Hi all! I’ve been making the best of our short fall, refusing to be rushed by the snow. I’ve bought apples and decorative gourds at Green Bluff, did some exploring on some family property up north, went to visit the Japanese Garden at Manito Park (sadly closed when I arrived) and did some fall baking. What have you been up to? Do you have a prized pumpkin bread recipe? I’m looking for a good one-and in my mind, that means chocolate, not nuts!
Mt. Rainier Camping & Sketching
Little Spokane River Artist Studio Tour ONLINE
Hi Everyone!
I’ll be posting updates of what I’ve been up to since we last talked soon, but I wanted to get this out quick. We’re coming up on the Annual Littler Spokane River Artist Studio Tour which has gone online for this year. If you love local art, you should definitely check out the website and all the artists participating. Me included! I knew this would be a good excuse to finally try to get a website up and going, especially with the holiday season approaching (I can hardly believe it!). Feel free to poke around in the shop. I’d appreciate any feedback you can give me about it since this online selling process is sure a learning process and if you feel moved to buy something, I’d love that too!
Hope that you are all well and breathing clean air during these beautiful fall days!
Summer Dreaming
We’re hanging out just under 100 degrees right now here at my house and I’m planning on popsicles for dinner. Despite the discomfort, I’m glad that summer isn’t over yet. I’ll hold onto the warmth and daylight and plein air painting for as long as possible. I mean, my tomatoes are just starting to ripen!
Hope that you are all doing well and getting to enjoy the beautiful place we live in in whatever capacity you can.
#the100dayproject2020 DONE!
I made it guys! I completed #the100dayproject2020! 100 days of painting in gouache and watercolor since April 7th. I’m so pleased because this is the longest challenge I’ve ever done and I wasn’t sure I could manage it. Things got really tough around Day 75, but switching to working almost entirely from life either plein air (painting outside) or painting still life, rather than doing master copies really helped bring new life to the project.
I’ve wanted to go out and paint the fields near our house for years, but this time of year was always busy for me with classes and art festivals so it got put off. Well, this is finally the year for it!
Fields, Gardens, Barns & Flights of Fancy
Hello there!
How are you?
I’m hot and bug bitten and slightly sunburned (I leave the sunscreen by the door, when will I learn to PUT IT ON?). I’ve been keeping myself occupied in the garden as the pace of growing has accelerated in the warm weather and out in the fields painting the shifting crops of our beautiful area.
Hope you are all doing well. Are you gardening or walking, reading or at the lake? What are you up to these days?
Springtime Explorations
Still sticking close to home and keeping myself occupied the way I always have, painting and drawing what is in front of me, but also thinking about how different this spring has been than previous ones. Especially, all the students graduating at this time of year and how different their experience has been from expectations. Almost a year ago, I visited Lewis & Clark with a friend of mine who teaches there and took pictures. Now seemed an appropriate time to do a painting of that school as I thought about all those graduating seniors heading off to college or the unknown.
View from the Studio
I’m still plugging along on my #100dayproject, despite the garden providing plenty of distraction on the warmer days. I should be able to get tomatoes and peppers in the ground in the next couple of days!
The first few paintings here are all of our neighbors’s houses as seen from my studio window. This has really been enlightening because it is amazing how different they all look despite the same subject! Atmosphere and light (aka weather and time of day) make a huge difference!
The following paintings are all copies of various master works-the first three are contemporary and I’m afraid I’ve lost track of their names, but the last two are famous paintings by Maynard Dixon and Edward Hopper. You can see a difference in paint handling between the paintings above and those below. Above, I’m working in transparent watercolor, in my usual style, while below, I’m working thickly with gouache to mimic the look of oil paintings. I really do need to collect some master watercolor paintings and try making copies of those! It’ll be interesting to see what I learn as compared with copying oil paintings!
Truckin' Along with my Paints
I’m truckin’ along in my quarantine routine-a morning walk, a little bit of yard work (weeds wait for no one!), painting for my 100 day project (We’re coming up on 25 days, a quarter of the way there!), read (I just finished a book on Maynard Dixon, one of my favorite Western painters), some more painting or drawing and time with my husband. I’ve learned that without the interruptions and days that I need to spend out of the studio, I need to factor in more breaks for stretching after ending up with some intense neck pain from spending multiple days basically looking down all day (painting, reading, weeding, pretty much all the same angle!). I’ve got some house projects and we’re finally getting warm enough that I can start planting veggies and flowers which will help to break up my schedule so that’s good. There will be paintings of our lilac bushes and the neighborhood apple tree blossoms to come. Hold me to it!
Saturday plans include the wild excitement of making our new favorite waffle recipe: Essential Raised Waffles from Smitten Kitchen. The recipe makes a bunch of delicious, rich waffles that have a crisp outside and soft inside. Sadly not for Belgian waffle irons, just the normal type. I like them for breakfast, then we freeze the rest of the batch. Waffles defrost easily in the toaster oven and I frequently have one topped with avocado and oven roasted tomatoes. Delish!
Wishing you all the best!
