I shared last week that I signed up for the Radiant Watercolor Portraits class offered through Jeanne Oliver’s Creative Network.  I signed up for it because I found the watercolor examples by the instructor appealing and I would like more instruction on watercolor, but I also signed up because the idea of drawing people scares the snot out of me. Well, spiders scare the snot out of me…  Drawing a person is just reeeeeeally intimidating. The human face is so recognizable to us that even when little nuances are off, the whole piece looks off.  …unless it’s deliberately abstract, but even then, I haven’t figured out how to determine if something is an artistic masterpiece or a amateur disaster.  Anyone else there with me?! But, I’m never going to grow if I don’t do things that are intimidating and seem out of reach.  So, to portrait painting I go! First of all,

I haven’t had much of a chance to paint recently and I found I was really missing it, so last week, I set aside some time to put brush to paper.  I picked blueberries as my subject and started. I got to an “almost finished” place and realized I just hated it!  It was too stiff, structured, and boring.  It just wasn’t working. On a whim, I filled the brush with water and smeared it all over the small painting.  It looked like self-sabotage for a moment, but the pigments started to run and bleed, blurring all of my stiffness and amateur strokes. Once it dried, I added a little detail back in, but I learned my lesson from the first “draft”.  I loosened my choke hold on the brush and let the strokes be more suggestive and less literal. I’m so happy I stuck with this one and saw

For the past few years, as I really started to hone my skills as a photographer, I saw the world through a camera lens.  Seeing a beautiful scene, vignette, or a particularly photogenic item, and thinking what a lovely shot it would make.  Lately, though, I’ve been seeing things through a brush.  How would it look on a canvas or piece of paper? On my recent trip to Montana, sadly, I didn’t have time for site-seeing.  We had planned a 1/2 day, but between flight delays and fog, we ended up only having about 30 minutes to drive towards Glacier Park before darkness set in.  It was a magnificent 30 minutes, though, and I kept asking Jeff to stop the car, so I could snap a few pictures.  Even as I was taking the pictures, I was thinking how much I would love to paint these scenes and I was glad I

Now that my major deadlines are past and I am home from my trip to Montana, I am catching up on some things that have been waiting for my attention.  I’m also looking forward to getting back into more sketching, painting, and product design. I’ve gotten my creative space set up pretty well, but I realized I was lacking something for cloudy/rainy days – a work light.  Most of the time, we have gorgeous natural light in the studio, but there are days when it’s dark, even sitting right next to the large windows. So, I ordered a simple clamp-on drafting light from Amazon.  I looked for something a little more unique, like a cool antique brass lamp, but they were just more than I wanted to spend. This white one is definitely more modern, but the white color makes it neutral enough that it works.  It even provides a