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Personalized Name Art with My Watercolor Wildflowers

  This week I gathered up all the wildflowers I've painted and created a custom name plate art print. I like it for an entryway, kitchen, or dining area. There are Texas Bluebonnets, Indian paintbrushes, coneflowers, and sunflowers. The small pink ones are Wine Cups and the small orange and yellow flowers are Mexican Blanket. See those tall, slim purple flowers? I needed something long and delicate for balance. I've been thinking of them as lavender even though that isn't a wildflower, around here anyway. One could possible get away with calling them salvia. Another idea for this art print is the Grandmother Garden. Those are usually made with birth month flowers of each grandchild but after perusing those flowers assigned to each month and asking a few young friends, we decided that most don't really identify with the flowers assigned to their birth months. Several favorite flowers aren't even represented on the lists. I've selected a few fonts that I know to w
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Lovebirds Watercolor Painting

Living in the turkey and quail brown part of Texas, it is fascinating to me that such brilliantly colored birds as Lovebirds naturally exist. And that someone actually named them lovebirds! The season of declared love is quickly approaching and so far my only contribution to anything Valentine-ish has been the Cardinal Pair which are quite Christmasy, and the flamingos. But now we have lovebirds. Perfecto. Lovebirds Watercolor Painting on Etsy I finished painting these two lovebirds late last night and they are now leaning against my computer, propped up by the llama, waiting to be scanned for the printmaking process. And here is a photo at the beginning of the painting process, with the lime green seeping into the yellow.

Kids' Activity Pages from the book "If You Hear Oink Oink"

 Here are the printable activity pages for kids, from the back of my children's book If You Hear Oink Oink . Print the activity sheets, have fun with them. They are jpg files the size of a sheet of copy paper. Teachers, if it looks like something you could use, print them for your whole class. This one ^ is the printable rhyme maze activity sheet. Kids look for words that rhyme with "cat" to help them through the maze. Illustrated with the fuzzy black cat and a few other images from the book. This one ^ is the printable mini book activity sheet. Help kids cut the square along the dotted line and fold it twice to make a book. Then they get to choose what each animal does to create their own story. Print it a few times and create a slightly different story with each one. But most of all, enjoy!

Bluebonnet Floral Notecards Set

  A greeting card pack all about bluebonnets and several companion wildflowers. For some of these, I digitally combined two different paintings of mine, like the coneflowers that now have bluebonnets inserted among them, and the same with the sunflowers. This is the fun of having painted each bluebonnet separately. They were originally used as design elements all the way around a coffee mug, at my father-in-law’s request . Since then I’ve used them in several projects. I keep thinking I’ve used them to their fullest by now and am ready to retire them but occasionally I get a new request that they are perfect for. My personal favorite is the single Indian Paintbrush with the single bluebonnet. Next fave would be the poppy and bluebonnet field I think. I looked up Indian paintbrush to see what its scientific name is and it is just as beautiful: Castilleja. CAST-i-YE-ha. Named for Domingo Castilleja, a 1700’s Spanish botany professor. You can find my bluebonnets floral notecards set on my

Lion Art with Courage Bible Verse, Joshua 1:9

I painted this lion one August to honor both my parents. Whenever the subject came up, Mom would joke about how volatile it was for two Leo's to marry. She wasn't wrong. While I was painting this lion, I wound up wondering why some lions have black manes. It turns out their manes grow more and more black as they age. A lion with a mostly black mane is a long-time survivor. Inverse to we humans who tend to go gray and then white with age. Lion with courage verse, art prints on Etsy The original painting, which now resides in a private collection in Chicago, Illinois, does not have the scripture or any text on it. I'm not a fan of original paintings having text or pushing a meaning. I only paint because some things strike me as beautiful or emotional and I start thinking about how I might get watercolor to convey that. The verse was added later to some of the prints, upon a special request. It fit both symbolically and physically in the open space so I accommodated.

Bluebonnets In A Jar: The painting that got things rolling

  My watercolor painting Bluebonnets in a Jar was the art piece that finally got things going on my Etsy store. I had been doing pet portraits and quickly burning out on those. Then one day my father-in-law Ralph asked if I would paint some Texas bluebonnets on a coffee mug for him. He had offered to fix a chip in his neighbor's bluebonnet mug, her favorite, but the old ceramic mug cracked and broke under the pressure. Ralph felt bad about the broken mug and was determined to find a replacement. Bluebonnets in a Jar - art prints on Etsy We searched for one online in all the usual places and were surprised to find none. So I sat down one day and painted a full page of detailed bluebonnets that I could place one-by-one in a design that would wrap around the mug. We tried out a few companies that do sublimation printing on mugs and found one we liked. The mug turned out just as we had hoped and Ralph was very pleased to be able to replace his neighbor's favorite mug. The next tho

About me

Hello there, thanks for stopping by. My name is Cheryl Casey Ramirez and I am an artist living on the edge of the West Texas plains. I have been an artist for a pretty long time and I love what I do. I studied at Cisco College, Texas State University, and Tarleton State University where I earned a Bachelor of Art degree. I work in my home studio, mostly on watercolor paintings. My art is inspired by my upbringing, surroundings, and friends right here in Texas. From the fields and homesteads to our lively, vibrant cities. You'll find bold colors here with a sense of warmth and excitement. My husband and I are also beekeepers. We generally keep eight to ten hives at my dad’s farm. We learn more from those bees every year, including our humble place in the hierarchy of the ecosystem.