Fall's End & Zoom Class!

Still clinging to Fall over here, though it is looking more like…

THIS…

than THIS.

Oh well. Maybe next year? It looks like I’ll get plenty of practice painting snow this winter.

I bought a pumpkin and some decorative gourds at Green Bluff back in October and they are still hanging out on my studio table. I decided to tackle them in gouache on tan toned paper.

Swan gourd! And now for the Big Announcement-I’m going on ZOOM! Read more below.

ZOOM CLASS! I will be teaching a “Paint and Sip” class with the Northwest Museum of Art and Culture on November 19th, 5:30-8. Sadly, we aren’t able to do it in person so the Sip part will be BYOB, but it will be a live class where you paint along with me as we paint a scene of Riverfront park-the Clock tower and Pavilion.

There’s still time to sign up here!

House Portraits & Fall Dreams

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!

Painted at Siemer’s Farm up at Green Bluff a couple years ago on a warm October day. I love to visit them and Hansen’s Orchard and High Country Orchard for apples, apple cider, gourds and more.

Sketching my old Ford Explorer on the overgrown dirt road where family goes to hunt deer. Lots of interesting plants, especially around the old homestead and near the creek. We picked elderberries!

A small watercolor sketch of the brilliant colors in the Japanese Garden. It seems like they are closed for the season (or never opened?) which is a bummer because this is the best of the time of the year there, in my opinion. These next two paintings are recently completed house portraits.

This is the 2nd time I’ve painted this house and I’m still loving it. The commissioner has hired me to do a portrait of the house in each season. So far, we have done Spring and Summer and I’m looking forward to Fall and Winter.

A little brick house on the South Hill is going to be a wedding present.

I love painting portraits of people’s homes. If you would like to commission me to do a painting as a Christmas present (whether it is of a house, a pet, a garden, etc), please reach out to me before the 7th of November when I will have to start charging holiday prices.

Mt. Rainier Camping & Sketching

I grew up on the west side of the state and I loved all the green and how lush it was, but I didn’t really appreciate HOW GREEN it is there until I lived on the other side of the Cascades in a high desert for a couple years.

We were lucky to be at Mt. Rainier National Park during peak wildflower bloom and it was wee bit chilly, thanks to the elevation but we found a sheltered spot and I did this painting of lupine and indian paint brush and yellow daisies carpeting the hill.

My friend playing her ukulele and a quick sketch of the wildflowers. It was an interesting trip because we had to camp on a forest service road because the most of the campsites in the park were closed due to tree fall danger (perhaps the rangers weren’t able to clear them earlier in the year because of Covid closures/lay offs?). No bathrooms and no running water besides a nearby stream, a 37 degree night and springing a leak in one of the air mattresses contributed to a bit more roughing it than we were initially planning but we still had a good time.

I stopped on the way home to sketch these windmills near Vantage. There’s a rest stop with a great view of them as you travel east. I sat at a picnic table and was grateful for the wind (even though it was warm) because it was still in the mid 90’s as I did this. I could feel sweat dripping down my back as I rushed to finish this. Despite the discomfort, I tried to embrace it. Soon, we’ll be in the time of year when I can’t seem to get warm and a 40 degree day is excitingly balmy! That what sketchbooks help me celebrate-living in the moment.

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!

Painted sitting under a pine tree on our 10 acre property, looking out over our neighbors’s fields toward the distant hills. Done EARLY in the morning.

It is sunflower season up here north of Spokane, which means that swarms of people are parked all along the roads and highways, trying to get selfies with the flowers. Sunflowers are one of my favorite flowers (They were my wedding flowers, in fact), but I find all this sunflower mania frustrating because people are not respecting private property and are trampling and damaging the flowers-even if they don’t break any flowers getting into the field, sunflowers have a very shallow root system and the repeated trampling is not good for them. If the fields get to be too much of a hassle to maintain or the farmers can’t make a profit with the damaged plants, then there won’t be any sunflower fields at all and that would make me SO SAD.

