I still have a ton of work to do on the little girl and her basket. This piece is still a work in progress.

I spent the last week writing and researching for my other posts and didn't have much time to work on my art. Plus I was stuck on exactly where I wanted to take the scales. Scientist have found dinosaurs with feathers and scales, and I thought I would make the body of the Chickenosauras all scales and feather out the neck and tail.

However the part of the mind that doesn't use words was in full-out rebellion, so I was stuck. Yesterday I spent the day outlining and shading the body scales and feathers. Thinking to myself, "just sit down and do it." Which is how I usually push my way through creative blocks, finally today I had the brilliant thought, "Why not make feathered scales? I started feathering out the scales with Zinc white gouache mixed with my watercolors, and my non-verbal mind was happy!

Problem solved, I ran into my husband's "man-cave and told him my creative insight." My beloved husband said, "Yeah I could have told you that!" I need to talk to him more; he is fun to bounce frustrations and insights off of when I am researching my Dhamma articles. Now I am going to start using him for my idea board for my art projects.

We are going on 16 years of living together, and I am still getting to know the guy. I still love him as much as I did when I first met him, but even more in subtle ways one only gets to know when living with someone for a long time."

This coming week I am going to focus on finishing up this painting, and I have a ton of yard and garden work to do before the HOT Oklahoma summer hits us.

How birds evolved from dinosaurs.n the 1990s, an influx of new dinosaur fossils from China revealed a feathery surprise. Though many of these fossils lacked wings, they had a panoply of plumage, from fuzzy bristles to fully articulated quills. The discovery of these new intermediary species, which filled in the spotty fossil record, triggered a change in how paleontologists conceived of the dinosaur-to-bird transition. Feathers once thought unique to birds, must have evolved in dinosaurs long before birds developed. The dinosaur and the gravity paradox.

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