Workshop, WC WIP, and a Sketchcrawl

I am excited to announce that registration is now open for my Intro to Repurposing Books class. The information can be found under the Workshops/Classes tab at the top of this page. The class is in the lovely town of Haslett, which is just north of East Lansing. Actually it is hard to tell where East Lansing ends and Haslett begins. Class size is limited to 10, but if you can't take it now but are interested in taking this class at a later date, let me know and I will offer it again.


As you know if you are a regular reader I met up with my friend Dee in Battle Creek on Friday and we spent some time out of doors sketching. I had a great time. I'm not sure my art turned out all that great, but what good practice for getting out there and sketching. Here are a few of my feeble noble attempts.

We stayed up way too late (I think it was 3 am when the lights were turned out), so when I got home on Saturday, I took a nap and then while the art muse was still with me, I started a watercolor and ink sketch.

I intended for it to be as lovely as this postcard I received in the mail from Ursula, which I won in a drawing on her blog:

I am so pleased with this and hope to be able to sketch like this some day.

However, I am still having issues with perspective and I am trying to put too much into it. I wish I'd done the windows as she did in the postcard above.

In progress

I began by cutting a large sheet of Arches 140# wc paper to get this 11" x 14" and got it thoroughly wet. The initial problem began when I added color. I was thinking of very pale yellows with some ocher, reds, blues. I added the blue immediately after the yellow and voila! green. I added the color with the paper in landscape mode, but without intending to I ended up with much too linear color. So I turned the paper and began my buildings in that perspective.

I am quite happy with the roof lines and the lamp and some of the windows are fine, but some are quite wonky (in case you don't know wonky is a very technical art term :-) ). I am going to keep working and try to get the windows into a more pleasing perspective.

I will also be working on another repurposed book to take as a sample to my workshop. Now I am rummaging around in my closet of stash to find lovely gifts to give to the workshop participants. Can you believe it is July already??!!

Happy 4th to all of you who celebrate. May you have a lovely, festive day and may the mosquitoes magically not be present at all.

xoxo