This particular field is not far from my in-laws so I was able to spot it pretty early on. It was easy to set up along the dirt road (outside the field) to paint.

There is a saying the sunflower faces follow the movement of the sun across the sky and that is true to some extent in wild and garden varieties, but the commercial variety has a thick neck and frequently gets stuck simply pointing east, which means that in many of the fields I’ve been seeing, the sunflowers have their backs to you. Still, there’s always a couple that break the mold!

My Canna Lily is blooming its heart out and I’ve been spending time in the early morning admiring the way the light falls through the leaves.

I’m working on a large painting of a wedding bouquet for a commission. The key flowers are red Gerberas so I bought myself a bouquet and did some studies-first a quick sketch in the case of this painting and a more involved painting, as in below.

Couldn’t resist doing a purple shadow!

This is a painting of the Aer O Toaster, a large neon sculpture that hangs in the Spokane International Airport in Baggage Claim. After I did a quick sketch of it, early this year, the artist Ken Yuhasz commissioned me to do a painting for him. It was an utter delight.

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!

This distinctive clump of trees is at the end of our road and looked stunning in the light of sunset.

View down the road with winnows of alfalfa drying, painted while listening to birds chirp and the breeze trying to rifle my sketchbook pages.

A study of cut alfalfa in various stages of drying and another sketch of the view down the road. The sketch in the lower right hand corner is watercolor, the rest is gouache.

A little less than a week after the first cutting, they started baling. The round bales are hay and the rectangles are alfalfa. The blue dots are cornflowers that grow in the ditches along around road. I love them. Each of these are done quickly so I can get out and back home before it gets too hot that I risk sunburn or heat stress. There’s no shade out there, so early morning and evening sessions are the goal and the lighting at those times is the best anyway.

My bug house from Costco. Nobody has moved in yet, but I love the red roof in all the greens of the landscape.

A single ripe plum.

A strawberry picked from Siemer’s Farm.

Probably the last pear until fall and they are in season again.

I went shopping at Art Salvage a week back (You can shop online and do curbside pick up!) and bought shells. I grew up next to the ocean and collecting shells is something I’ve done my whole life. It is something I miss a lot now that I’ve moved inland.

A whelk shell painting, already sold! By the way, almost all of my paintings from the 100 Day Project are available for sale and priced $35-70 and range in size from 3” x 5” to 5” x 7”. A great opportunity to grab a bit of original art!

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.

I sowed Emiko cabbage for the first time this year and they are beautiful when the light glows through the leaves. They are tender looking, more like giant rosettes of lettuce than my usual cabbages. As the note on the sketch says, I heard a vole nibbling a 2 ft tall sunflower he’d chewed down. I caught him eventually but not till after he ate about 10 lbs of potatoes. He was HUGE.

I am currently obsessed with strawberries. The ones I inherited from the people who lived here before us aren’t productive. They make beautiful blossoms in the spring and then nothing. Sigh. Instead I go picking at Green Bluff, but I need to buy some bare root plants next spring and make a patch of my own.

A fast color study of a barn in a canola field up north. They’ve all faded now in the heat, but as I drive around, I can see the sunflowers starting to grow. Perhaps this will be the year of yellow?

A more detailed painting in the same location as the above quick sketch.

Painting done in the studio

8” x 10” painted in the field

This field is a little further north. The Coors Beer billboard made me laugh. Man, I think we all need to chill. I could certainly use some.

Very fast painting of the strawberry field up at Green Bluff after I’d picked about 20 lbs of strawberries. I made fruit leather and my husband and I probably ate around 10 lbs ourselves!

Facing the opposite way, painting a stately barn and then I rabbited off to go make fruit leather. Strawberries don’t last in a hot car.

Igor Shiplin is a Russian painter (now deceased) who I discovered recently and I love his bright, impressionistic color and interesting compositions so I added him to my 100 Day Project master copy list. We’re past 80 days. The first 50 days flew by and the 10-15 days after that weren’t too hard but from the 65th day onward, it has really gotten tough, but I won’t let this beat me. I’m going to get to 100 days!

