Hot and Steamy, but Raining

I thought I was going to go down and have to be resuscitated in the conditioning class this morning. It was cooler but very humid and the fans quit working. By the time I left there, I was soaked through and my water bottle was empty. But it started raining on the way home and so I am a very happy person right now. I just hope it continues to rain all day. I don't need a great downpour; I would be happy with a fine rain for hours and hours. As soon as I got home, I ate a handful of cherry tomatoes and am drinking my first of what I think will be several bottles of cold water.


I did find time to do some art yesterday and I have a green thumbnail to prove it. I don't think these are done yet, but I like them so far. I used some Peerless watercolors on these two pages. Peerless watercolors come on small cards and are activated when you wet them.

I also did a bit more on the previous day's pages. I did find that dabbing some gel medium over the flowers "set" the Gel Sticks and thanks to your suggestions I found that using them a bit less thickly is the way to go.

I think both of the spreads are crying out for either some journaling or a sketch or perhaps an image transfer. Who knows what will transpire between now and the time at which I think they are done.

I did a couple of pencil sketches in my favorite repurposed journal. I made this one last summer and it is my favorite one so far.

It is a nice carry along size - about 4" x 6.5".

Lillian Kennedy has a site called Weekly Art Lesson and I used her guidance to try this Adirondack Chair. I have rather a penchant for these chairs as besides loving to sit in them, the hubster builds them.

And I love pears, both to eat and to draw. I don't think I've ever seen a sketch or a painting of a pear that was wrong. Pears are very forgiving and are not geometric so are much easier to draw than a bicycle or a building, say.

I had to lighten this one quite a bit because it was being overwhelmed by a much darker pen sketch on the back side of the page.

Last evening my daughter brought her two girls and a friend of the older one for dinner and then she and I left the girls home with Poppa and walked for about 2 miles. It was in the nineties and there wasn't a breeze at all. Ugh!!! But we were both quite proud of ourselves for sticking with our plan.

I did take a very cool shower when I got home and then put an ice pack on the nape of my neck for about 20 minutes. Very refreshing. As was to be expected, after my previous sleepless night, I went to bed around 11 last night and the hubster had to wake me at 8:30 so I could grab a bite to eat before my conditioning class. Here's hoping I can get a regular night's sleep tonight.

It is a day when I get my new lesson from Vinita for the Going Green class, but I am already over my allotted 5 GB from AT&T (last month the internet portion of my bill was $140 - this cannot continue). I am already over my allotted 5 GB for this month and have 16 days to go. I think I will have to drive to Mason and have some iced tea at the Booksellers coffee shop and do my browsing/surfing there.

And how are you doing? Are you in extreme heat? How are you dealing with it? Are you making time to be creative? Or are you merely surviving? I surely hope your muse is with you and keeping that awful inner critic at bay for you while you play in your art space. I'd love to see what you are doing.

xoxo

Still Life Workshop

I spent most of the day yesterday at the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Jackson at a Mary Rochelle Burnham still life workshop. It was offered by the Jackson Civic Art Association (JCAA), of which I am a member.


What a great facility for a workshop - a huge room with lots of electrical outlets and lots of room. We worked 2 to a table getting together up front to listen and watch demos. Most of the attendees worked in oils, a few in acrylics, and little ole me in watercolor. I got tired of waiting for my layers to dry - you will see in my works that sometimes I thought it was dry and it wasn't - so finished up with Caran d'Ache Neocolor IIs.


I got reacquainted with a couple of women I knew from life sketching class and was pleasantly surprised to find a friend from my teaching days whom I hadn't seen in a very long time. There was fruit, nuts, popcorn, and a variety of breads and bagels provided. I started my "eat only what doesn't need a label" quest the day before, so I subsisted on fruit and nuts for the day.


For our first exercise we had 10 minutes to paint one fruit with a shadow (we brought clip on lamps for that very reason). We did this three times before setting up our arrangement and painting our "real" piece of art.


Here is my practice piece:

I'm afraid I fiddled too much. It is really hard to do this kind of thing with watercolor. What I needed to do was make just a couple of brushstrokes and then leave it alone.

And here is my finished piece:

The final layers were added with the Neocolor IIs and left dry.

My friend, Lorna, sent me a link to a video of Joanne Boon Thomas painting a very loose sunflower and I can't wait to try it for myself. I would really like to learn how to loosen up in watercolor. Here is the link to that youtube video. It is definitely worth a watch. I am also looking forward to an online  class with Vinita Pappas later this month called "Loosening Up in Watercolor". I have watched her on video a couple of times and love her style.

When I got home yesterday I had a package waiting for me from Jerry's Artarama with two quill brushes and a set of 30 Mungyo Soft Pastels. I can't wait to play with them (separately, of course) and share the results with you.

Meanwhile, for this morning I am going to drive into Jackson to Ella Sharp Park to the life drawing class that is offered by JCAA. They now have a nude artist - I've never sketched a real, live nude before and am pretty sure I will feel a bit uncomfortable at first, but I think this is too good an opportunity to pass up. I will share my experience and sketches with you tomorrow. I also hope to work on the water lily and the altered book today.

I have Miss Z, Miss P, and Miss M overnight on Saturday, which I am sure will be great fun. I will try to get pix and let the older two do some art that I can share with you.

I hope you are having a great day today and that you are taking some time for yourself. Thank you to all of you for your support, especially those of you who take the time to leave comments. I know from personal experience that leaving comments through Blogger can be a pain in the *ss, and so really treasure the ones that I get.

xoxo