dreams and diversions and WOW!

WOW!!!!  It was wonderful to see all your comments when I finally opened my computer, here in Chicago. Keep them coming!!!!! (If you haven't seen it, check yesterday's post so you too may enter the drawing.) Thanks to all my friend bloggers and congrats to all the brave lurkers who made their first comments. Who knows, you may be the lucky winner!
Short story, all the flights were canceled. First flight Wednesday. So instead we took the flight to Chicago with hope of making it home by Tuesday! A big thank you to lovely Rhegina who has been living at our house caring for the kitties. You are so wonderful!
On another note, I just learned that my painting, Canal Sunrise has been nominated for Best Portrayal of a Place on Making a Mark blog! Yay! I am thrilled beyond compare! Please check out Katherine's blog. Here's the link to her blog.   Even if you don't want to vote for my painting you can check out all kind of beautiful artwork on your visit. (Thank you Katherine for noticing!!!)

Now back to work......So here is a piece of the post I wanted to do earlier.

Four aspects I noticed that were present in both the Japanese woodcuts and the Toulouse Lautrec prints.
*use of strong diagonals
*large areas of flat color
*strength in calm/ negative space
*eye movement- look up look down
It's amazing to me how dynamic the works are; yet the Japanese woodcuts balance that with peacefulness.  I hope to figure that out in my work.