bought a spin top flat. It is a tiny little thing (6). I like it so much that I ordered one size up. So far, I like it.
Do you ever check your supplies after you order new paint? Me too. Turns out that I have three of the synthetic versions of iron oxide PR101. So far, the Terra Cotta is my Robin (Kody’s favorite sister-wife) However, since the other three are not burnt umber, I have yet to give them a really fair test. Maybe the jury is still out. Meanwhile, I’m on my honeymoon.
The gaits of Jericho are locked. No one gets in and no one gets out. What does the Almighty have to say about that?
“See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands.” (Almighty God to Joshua in Joshua chapter 6)
Jericho has been delivered (Joshua 6:2) I wonder to myself if Joshua thought he could waltz in that locked front gait and start moving his stuff in. When Ray, Chris and I agreed that we are selling our house and moving to Libby, Montana we were excited for the adventure. I myself thought the whole “process” happened before the house was sold. Deep cleaning and repairs, painting, yard work, saying good by to… everything. Putting just about all we own into storage, and since two of our storage units were in Idaho near Jason and Kelly’s house and one was in Montana, all the “stuff” had to be hauled by the pickup load from Everett, Washington to storage in those states. We cut down to what we absolutely must have to live into what we could fit into our 17 foot Springdale RV. Turns out that all that work was just preparation. Since our house sold right away (24 offers!) for far more then we were asking, I was sure that Ab’ba had granted us the blessing of an easy passage to the next house.
There is a process. Maybe (just maybe) Joshua thought that getting across the Jordan River without anyone’s feet getting wet meant that the rest of the journey was going to be easy. Even after being given the details of “the process” he may (in my interpretation) still have thought that the front gait would swing wide and Israel would be welcomed into a new home. That isn’t what happened. Who knew that walls would fall for everyone except Rahab? Who knew that the kin of Rephaim and evil Amorites would need to be slaughtered and that none of their pretty trinkets could be clamed by anyone in Israel (things really do have unseen power!). Then came the battle for Ai. No need to walk by faith on that city (right?) Israel was strong, they could take it…. but they couldn’t and 36 beloved warriors died in that “easy” battle.
So here are the three of us, the victory of the sale of our Everett home a month behind us. We are loving the journey, the beautiful spring-time of Spokane and western Montana, but in truth we are a little anxious about where we will land. There was victory in the sale of our home. Victory in our feeling ‘at home’ in Libby. Victory in the signs along The Way. But it isn’t easy when I want all my ducks in a row. The Almighty has not given us a property to circle, holding high the banner of my cute pink bible. I am confident we will not need to slaughter anyone before deciding how to best dedicate all their stuff to YHVH. We just have to find THEE PLACE to plunk down a bucket of cash on. We have tried to trade lots of money for a few different homes and property, but others escaping blue states beat us to them with bigger buckets of money. God knows, and we march on.
We have assurance that we have a home, we just have not laid eyes in it yet. Faith is being guided by the Spirit of YHVH through his beloved son, Y’shua-Jesus. It surprised me when I first learned that spirit and wind are the exact same word in Hebrew (Greek too). Sometimes the Spirit of YHVH directs me like a sudden gust of fast wind that will knock me down if I do not go where it is directing me. But most of the time it is like a gentle kiss of breeze on my cheek that I might easily ignore if I am not walking in awareness of the movement of God’s guidance. Dear Ab’ba, keep me tender to your guidance and (dare I say) patient in the process.
Debs in Newman Lake, Washington Driveway surfing at my son’s beautiful home and still anxious to get on the road today to see new things. I hear it is going to be crazy cold in Montana this week. Glad I did not put away my wool socks! April 24, 2021
I dread landscape painting. All that green in all those shades. I have tried so many different greens, so many different blends of blue and yellow. None of them left me feeling satisfied with the final painting. No matter how much fussing or fixing I did I couldn’t get it right. The best decision seemed to be to avoid landscapes.
So I couldn’t sleep early one morning (does 2 AM count as early morning or late at night?) Turned on the ROKU and started watching the latest Eric Yi Lin video. I was thinking, “this will be a good one to fall asleep to.” But no, he answered the question I’ve never asked. Just how do I get a naturalistic looking green landscape? What color or colors do I need to be satisfied???
Turns out it was a blue that I would never have chosen as an addition to any palate of mine. Cobalt Turquoise. I have a much prettier Paul Rubin turquoise, bright and pretty. This one is grayish in comparison. But boy-howdy, mix it with Hansa Yellow Deep and I get a nice naturalish green that is easy to deepen or brighten. Add French Ultra Marine and it gets a nice deep shadow shade. Add a dab of burnt umber and even tree trunks and deep shadows look like they belong. WHAT? Thank you Eric.
I’m going to give landscapes another go.
The last thing I learned is close to the “Never clean your green mixing area.” But the slight change is that Eric makes a large puddle of Cobalt Turquoise–Hansa Yellow Deep puddle with the four colors on each corner of the puddle. Use the brush to pull the color I need into the puddle to get the shade or lighter color I want. I do not need separate puddles of mixed colors. This is a game changer for me. Thanks Eric!
Debs in Everett, WA, August 8, 2020 …Bonus! Eric Yi Lin is a western Washington artist. It just makes me feel good knowing that.
Debs on the edge of Montana
Debs in Newman Lake, Washington Driveway surfing at my son’s beautiful home and still anxious to get on the road today to see new things. I hear it is going to be crazy cold in Montana this week. Glad I did not put away my wool socks! April 24, 2021
The Toy Box Suburban Farm 