Paris Poppy Pastel

On our artist trip to France in 2010, after landing at Charles de Gaule airport,  we had a couple of hours to wait at the Gare d'Austerlitz before heading south to Gueret.  We were jet lagged, full of breakfast pastries, going on adrenalin and decided to take a walk around the neighborhood.  To my surprise (I should have investigated this part of our trip!) two blocks away, we stumbled on the "Jardin des Plantes."  It is the oldest botanical garden in the world.  The sun was shining, the bees were literally buzzing like droning drums, the whole view was absolutely breathtaking.

We all took many photos of the site trying to capture the essence of beauty we were seeing.  The contrast of the orange and white poppies, the blue forget me nots and the other flowers was spectacular.  I painted a little scene in my travel journal but never got around to creating a watercolor painting.  I decided this flower garden would be great study for a pastel painting in the class I'm taking.  I do think I'm falling in love with pastels!

Here is the watercolor I painted in my travel journal.

Art and Spirituality - Playing in the Spirit

Art and Spirituality - Playing in the Spirit!

I'm looking forward to an opportunity to facilitate a two hour session on art and spirituality at a day of renewal on April 13th.  A reporter from the local paper wrote a wonderful article about the event that you can see if you click on this link.

http://www.jconline.com/article/20130315/LIFE07/303150014

Tippecanoe County Courthouse

It's always nice to have an incentive to paint something.  The Indiana Lawyers Association is creating a collection of all of the county court houses in Indiana.  Our county decided to have the local artists paint the courthouse for a competition.  The winning piece will enter the collection, the other pieces will be auctioned for the benefit of CASA.

When I was creating the mural for Friendship House last year, I took several photos of the court house so I had material for studies for the painting.

It seemed like a natural thing to paint on the wonderful hand made paper from Twin Rocker that is only 10 miles up the road from Lafayette.  So Steve and I made a trip up there a couple of weeks ago to buy some full sheets of watercolor paper.  This week I started the sketch and today I decided was the day to begin painting.  This is where I am at this point.  Now I need to live with it for a few days making observations with a critical eye to see if the painting tells me it needs something more.

The deadline is a month away - plenty of time to be ready!

Playing with Paint

This week I've been playing with paint on a couple of fun pieces.  The squiggly design is almost a zentangle. I say almost because a zentangle is supposed to be a contiguous line with no ending or beginning, kind of like a labyrinth.  Since this is my first, and I'm still learning, there are some stopping points, but I'm learning.  I created this one at my first Wabash Valley Watercolor Society meeting here in my new area in Lafayette, Indiana.  This is something to do again!

The 2nd piece is a fanciful colorful collage of skirts painted on different weights of watercolor paper.  The under paper is also filled with line drawings of skirts and lightly painted.  I wanted to get the feeling of too many skirts to be contained in the mat.  Fun.

Sometimes you just want to play with your medium and try something different! Here is a great web site demo of creating zentangles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-d2UdXAD7k