Flowers and Portraits: Why I Post Flowers
Each local supermarket has flowers that inspire me to draw and paint the bouquets. An attempt at drawing 100 people in a week resulted in a gouache painting of a boy showing a flower to a chicken.
Category: books
reviews, photos, fiction, non-fiction, author, biography, Jewish
May Jewish Book Carnival
The Jewish Book Carnival is a monthly event for bloggers to share Jewish books. The illustration for the carnival post is a watercolor of a siddur, Exploring Exodus, and Dissolving Illusions.
Bloody Nile Watercolor and Solzhenitsyn on Art
Alexander Solzhenitsyn explains why art can relay what propaganda and scientific proof fail to do. An egret cried in a bloody Nile of Egypt when God placed a plague on the Egyptians who worshipped the Nile.
Mourning Dove Watercolor
A mourning dove wandered into a front yard. Enjoy the dove watercolor painting, and learn the process of how a quick watercolor sketch is created.
Book Review with Sleep, Names, and Separation
A book review of The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping by Aharon Appelfeld This review explores important themes of the book, such as sleep, names, separation, literary explorations within a book, connections to the past, and healing. Basic plot: The main character along with a group of teenage boys is a Holocaust survivor. He and […]
Book Review: Growing Up Jewish in Alexandria by Lucienne Carasso
Have you ever heard someone speak, and felt you have become part of history? Last week I had the pleasure of hearing Lucienne Carasso, author of Growing Up Jewish in Alexandria: The Story of a Sephardic Family’s Exodus from Egypt tell us about her book at Congregation Etz Ahaim in Highland Park, New Jersey. After […]
Book Review: Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust
You might think a book called Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust would make you incredibly sad. Perhaps. Well, most probably. But perhaps also it will give strength, hope, inspiration. In the forward to the book, Yaffa Eliach explains how she gathered these tales. They are based on interviews and oral histories, compiled with the help […]
On Blogging Breaks and Old Writing Desk
Photo of old writing desk inspires post on blogging and blogging breaks. Review with Mr. Darcy, burning bread, Genie, Pesach, strong passwords and Istanbul.
Book Review: Out of the Depths (story of Rabbi Lau)
Holocaust books can range from only brushes the surface to difficult to read to powerfully upsetting. There was one book I read in part and never finished because I found it so upsetting. In that book, everyone Jewish died (each a gruesome, slow death) – the narrator himself was a prisoner in the camp but […]
Interview with Adam Gustavson, Illustrator of Hannah’s Way
Interview with Adam Gustavson, Illustrator of Hannah’s Way – how he picked clothes for the characters, his favorite projects, on being an illustrator