Igor Shiplin, gorgeous sunshine on a lawn.

David Dibble is a contemporary painter who has a great take on the trope of painting barns. He manages to make them his own.

David Dibble

David Dibble

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.

Lewis and Clark High School

Early spring Arrowleaf Balsamroot bloom in Hamblem park on the South Hill. I passed by on my way to deliver a print and had to stop!

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garden (but thanks to all the rain, I’m still barely making a dent in the weeds!) This is a small study of strawberries in the garden. I can’t wait till the picking fields up at Green Bluff are open!

Peonies in the bed by my house. I’m so pleased that I got out there and painted them before the petals all fell off. It seems like peony blossoms last a day before the wind or the rain or the heat makes them fall apart in a rain of petal confetti.

Neighbor’s barn. I’ll definitely have to return throughout the year to study it.

Mt. Spokane, at the time of the sketch, it just barely had some snow left on its ski runs. Now it is just dirt.

Fast watercolor studies looking down my street as I test out a new plein air painting set up.

Neighbor’s house before rain as seen from my studio.

Sunny late afternoon view.

Sunny morning. You can really tell the difference between the yellow house’s irrigated green lawn grass and the field grass of the closer neighbor.

Gazebo at Coeur D’Alene Park in Browne’s Addition painted for Artfest Online with the Northwest Museum of Art and Culture. I filmed myself painting this and you can see the video here, just scroll down. I’ll be doing classes with the MAC this summer, in person if we can and via Zoom if not.

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!

A break in the storm toward the end of April (You can still see some snow on the mountain and there aren’t any leaves on the big deciduous tree.), much cooler light.

Sunset just a couple nights ago!

Another cloudy day.

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!

Gouache copy of Maynard Dixon’s Cloud World

Original by Edward Hopper

One more bit of exciting news! After 13 hours of shoveling gravel to prepare its foundation, my studio is here! It’s completely unfinished inside, so there’s still a lot of work to do, but I am SO EXCITED.

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!

This is a recently completed painting for a patron who got married at the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend. I grew up on the West side of the state and the thing I miss the most is the ocean so this was a delight to do. I had to include one of the ferries!

This is a house portrait with the patron’s beloved pets. She wanted to include both current and deceased pets so we worked out a plan-living pets are inside the house while those no longer with her are in the yard, keeping an eye on the place!

This painting and the one below are both gouache studies of Jeremy Lipking paintings for the 100 day project.

You can see the uneven deckled edge at the top of this photo.

A quick morning sketch of the light hitting our neighbor’s yellow house while I was still half asleep.

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:

1. Small color copies of master paintings

2. Gray scale value studies of master paintings

3. Painting the same view outside my studio window at different times of day and weather conditions

4. 20 stroke paintings-a focus on simplicity and what is essential

5. 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!

Yes, we had overnight snow in early April. It all melted by mid-morning thank goodness.

I spotted this dramatic lighting between spring storms.

Study of a Maynard Dixon painting

Gouache study of “Capri Stairs” by John Singer Sargent

Gouache studies of contemporary masters

My first attempt at a 20 stroke painting. It is much closer to a 35 stroke painting! This is really tough-both to think strategically and limit brushstrokes AND remember to count!

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.

Since we’ve been getting snow in the morning pretty regularly I’ve been exploring around the house. This is my reading nook! The colorful throw on the armchair is a kantha quilt made from silk sari scraps that I bought when I was in Kolkata last year.

This is a vignette of part of the house, looking back toward the front door from my spot at the kitchen table. I picked up the bust at an estate sale and she gets decorated pretty regularly. The rainbow colored fabric was purchased back in 2008 when I went to Ecuador.

I’m starting seeds inside for the garden and they are rapidly outgrowing their space in our living room so I’m very excited for the warmer weather predicted for this week!

This is a recently finished commission of Bozarth mansion, known to old school Zag alums as Waikiki. My cousin got married there two years ago and I was utterly obsessed with their walled garden.

