Fiber Artist
The beautiful vegetables and fruit we receive in our weekly box is truly inspirational. I thoroughly enjoy cooking and appreciate the opportunity to try new recipes as the contents of the box change. This week brought our first delicata squashes. What a grand vegetable they are! They are not only easy to prepare — just […]
Last week I was thinking about what I have in my medicine cabinet (perhaps I had a headache?) and what I would like to have there. My mind immediately began racing with possibility. I grabbed a Tombow pen and my watercolors and started sketching. Click on image for larger view. While I was working on […]
Forget December 25th, Santa dropped down my chimney last week — at least it feels that way! I ordered a Schmincke travel paint tin from Blick Art Materials (none of my local art stores, including Blick, carry Schmincke products) and expected to wait 2 months for its arrival. Sigh. Within a few weeks I got […]
This week has simply vanished into thin air. I haven’t completed viewing all the lessons that Liz Steel has in store for me in Sketchbook Skool but I am plugging away. The process of watching the videos, contemplating the lesson and doing my best to get into a new mindset are fun but also a […]
This week Andrea Joseph is leading the charge for Sketchbook Skool. If you’re not familiar with her work, your eyes will soon be wide open! Her style of teaching is relaxed and calming. At the same time she’s packing in the tips and techniques. Andrea’s forte is drawing with ballpoint pens. This was a real […]
Sketchbook Skool instructor Cathy Johnson had us sketching birds this past week. I tried my hand at a cedar waxwing sketch with watercolor but was disappointed in the outcome. I’m pretty happy with this sketch of a raven though. Click on image for a larger view. I am also taking a class focused on sketching […]
No matter how I fine tune the flow of mail that comes to my letterbox, there is a daily abundance of junk mail. This year I’ve finally embraced the inevitable with new vision. It started with Carla Sonheim’s on-line class here. Recent inspiration from my friend and fellow artist Priscilla Read followed this week! She […]
My first lesson with Val Webb on sketching cats and dogs was Monday. The first lesson is called Pencil Language. We started with a primer on how we were going to be using our 4B graphite pencils including warm-up exercises to become more familiar with how to create hatching, cross-hatching, scumbling and stippling. I love […]
If I had known that Koosje Koene was going to ask me to sketch a self-portrait, I probably would not have signed up for this semester with Sketchbook Skool. I have never attempted any kind of portrait sketching. But I’m in the klass now — and I’ve trusted her before and been pleasantly surprised with […]
I’ve completed the final lesson of Carla Sonheim‘s Junk Mail Artist Book series. There was more painting, more drawing. . .then changing of the mind involving more painting and more drawing. At some point one has to say it’s time to stop. Done and done. And here it is. Be sure to click on an […]
Finally! I’ve completed the fourth of five lessons with Carla Sonheim and her method for creating a small book from junk mail. This step was extremely challenging for me — each drawing extended beyond its page to pages behind creating a puzzle to solve: what the heck can be created from the partial marks here?? […]
This is the first week of the second semester with Sketchbook Skool. Danny Gregory is our first instructor. The focus of this 6-week class is ‘seeing’ — not what we think we see, but what is actually in front of us. The lectures are thoughtful; the homework is challenging. First assignment: Draw a piece of […]
Last week I snipped a couple small branches of my friend’s black oak tree to do some sun printing. The black oak is a native California tree and will fit nicely with the art quilt series I’m working on. I am quite taken with the shape of the leaf. It has so much character and […]
I learned about Carla Sonheim from my friend and fellow-artist Priscilla Read and I simply could not resist trying her Junk Mail Artist’s Book class! In just five lessons at Silly U I am turning junk mail — the stuff usually tossed straight into the recycle bin — into a book. I can’t see a […]
Roz Stendahl, one of the 6 instructors of Sketchbook Skool, focused on sketching animals. She particularly liked sketching live animals. She also realized that it can be quite a challenge to sketch a model that is moving, particularly if you are new to the discipline. She recommended going to natural history museums, state parks or […]
There are few things that scream summer like strawberries. And we are enjoying our share of beautiful strawberries that arrive each week in our box from Shooting Star CSA. Click on image for larger view. I couldn’t resist a calm sketching moment with the last few berries in the basket. Tommy Kane, one of the […]
I think it’s not so much a problem of lack of inspiration for sketching, it’s more a matter of being overwhelmed by everything that could be sketched. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it for now. For this sketch I played with creating the background wash first. When it was dry I simply put […]
I’m in the middle of an on-line class called Sketchbook Skool developed by Danny Gregory and Koosje Koene. The idea behind this 6-week class led by a different instructor each week is to gain skills and inspiration which will lead to making sketching a daily habit. I am learning a lot and having fun, my […]
There is just one more meeting for the watercolor class I’m taking at Merritt College so I’m especially pleased to have completed this painting on Friday. The painting began with the background using a wet-on-wet technique — the reverse of other paintings we’ve done — then the shadow, the reflection and the eggplant. The last […]
I’ve been attending a beginning watercolor class at Merritt College since August. I enjoyed the journal-style sketching and watercolor classes with Jane LaFazio (see the Sketch/Watercolor category for posts on those classes) so much that I thought something more ‘formal’ would improve my skills, especially mixing and using color. Instructor Pablo Villicana Lara is soft-spoken, […]
I was in Ashland, OR, recently enjoying some of the plays and the great food and I took a quiet moment for myself to do a bit of sketching and watercolor painting. This is one of three ceramic chickens that Pat uses on her dining table. This one was medium-sized and the most colorful of […]
I asked for suggestions for naming the quilt I completed last week and received many ideas. I particularly liked the suggestion of Branching Out from my friend Carol Larson. Capturing the obvious (a tree branch) and the allusion to my trying something new with the quilting hit the spot for me. The on-line class I’m […]
I worked parts of several days this week on a page intended to introduce me to collage. Yesterday I was so unhappy with what I had that I tossed it out. I may or may not go back to that lesson and see what I can do with it. Meanwhile, I sketched and painted another […]
Skidding to the finish line of this week, I have completed a second page using the 8 techniques of focus in Jane’s Sketching & Watercolor in a Mixed Media Journal class. A week always seems like plenty of time to complete several pages for one lesson. The problem is that I’ve never mastered the art […]
Where to begin. There are many things in progress here. After all, it’s July — the height of summer. Our side yard with the succulent plantings is filling in nicely. Here’s a close up of one panel The male oriole and his entire family — 2 chicks this year! — visit our feeder regularly. He […]
Whew! This is week 3 with Jane and she’s really ramping up our game. The assignment: divide a page into 8 sections and complete assignments using 4 different techniques. Don’t worry about where you start on the page or how you divide the page. . . just get going! So here I am so far: […]
It’s the end of the week with Lesson 2: Everyday objects. I’m always optimistic that I’ll get several pages of sketches done in a week, I certainly intend to. I feel lucky to have completed 2 pages! Here is the first page of objects from the dining room: And here is the second page with […]
This lesson introduced a new tool: a Tombow pen. This nifty pen uses water-soluble acid-free ink and has 2 ends: a brush and a fine tip. The fine tip is great for drawing the outline of a final sketch. The brush end is handy for getting more ink on the watercolor brush for darker shading. […]
I completely enjoyed the class I took with Jane LaFazio in early 2012 — Sketching & Watercolor, Journal Style — and regret that I haven’t made use of my new skills beyond the class. So I decided to get back into a class with Jane and take it to a new level. I’ve never done […]
