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Mingus Mountain Winter Roadside Scene

detail of 10x14 watercolor

AVAILABLE

WELL, IT’S STILL JANUARY

I HOPE YOU’RE STAYING WARM! 

In this episode Freddie finds a switchblade knife on her patio table, she and Wendy freak. Freddie finds her “missing photos” in “the cloud”, which – combined with re-visiting the painting begun on the riverbank on the “fateful day” – causes disturbing memories to surface.

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A FREDERICA & CHLOE PICTURE BOOK MYSTERY

Episode 3

A series of short stories featuring Frederica Jones and Chloe, Freddie’s cat

© Julie Gilbert Pollard

Hi - it’s me again! My not-so-fluffy-anymore-but-still-beautiful cat Chloe and I have been humming right along.

Unfortunately, cats don’t bark. So, if Chloe was aware we had a visitor during the night, she’s not telling. And poor little old-man Scruff didn’t raise an alarm either. Yes, he and Wendy are still staying with us.

This morning, I took my morning coffee out to the back yard to enjoy the fresh new day, birdsong, etc., only to find a switchblade knife on my patio table. That ugly, ominous, horrid “gift” and nothing more. Nothing else that I could see disturbed at all.

(“Sinister event” number 2. Do you recall the first “sinister event” from our last visit? Well, I’m starting to recall this and similar occurrences - not yet mentioned - that certainly didn’t strike me as ominous at the time, though they did catch my attention I have to say.)

Lordy, lordy, this is distressing. Wendy works a night shift and sleeps much later than I do. I decide to wait until she wakes up naturally to give her this little piece of news.

Her ex-boyfriend Josh is a real piece of work and not a comfortable topic of conversation for us - and this conversation will go right to pointing the finger at “you know who”. Of course, this knife in all probability doesn’t have anything to do with him. But fairly or un-fairly, my mind jumps straight to him - and I feel the need to talk to her before going into a tailspin, call the police, make accusations - do things I might regret if I don’t think things through first.

Jumping to conclusions is just so easy to do – TOO easy.

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Wendy gets up - we talk – she’s freaked - I’m freaked.

Perhaps I was in shock earlier, but now my fear has escalated, in part because it’s contagious. On telling Wendy, she jumped to the conclusion I was trying not to, and I find myself in lock step. We’re both really scared. If it had been an isolated incident - but it isn’t. She and I have both had scary experiences and we can’t help but connect the dots. There are just way too many conclusions available for us to jump right onto.

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After calling the cops, the - you guessed it - same policeman from before is now here, taking our statements. When we last saw Tom (as you may recall, we were quickly on first-name basis with Tom-the-cop FYI) we were so caught up with Josh and all that mess that my assault, accident - whatever it was - was not mentioned. So, Tom didn’t know anything about it.

I fill him in. “I’m not a detective” he says, “but I’ll make sure my report on this complaint goes straight to Struthers and Hunter. One of them will be in touch.” Off he goes.

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So, Wendy and I are left to stew and speculate and finally, to go about our scheduled days. Wendy takes Scruff for a walk; I tackle Chloe’s sand box. Mundanity does have a way of taking one’s minds off of drama. To be honest, I much prefer scooping the litter box to thinking about a switchblade knife and whatever skulking entity might have left it for me to find.

Okay, I guess my mind is not completely distracted. So, I find another loathsome task to occupy it - bookwork and paying bills - yuck!

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But now, back to the studio - yay! Let’s see - how long has it been since I was bonked on the head? A few weeks now?

Doing some of my despised bookwork has jogged my brain. Well, hmmm, on “the day” I “lost” my camera I also took some shots with my phone – also “lost”. Now, those photos sync directly to the cloud. Why had I not thought of this before? So much going on. I wonder…

Logging into my cloud account I go back to that day in pictures. For a moment I find myself distracted from what happened to my head and devices by my photos of the beautiful river and the rescued painting that I still need to finish. I had gotten off to a pretty good start on it. I’m so glad to find that not all of my photos were lost. Art does distract.

But there - what was that? Well, a blurry shape - of what? A few other pix also have blurry shapes that kind of look like a third person talking to, looming over - attacking??? - the young couple?

My fearful, evil imagination takes off on its own for a bit. I pick out the best shot, put it into Photoshop, zoom in, sharpen. My skills are mediocre and what I come up with really doesn’t look like “evidence” at all.

But what do I know. I will turn these images over to the detective from whom I’m waiting to hear. Now back to ART! My doors are securely locked, and Chloe is curled up in her basket.

Time to paint. Woo Hoo! I pick up the painting from my plein air day at the river, put it on the easel.

Now, you might think that this painting would have a dark scary shadow hovering over it, given what happened while I was painting it. But remember, I was happily working on my masterpiece when everything went black without warning, and I woke up in the hospital with no memory. I was so unaware of the violent occurrences on that day that my painting has no dark vibe at all.

Or so I thought.

My palette set up, I turn to the canvas...

Gosh, what genius put in those beautiful purple shadows on the bank? (Smile.) Let’s enhance the sunlight streaming through a break in the clouds with a bit of transparent Lemon Yellow mixed with Titanium White. Well, a bit too bright - I temper it with a wet-into-wet less-bright mixture at the edges to soften the transition between the bright sun and those gorgeous mysterious shadows.

I’m in my “right brain” now, the muse is visiting - however you think of that near-magic state of mind that happens when we really get into the painting process. Wow, I am truly a painting virtuoso!

But…

NO!

No, no, no, no, no. My muse has turned on me - she and the photos have awakened my subconscious - and the memory of something I was not consciously aware of at the time has surfaced…

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Dear Reader, Freddie is now quite distracted indeed and not able to work on her book at the moment. But she’s got some chapters “in the can” so to speak. We’ll let you see one of those.

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PLEASE NOTE ONCE AGAIN: the mini art chapters following a story segment

are written and illustrated by Julie Gilbert Pollard, not Freddie. :)

The STORIES are fictional - the CHAPTERS for “Freddie’s” book are true and valid!

Goldfield Wildflowers

8x10 watercolor

AVAILABLE

Would you like to see the chapter showing how I painted this scene in a simple, straightforward manner?

Here is the Dropbox link to the PDF document:

JGPollard_ Watercolor Unleashed_Paint a Simple Landscape_for Story 3