Here We Go!

As I recovered in the hospital after the surgery and diagnosis I was amazed, touched, flabergasted, blessed and completely humbled by the outpouring of love, prayers, concern and flowers I received. The nurses told me they had never seen so many flowers in one patient's room before! There were so many flowers they covered my table, the counter by the sink and the top of the wardrobe. I had too many visitors to count. Family and friends I hadn't seen for a long time came to visit as well as my parents and, of course, my immediate family was there as much as they could be! What an incredible experience!

My recovery was difficult. I have a weird thing with pain medications and it took a while to figure out a medication that worked for me. I am the type of person that wouldn't even take Tylenol or Ibuprofen before all of this happened except for rare headaches. I did not want to go on pain medications but everyone was insistent that I "needed them". I don't like the effect they have on me and didn't want to become addicted! My doctor told me that I would be addicted but that was the least of my worries at the moment! So I relented!

Through all of this, I was having a very difficult time eating. I had no appetite. This lasted for most of the year. My poor family had the task of trying to get me to eat something! I was losing weight rapidly and my doctor told me that if I continued to lose weight as quickly as I was that it would be hard to stop the weight loss. Well...I had never had a problem like that before! Haha In fact, I was the heaviest I have ever been when I went in for the surgery. I went from 188 pounds to 135 pounds in 2 months time! I'm getting ahead of myself...

I am so grateful for the people at the hospital that took such good care of me day and night! These sweet people checked my vitals, woke me at all times of the day and night to make sure I took my medication, tried to get me to eat, and drew blood every morning at about 5:30 a.m. I definitely had incredible care. I tried to be a happy, kind patient and asked for as little as possible. I told them thank you often but I wished there was something more I could have done.

So the picture above is all of the watercolor supplies I have. There is paper, hard pan watercolor paints, watercolor tubes and watercolor pencils. I have many different brushes, paper towels and 2 bowls of water. I have painted with watercolors before. My mother introduced me to them and taught me what she knows. I think it's my favorite artistic medium right now so I was excited to maybe learn something more about it. I did learn something more after looking at various websites and pictures trying to be inspired I learned that I like to figure things out on my own! I sat down and began to sketch. My husband asked me if I would like to go to Italy this summer. WHAT!!!!? ITALY! That has been number one on my bucket list most of my life! What does going to Italy have to do with sketching and painting? EVERYTHING! I sketched a boat next to a dock and I named the boat CIAO! Ciao is a greeting in Italian. After I sketched the picture I decided to use the watercolor pencils. Here are some pictures of the process.

These first two photos show the sketch after I used the pencils. It is much the same as using colored pencils. After coloring the picture with the pencils I used water and a small paint brush and began at the top applying the water to the color. I love these pencils for my grandkids too. They have a blast coloring pictures and then painting what they colored.

This photo of the painting was taken after the water had been applied with a brush. I love this brand of pencil.

The picture above is almost finished. All that is needed is the finishing touches. A light outlining of the details of the painting with a black pen completes the look I want and the painting is finished! This photo doesn't show the end result as well as I would like it to but hopefully you can get the gist. I had a wonderful time doing this. Next time I'll use the tube. We can compare and see if there is a difference in the color and texture between the 2 types of paints.


I hope you have all had a wonderful week so far! We are halfway through the week already! I'll be back in a couple of days.

Living Beyond Cancer
Lisa