This is a fun and silly self portrait of the artist in her studio, creative juices swirling. Yes, when it is cold, I put my bathrobe over all my other clothes. Blankets just fall off and I’m not willing to accept a snuggy yet. Have I mentioned that I’m looking forward to warmer weather?

Best wishes and health to you all!

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…

A friend posted a photograph of the Monroe Street Bridge on a foggy night and I found it super inspiring. He kindly gave me permission to use it as a basis for painting. The painting below was my first try-4” x 6”, warmer in color with paint colors with more granulation. The painting above is cooler and calmer and 9” x 12”. It is always tricky to keep the energy of a small painting in a large one!

Man, I love the way the paint pigment settles out on the paper. It’s the small things in life!

My last plein air sketch in Spokane for 2020 (so far!). I met a friend at Rocket Bakery on 1st and Cedar at the end of February and drew the Old Public Library (now home to an architect firm) while drinking a strawberry Italian soda with shipped cream.

Now that I’m serious self isolating, I’ve been looking around the house for inspiration as well. This is my kitchen. It is in the center of the house so it doesn’t get any direct sunlight so one winter I lost my mind about how dark the interior of the house was and painted the whole room yellow (Color name: “Bonjour”!). The cabinets are terrible, old laminate things so I spent hours watching ice skating during the Sochi Olympics covering the doors with sunflower themed scrap book paper and sealing it. They’ve held up pretty well so far!

Having more time on my hands means that I’m trying to push myself to try new things that I’ve been putting off-this is a combination of watercolor and watercolor ink. I’m also playing around with acrylic ink and gouache, so more to come!

I hope you are all well during this wild time and that you and your family are healthy. Best wishes from me!

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

This is a 5” x 7” painting of the Spokane falls when the sun has just gone down below the horizon and the Pavilion is starting to light up. With the lack of color in the landscape at this time of the year, I’m clearly digging on dramatic lighting to bring the color!

8” x 10”, Monroe Street Bridge on a slightly overcast winter day.

3” x 5” painting of the Philanthropy Center. I love the warm stone and orange-red roof on these cold winter days and the gnarled trees planted in the median. I actually did this painting AFTER the larger painting below because I wanted to see if I could do most of it wet in wet and have softer edges for mood rather than focusing on the architecture.

8” x 10” painting, done very deliberately. Which do you like better? This one or the little study?

4” x 6” study based on a photo snapped while waiting for a light one evening.

9” x 12” final. I love the granulation in the dark paint!

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!

This is a recently finished house portrait that will be a Valentine’s Day gift to a husband who loves fall.

This house portrait was commissioned by a loving daughter as a Christmas present to her parents!

My version of the Madonna and Child Stain Glass Christmas Display that used to hang on the Macy’s Building. I’m glad they managed to get it out of storage this year, but wish that it was a bit more centrally displayed. It ended up on an apartment building near our Lady of Lourdes. I initially tried to capture the color of the brick wall it is hung on, but I didn’t like how it came out (too dark and muddy for these brilliant colors!), so I cut out the stain glass design and I was so amused by the arch shape, I nearly left it like this.

But, a small arch shape is a bit odd and difficult to display (though perhaps I could think about mounting it on a custom wood panel!), so I glued it down onto a sheet that I painted lime green, drawn from the stain glass itself and to emphasis the brilliant and glowing colors of the stain glass.

This month my column in the Spokane Coeur D’Alene Living Magazine is focused on a painting of the Coeur D’Alene Resort on a beautiful summer day.

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.

Admire snow. Preferably in a warm jacket with a warm beverage. Or even better, from inside.

Go to the Davenport and admire their Christmas decorations and hopefully catch some live Christmas music.

Visit Manito Park to see the Gaiser Conservatory Lights. I recommend a week day if you don’t want to wait outside in the cold. Maybe a hot cocoa at Rockwood Bakery to go?

Wheatland Bank does free carriage rides in downtown Spokane for some old fashioned fun. I love seeing horses on the streets of downtown Spokane and hearing the jingling bells as they clop-clop by!

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!

