Gesso Flowers

Week 2 of the "Flower Crazy" online class, we are playing with watercolors, markers and gesso. This one looks line an underwater garden.

Imaginary Flower Garden

Welcome to my imaginary flower garden, where whimsical ideas bloom all year round! This time triggered by week one exercises in Carla's class. This is almost a form of meditation for me. When I am tired of working on the computer, I just go to my art studio and start doodling with watercolors, water soluble markers and white acrylic ink. It's just an exercise in mark making and I never know what it's going to look like. I usually work on several paintings at a time. I really like this one, could it be the start of my new collection?

Flower Crazy Workshop

I took this online workshop last year with Carla Sonheim. She is quite an amazing teacher and this class was my inspiration to my Sea Garden fabric collection that got me in the top 8 at the Fabric8 Spoonflower contest. You will learn so many different and fun techniques and will get to share with people in the flickr group. I loved it so much, I am going to do it again. And the great thing about Carla's online workshops is that once you pay for the workshop you get access to it FOREVER! And when she runs the class live again, you are welcome to join in for free! The class runs from March 4th-April 6th. The cost is $100 for 5 weeks! That's only $20 a week and well worth it. You can sign up for it here. I'll see you on the Flickr group!

Raccoon Party Tonight!

I started an acrylic painting class with local artist Max Grover.  This assignment was to do a night painting. We had to paint a kitchen at night with the refrigerator door cracked open as our light source, and something unusual happening in there. I must have been channeling my friend Megan who used to run a raccoon rescue business. I have to say, they are pretty mischievous creatures but they are fun to draw. And they like to party!

Happy Valentine's Day

I wanted to share a spread I painted in my friend Diane's altered book. The theme for her book is "Just One Word". It was actually really fun to work around and I decided to get my acrylic paints out and not do any collage on this one to try to keep it simple. I really like the playfulness of it and of course you will notice my favorite "Caribbean palette". My word was "Wish" and I was going for bright, colorful and happy. Cheers!

The Postcard Project

Last week I worked on a Postcard Project for Jane Davies to save her little country Post office. Read her post here and feel free to participate. I first collaged and painted a 22 x 30 piece of American Masters printmaking paper (from Utrecht). Then I framed the area that I wanted for this particular postcard, cut it out, added more paint and collage on top, then brushed a tinted glaze over it to bring it all together (a trick I learned from painter Don Tiller). I got 14 postcards out of that piece of paper and will be showing you how they turn out as I finish them.

Step 1- Collage

Step 2- Paint

Step 3- Crop

Step 4- Cut

Step 5- Add more paint and collage elements and final glazing

Sweet hand stitched sign

Seen at our local yarn shop. Love it. And it's true too!