More palm trees?

Been practicing palm trees and used them again on this card.

My good friend Amy helped me with the wording of this card for my 86 year old neighbor in Florida. Sam is deeply religious, bugs me to go to Church, has holy pictures and statues all over her house ... 

The inside of the card says ...

He showed me all the candles on your cake! 

Here's to a glowing birthday!

Didja know you can tape watercolor paper to regular printer paper and then run it through the printer? I really held my breath as it went through, but it worked!!!

Card completed

Front of the card is the lighthouse, inside you see the beach in Florida. We may be a lot of miles apart, but we are always close at heart.

Wish I had thought of that for the card, too late!

LIghthouse at Charlevoix

My nearest and dearest friend has a cottage up north.

Between me going south and her going north, we seldom see each other anymore.

I made this for on a card for her birthday.  She lives right near this lighthouse.

More Livingston

Did a thank you card for Wendy with her pooch on the front.

She recognized him. I am not so sure anybody else would.

Livingston

I did this portrait of Livingston, who belongs to a very dear friend in Florida. At first I planned to do it as a pencil drawing. But then I saw Athena, created by  Yevgenia Watts. I still plan to do the background, but that can wait until another day. 

Chicago Weekend

Had another quick trip back through Chicago this weekend.  I was able to stop at Dick Blick and got a new sketchbook.

Mike wanted to swim so I had some beach time.

I was ever so happily drawing a chair with a towel draped over it. When I looked up from my sketchbook, this man had plopped down onto the chair. So I started adding him into the sketch. As you can see, I started working from the bottom up and never saw his face!  All at once I glanced up and he had moved off taking my chair along with him.

My best drawing of the weekend is on the back of a scrap of blue paper - We were walking along when Mike took a phone call and I grabbed a scrap from my pocket and drew a streetlamp while I waited. I was really happy with how it turned out.

It's on the fridge

I took a "watercolor in a day" class at Saginaw State yesterday --- it ran from 9 - 3.  The instructor,   Rosemary Hayes, demonstrated her techniques for mixing colors, making water and trees, and chatted about other classes available. She chatted a bit then chatted some more ... and at 1:00  I texted Mike that we had not yet wet our watercolor brushes.

We did a lot of color theory and mixed colors on palette paper.  I did learn that Arches Watercolor  140# pound paper is the best, and that you can paint using just Pthtalo Blue, Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Red and Alizarin Crimson.   She gave us some violet to use for shadows although she said we could mix it easily enough.

At 2:15 we finally started our watercolor! What you see here is not what I accomplished in that final 45 minutes; it is what I finished by 7 pm when Mike came home and I proudly put it up on a magnet on the fridge.

I am not happy with the sand and rocks on the breakwater, but a bit afraid to make things worse.

I also am debating keeping its place on the fridge or actually getting it framed since my friend Amy's birthday is soon and she loves lighthouses. Unfortunately the paper we used is  10 x 14  and our instructor later told us that common frame sizes are either 9 x 12 or 11 x 14   so this would be a custom frame. Just WHY would they sell watercolor pads of paper in a non-standard frame size is beyond me.

Roses and Chairs

Weekly art lessons presented a convoluted collection of boards called an adirondack chair this week. I share my attempts as well as the inspiration photo so you can sort it out.  I also went back in Lillian's files and found a weekly challenge to do roses. So they appear on the same page as my sketch book has no rules!

I am thinking an adirondack chair makes much better sitting than drawing!

Thanks to Lillian Kennedy for the inspiration and photos.

Loving my Inktense pencils!

I took my sketches from Art Camp and made thank you cards for the camp leaders. I wish I had taken notes on my pencil sketches as I had NO recall of what color clothes they were wearing.

Art Camp Sketches

 I have a perfect captive audience when the instructors are giving information ... but these are kids and they move a lot, so I made some sketches first.

Came home and went over the pencil with black ink because I got tired of fighting my camera and scanner.

Our student/teacher trying to get the media player to work ... 

A not-so-patient ( nor polite) young lady