Summer Travel Journal Watercolor Classes

I just finished the flyer for my summer classes - painting travel journals plein air.  With so many traveling over the summer, there are six classes offered and students can choose to attend four of the six.  There is nothing like painting outdoors and capturing the essence of places visited.

Breath of Spring

The Breath of Spring classes finished today.  It was a learning experience to paint on regular watercolor paper, Twin Rocker handmade paper, Yupo and Aquaboard.  The students came up with some lovely fresh spring flowers.  These are the four paintings I did as demos.

Breath of Spring classes have begun!

The first of four "Breath of Spring" classes begin this past Monday.  I've never had to scrounge to find spring blooms so much in my life!  After forcing several plants that I bought, we did have some hyacinths and a daffodil blossom.  Now that warm weather is here we should have study material for the rest of the classes.
This is the beginning of my first class demo - to be finished by Monday!

Breath of Spring

It's time to leave snow paintings behind and let the promise of spring inspire florals. Four classes are planned for April - the details are on the form.  We'll not only be painting spring flowers, we'll be experimenting with different surfaces, clayboard, yupo and Twin Rocker handmade paper.

Painting Winter Snow Classes

We've managed to stretch the four week painting winter snow classes to six weeks because of....SNOW!  If any inspiration was needed, it's been all around us.  One of the students said that painting snow was helping her see it with different eyes and even cope with the winter we've had.  We've painted snow on trees, a red building with bright blue sky, sunset or sunrise landscape and tomorrow I'll be teaching how to paint "white on white."  Learning that snow is not just plain white has been a big part of these classes as well as noticing shadows.  As much as I love snow, I'll be ready to move on to the next season for the next set of classes!

Good Morning Moon!

Good morn-ing bright star

Good morning wan-ing bright moon

Good morn-ing dear God.

I woke up early on one of our recent frosty mornings to see a marvelous site.  The crescent moon, the morning star, and a street light glowing orange on a house as the sun was just beginning to rise. The image made me think of an Edward Hopper painting and I wanted to try capturing it in watercolor.

Snowed in? Paint it!

While it's snowing outside, it's a great time to paint snow scenes inside!  I have many snow scene photos I've taken to use as inspiration.  So while it's cozy inside, it's fun to paint scenes that look cold.  I'm also working on a snow pastel painting from the class I'm taking.

Painting swatches of color to experiment with snow shadow colors