Happy Valentine's Day!!!!

I am the luckiest woman in the world ....
 that is what my husband likes to hear me say ... and I do believe it, too!!


I made him a lemon meringue pie for Valentine's Day and he got me a beautiful bunch of flowers that will serve as inspiration for many days .... and it shows me he loves me on this 14th of Feb .... along with 364 others days of the year.

Clematis and Birdhouse demonstration!

I am excited to have this 

demonstration documented 

so I can share it with you all!

My watercolor group meets every Wednesday and this little sketch was selected as our subject for the day.

The resource (clipped from a discarded bank calendar) had a white background so the class wanted to have a white background.... I will post that later when the class gets it completed. It is turning out fine but not my favorite approach to a painting,

After they left, I went straight to work on the same image with a more negative approach.

I remembered to snap a photo after each step and I think you will find it interesting to scroll through the 12 images and "see" the painting emerge.

Flowers .... I love them!!!

Another busy day in the studio...

Student #1 Paper Collage started of Daisey type flower
Student #2 Basic Watercolor Negative Painting of a Daisey
Student #3 Tempera painting of Tulips

Along with helping these three students I was able to complete some office work, have lunch with my husband and paint a tulip card plus signed up a new student.

It was a good day and I love teaching .... but I am anxious to have time to paint on my own projects. I have so many ideas in my head, in my sketchbook and in a pile of projects started but not finished.

Fresh start for the New Year!

I would say today was a good day .... 

lots of things accomplished. 

Today was a good day for another BIG reason ... we put away all the holiday stuff at the brick and mortar ...fresh start for the new year! 

I still have some office work to complete for the end of the year and the beginning of the new. 

We have a system that helps us with orders and filing that requires tabs and labels so I have to print little titles ... I do it the old fashion way with my pen (no computer).

In the classroom/studio, I demonstrated pushing a color for one student. He was using green with no value shifts, no variety ... just green ...  everything was flat. I think the lesson helped him see the possibilities. 

With another student, I started a basic collage  lesson/project. She is super excited to be taking classes with me. I am really in the mood to do some collage work of my own so look for that in the near future. During my own time today,  I was able to finish two greeting cards to sell.

I worked in my sewing room tonight to create a round table cloth we need for the showroom table. I selected a blue and silver fabric with snowflakes, suns and stars. It is very wintery. I will try to posts a few snaps of it tomorrow.

I feel good about all I accomplished today. Sometimes, feeling good is what it is all about!!!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

I am going to try and post more often and get back into the habit of blog reading and communicate more with others I have clicked to follow.
I know I won't successfully diet or excercies .... or clean and organize.
Those are my usual new year's resolutions... but I am more likely to blog and post that I am to jog and fast.

So, for 2012 I resolve to be creative and blog about what I create.

I am in the mood to collage and work with paper and paste. This will be my first series of projects that I will be writing about. I love paper and started pulling out some of my stash.... I like art paste more than mediums because I really don't like the glossy shine. I will post some of my collages soon, most of my collages are backgrounds for future work ... the backgrounds are fresher and free of small details that come with the
finishing of the piece.

So gather your paper stash, favorite paper glue and let's work together or you can wait to see what i blog about and follow my lead.

Scribble!

I have a young student that comes in for classes every Friday and the first 10 to 15 minutes are spent pouting, sniffling and crying because she is so afraid of doing it WRONG and doesn't trust herself to know what to do.

So.... I today presented a project I have used before....scribbling ....random marks with related colors .... even this baffled her for a bit.

I gave her a surface to work on and a few watercolor pencils (warm colors). We drew a border together with the aid of a straight edge and all four of our hands. I then told her to pick a color and Scribble! She again got teary eyed and said she didn't know what to do ... so I demonstrated for her on a smaller piece of paper and she started in, rotating colors as I called out for her to "switch!"

The thought of drawing Autumn Leaves would have put her over the edge so we traced around the leaves I have pressed in an old phone book. She is light handed with her colors so after  we had traced several to fill the paper in a pleasing way, I had her go over the outline for more pigment.

Then, following my lead, she added small amounts of clean water to the leaf shapes and watched as her scribbles melted into beautiful soft Autumn Colors.

Her time was over before she could complete the background to which she had added more watercolor pencil (cool colors).
Hopefully she will return next Friday with a smile on her face, anticipating the FUN we have ahead of us.