Okay, I'm in serious denial. This is Florida with temperatures in the high 90's, with hurricanes and tropical storms swirling around us, and we don't see Autumn before December (usually) at the earliest...but why let a little thing like reality spoil the party?!

There will be days when the challenges stack up, left and right.

There will be days when it seems easier just to give into the defeat than to keep fighting.

There will be days when nothing makes sense and the fight seems pointless.

And yet...

There will be days when I remember why I do what I do and why I love what I do. Those are the days I live for. The moments that make up those days are the reasons why I continue to overcome the challenges that would see me give up.

I've recently had a bunch of those challenging days gang up on me all at once. Technology is a wonderful, marvelous thing—until it's not working right, a piece of the system changes or has to be replaced. I use an analogy of a spider web. Wherever a spider web is touched, it is felt all over the web. The bigger the touch, the stronger the vibrations.

My camcorder malfunctioned and I was quite annoyed to learn that the maker considered the camera "obsolete" even though it's only six years old. Of course, in the world of technology, that's a dinosaur. When I switched to a new camera, my lighting setup no longer worked well. More changes. Then there was a memory card malfunction. And if these had the only challenges, it wouldn't have been so bad, but life doesn't work that way. There were other challenges, unrelated to work, going on in the background.

A casualty of those "stacked" challenges was my concentration to write and post to the blog.

There are days when I have to scrape pretty close to bottom before I realize it's not a place I want to be, let alone linger in, and the only way for me to realize this seems to be for me to go there.

One of the things that helped to pull me back up and refill my well was a great class at Keeton's. Since it's been so bloody hot here in Florida (and a lot of other places as well), we worked on painting ice cream in our sketchbooks using stencils for the cone and backgrounds.

And, yes, we had a blast! Below are three of the ladies from class with their gorgeous ice cream cones (everyone chose their own flavors) and there wasn't a calorie in sight.

Marilynn, Mary and Gayle

Once again, it was the healing fun of art, the camaraderie of working with others to learn and create art that seemed to restore a sense of balance to my life.

The challenges are inevitable. To some degree, they're even wanted. How boring would life be with no mountains to climb or obstacles to scale?

And I'm sure there will be more weeks when they all happen at once and yet again, decisions will have to be made about whether to fight or give in.

I'm also willing to bet art will be there to save the day!

How is your (hotter than all-get-out) summer going? Are you painting, sketching or pursuing some other artistic pursuit? Please share in the comments!

Two quick reminders for this week!



An Imaginary Visit To A Tulip Festival will begin this Thursday! We'll be working with all kinds of bright color both close up and at a distance over a field. We'll also play around with all kinds of greens and how to make them interesting. If this sounds like fun to you, come and join me! Please click here or on the class title to sign up!

P.S. As ImaginaryTrips.com will be celebrating six years of creative fun and learning, I am offering this class at a special celebratory price. Check out the link above to find out more!






Next up, if you're anywhere nearby, plan on joining me for a class at Keeton's Office And Art Supply in Bradenton this Saturday, June 25th! We'll be capturing the jeweled wings of the Monarch Butterfly in our sketchbooks! It seems kind of appropriate since today marks the Summer Solstice!

To sign up for this class, please contact Keeton's directly by following the link above!



Hope to see you there or in the Imaginary Realm!

Laying awake last night, I found myself asking the same question over and over.

"How do you stop the hate?"

What would make a young man so full of hate by the ripe, old age of 29, that he would take it upon himself to kill 49 people while leaving scores more injured?

I found no answers. Folks far smarter than me don't seem to have the answers either.

I've watched some of the vigils held around the world to mark solidarity and to remember the victims. I've given money to some of the relief efforts, and yet, I feel...frustrated. Like those few token gestures were not quite enough. Perhaps you've felt the same way?

You may have called your congressman or woman to ask for stronger gun laws, or you've sent a letter or joined in a protest or you may have sat quietly and cried tears for the incredible loss of life. I have.

As I chased this question around and around in my mind last night I finally decided there was something more I could do—I could Pay It In Kindness.

Paying It Forward
Here's my idea—I intend to pay kindness forward 49 times for each of the lives lost. Then I'll pay kindness forward 53 more times for each of those injured. That's 102 acts of kindness paid—deliberately—into a world that seems to have tilted ever so slightly off its axis.

If even one other person joins me, we'll be bring 204 acts of kindness into the world. And if ten of you join me, there will be 1,020 acts. If one hundred people act, that's 10,200 and if a thousand people act, that's well over 100,000 acts of kindness.