100 Day Project
I decided that since I’m home anyway, this is the year to finally try the 100 Day Project which is exactly what it sounds like-a project that you design/plan and do for 100 days. I’ve seen all sorts of projects-100 days of knitting, haiku writing, collage, paper cuts, origami, painting, song composing, and more. I’ve done 30 day challenges before, but this is three times as long and I’m a little daunted! I decided to do my project based on exercises suggested by Nathan Fowkes in his “How to Paint Landscapes Quickly and Beautifully”. I wanted to make sure I had a variety of different activities to do so I don’t get bored over 100 days, but all of them are similarly themed. To make it manageable all of the paintings will be no larger than 5” x 7” and most of them will be smaller. All of the paintings will be in watercolor and or gouache and the value studies can be in paint or markers in shades of gray.
Painting Exercises:
Small color copies of master paintings
Gray scale value studies of master paintings
Painting the same view outside my studio window at different times of day and weather conditions
20 stroke paintings-a focus on simplicity and what is essential
Three colors plus white used to make an abstract composition
The project officially started April 7th, but you can join any time. Maybe it might give you something fun to do to pass the time?
Here are a few of the paintings I’ve done in the first two weeks!
Sketching at Home
Hi everybody! We’re still doing well here. Friday was my first time leaving the house to go anywhere in two weeks (grocery store run). I’m grateful to be able to get out for a walk or poke around the garden even though the weather has been less than welcoming lately.
Staying Home, Making Art
Well, the Stay Home, Stay Healthy order is fully in effect here in Washington. I’ve been sticking to the studio seriously for over a week at this point and everything is well here. I’m taking pleasure in the little things-new seedlings coming up under my grow lights, making Smitten Kitchen’s Puddle Cakes (I love a molten lava style chocolate cake), going for walks weather permitting (I couldn’t feel my face when I got back from my walk today!) and painting. So here’s a bit of what I’ve been up to since the end of February…
Custer's Spring Arts & Crafts Show
Hi Guys!
In a little over a week, I’ll be at the Custer’s Spring Arts & Crafts show at the Fairgrounds! I’ve been framing many of the watercolors I shared in my last newsletter! And I’ll have prints of the Monroe St Bridge Arch and the Parkade! Hope to see you there!
Dates and Hours:
Friday, Mar. 6, 10am - 8pm
Saturday, Mar. 7, 10am - 6pm
Sunday, Mar. 8, 10am - 4pm
Admission: Adults $7.00 - Good all Weekend!
Kids 12 and under Free!
Acres of Free Parking!
Custer's 43rd Annual Spring Arts & Crafts Show features 300 professional artists and crafters from across the northwest displaying and selling their Fine Art, Hand Crafts and Specialty Foods. With over 78,000 square feet of exhibit space, this is the largest show of its kind in the Inland Northwest!
Discover One of a Kind Jewelry, Hand Thrown Pottery, Fused Glass Work, Wood Turning, Metal Art, Photography, Soaps, Candles, Paintings, Wearable Fiber Art, Mixed Media, Seasonal Decor and so much more!
Specialty foods include Loose Leaf Hand Crafted Teas, Gourmet Chocolate Caramel Apples, Artisan Cheeses, Balsamic Vinegars, Baking Mixes and more. Many of these items will be available to sample!
Enjoy the festive spring atmosphere with participants decorating their displays and selling items for gifts and home decor.
Wintry Scenes
I’m painting like mad trying to get ready to hang work at the Rockwood Retirement Center (They have a HUGE wall for me to fill!) and have some new paintings at the Custer’s Spring Show the first weekend of March. Hope you all are well!
Snowed in and loving it
We’ve been snowed in to the point where the pantry is starting to get a bit bare, but I’ve been loving the excuse to hole up and paint in the studio. It’s pretty funny to me that I’m surrounded by white and the theme for this post is definitely GREEN, especially since I’m not sick of the snow yet. I still have a whole bunch of snow paintings to do!
How are you all doing? Enjoying the snow or bemoaning it? My goal this winter is to go snow shoeing in my yard (We’ve got about 10 acres.) and try painting plein air without freezing my fingers off. We’ll see if I manage to achieve it!
Happy Holidays, Best Wishes from Me!
Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, and all best wishes for you in this holiday season! Here are some of my favorite things to do this time of year.
Whatever you’re doing, I hope it is lovely and I’ll see you in the new year! Here’s to another year of adventures! Thanks for coming along with me and for all your kind comments and support. I really appreciate it!
Winter is Here!
Hoo boy guys, we haven’t seen much snow yet, but last night, the high at my house was 15 degrees! As I write this on Sunday afternoon, the furnace keeps kicking on to keep us warm!
Snowy Scenes & Holiday Shows!
Liberty Building Painting-Watch my Process
I was comissioned to paint the Liberty Building and just recently finished the commission. It was quite large-22” x 30”, which is a full sheet of Arches Watercolor paper and I wanted to do justice to one of my favorite places in Spokane (The home of both Auntie’s and Pottery Place Plus, makes it dear to my heart).