Other signs of winter and the holidays? Amaryllis for sale at all the grocery stores! I love these flowers. They are so dramatic. I like to track the unfolding of their blooms in my sketchbooks every year. I’ve got all of mine stashed in a dark closet, trying to prep them to bloom sometime in January and I have high hopes that I’ll get at least a couple of flowers out of them, but it is still hard to resist buying an already blooming plant at the store when I pass by!

I did this demo at my last watercolor class to demonstrate how to make something look further away when we were working on landscape and reflections. More water, less color intensity, and softer edges are key!

Here’s another demo from this class, this time also addressing sky. The sky is typically a darker and redder blue up high and gets lighter and yellower toward the horizon (all the dust and dirt and particles in the air). Clouds are way softer than you think and definitely not just white! The colors from the ground below reflect up into cloud bottoms! For reflections, dark objects usually reflect a little bit lighter than they actually are and light objects a little bit darker! There you go! A quick lesson. Have fun!

Now here are my last two holiday shows of the season (You can always find my stuff at Pottery Place Plus and the From Here Store all year round!):

Urban Art Coop’s Holiday Market which is THIS weekend. They have an paid preview night on Friday where you can meet the artists and get delicious nibbles and are open for free Saturday and Sunday. The show is managed by the co-op so if you want to chat with me in person, your best bet is my next show: BRRZAAR, Saturday December 14th at RiverPark Square Mall! Yes, the MALL. Now this was a great show last year with lots of amazing stuff (I bought a print of a giant marmot rampaging through the Monroe Street Bridge whipping the gondolas over his head.) so you should definitely brave the crowds and come!

Urban Art Co-op 3209 N Monroe St, Spokane, WA 99205

Friday- opening night 6-9pm light food 5.00 suggested donation at the door
Saturday- 10am to 6pm
Sunday- 10am to 4pm

RiverPark Square Mall in downtown Spokane!

Snowy Scenes & Holiday Shows!

My painting of the Woman’s Club was the feature of my column in the Spokane Coeur D’Alene Living Magazine this month. These columns are always such a great excuse to go digging around on the internet for the history of my favorite places and buildings around town.

Snow and historic buildings are still on my mind. This is the Fort Sherman Chapel, also known as “The Little Red Church”. It is the oldest still standing structure in Coeur D’Alene! It has been a church, a school house, and meeting area, and now seems to be a popular wedding venue!

Every year I enjoy sending out Christmas cards, though most years they are more “Happy New Year cards” than Christmas because things get so hectic during the holidays. I love to get snail mail and I know I’m not alone in the burst of excitement when I see an envelope in the mailbox that isn’t a bill or ad. This year I am doing a special postcard for people who have helped my art career along the way so, if you have taken a class with me, backed the Kickstarter, commissioned me, helped me show my work or bought over $100 in prints, cards, calendars, etc, reply to this email with your address and I’ll send you a postcard!

This guy is my most recent finished commission-the Liberty Building! The original is 30” x 22” and getting framed right now to be hung on location, but you can get 11” x 14” prints at my next show-CUSTER’S CHRISTMAS ART AND CRAFT SHOW. It is Nov 22-24th down at the Spokane County Fairgrounds. It is $10 to get in but I know there are some $1 off entrance fee coupons still down at the front desk of Pottery Place Plus if you want to grab one. It’s my first year at this show and I’m hopeful that it will go great.

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).

I started by doing sketches on site, trying to figure out proportions and settle on a size for the commission.

I counted windows and was surprised that there were more on one side than on another!

After I got the ok from the patron, I went to my final drawing and transferred it to the watercolor paper and began inking.

Inking is a slow and deliberate process.

A shot in action as I waited for the sky wash to settle down. I tackled the largest washes in the background and the road since I wanted soft edges between the road and the background.

Next the brickwork!

Working my way down.

Full color!

I had so much fun tackling this great subject in a big way. I can’t wait to visit it in its final home! Right now, it is at the printer, so 11” x 14” prints of this guy will be available soon!

Hope some of you can mak it to the show this weekend! It’s always a good time and supports the historic Woman’s Club!