Kindness Of Every Kind
There are thousands of ways to be kind. Even the poorest among us can spare a smile or a compliment. It makes no difference if the person knows of our acts or not. Because we know and kindness has a way of making us feel good just as it does the recipient. A few suggestions:

Hold the elevator door...share your umbrella...buy a cup of coffee for the next person in line behind you...help someone pick up spilled items...tell someone how much you like their eyes or their smile...speak kindly when aggravated...take a breath to let go of impatience...tip your waitstaff a larger amount then necessary...let someone in when you're sitting in traffic...give a stranger a flower...let someone have your seat on the subway...smile as you pass people on the sidewalk...stop and visit with an elderly person for a few minutes...tell a child how much they inspire you...give blood...pay the toll for the person behind you...curb your impatience for the person driving slow in front of you...

Maybe, just maybe, if we fill the world with kindness, we'll begin to crowd out the hate that drives someone to harm others.

This Is About The Human Condition
This post is NOT about political party lines, gun laws, alternate lifestyles, religious beliefs, or anything else EXCEPT recognizing we're all in this together and it will take all of us to bring about change. I cannot change the world. You can't either. But we can change ourselves. We can all be kinder and share kindness with those we love as well as unsuspecting strangers.

Please SHARE
I don't usually ask for you to share anything from this blog, but this time, I'm asking you to share this idea with others. Share the graphic at the top of the image along with a link to the post or give it your own spin.

Join me in bringing something good out of the horrific events in Orlando this weekend. 

Thank you.

An Imaginary Visit To A Tulip Festival!

One of the coolest things to happen along my artistic path are the connections I've made along the way. It is odd to me that some of my "closest friends" are people who live thousands of miles from me and I only actually see once in a great while, but then to me, that's the real beauty of the world wide web.

One such connection is Claire McFeely who recently sent me a disk full of gorgeous photos from a trip she took with her family to Skagit Valley, Washington, to the annual Tulip Festival—a place I've always wanted to visit!

Undulating waves of colorful blossoms, kites rising gently over the fields, happy shining faces of the visitors, portraits of delicate tulips lifting towards the sun...and an imaginary visit was born!

I had intended to wait until next April to put the class on the ImaginaryTrips.com class schedule as this when the real festival happens, but I decided I didn't want to wait. This unexpected gift was too bright and colorful and fun to be ignored and we all know artists are hard pressed to ignore any new, bright, colorful, fun thing that comes along!

I invite you to come and visit the tulip festival with me. An Imaginary Visit To A Tulip Festival with start on Thursday, June 23rd! To make this even more of an unexpected gift as Imaginary Trips is celebrating six years of travel sketching, I have included a discount on the pricing of the class. Click here or on the class title to find more information!

Monarch Butterfly on Globe Thistle Ink and Watercolor

The drawing for this piece of art has been sitting on my desk for a while. It took me a while to realize I was avoiding painting it. In its former life, it was a full page sketch with the background mostly abstract containing suggested shapes and lots of greens, yellows, blues and violets.

Meh.

It didn't excite me and it was a lot of space to paint. Especially when I wasn't all that excited about it. (I don't know about you, but if I'm not excited about painting something, I tend to do a lousy job at it.)

After realizing I was resistant to tackling the piece, I began the process of sussing out what the problem was and it was mostly the background. It took up a lot of real estate and it didn't really add anything (IMO).

Playing around with ideas, I scratch out some thumbnails looking for a better overall use of the space.  I was looking for a composition that excited me:
While they're not a lot to look at, thumbnails do the job of visualizing possibilities. Starting at the upper left, I started with a smaller version of the full page, limiting the background and adding a title at the bottom.

I then decided to break the border and put titles at the top and the bottom. I then moved on to putting the title along the right side. From there I abandoned the title idea and put in an erratic line for a border, and—eureka!

I decided to break the border AND put the word, monarch, down the right side, as part of the border.

Once I started drawing the page again, I scaled the box back even more so that butterfly's wings would break through on each side.

That made the stems kinda short and I would have lost one of the leaves, but by leaving them outside of the box, I added a little more interest.

After the painting was done, I decided to add splatters (mostly because I need to camouflage some errant drops of paint). Splatters are an easy way to add energy as well fill in "too" much white space (if that's even possible. I've never had too much white space, but I digress...).

In about half the time it would have taken me to create a full page, I had a page that I not only liked but I'm looking forward to sharing with my class at Keeton's Office and Art Supply on Saturday, June 25th. If you can, please come and join the fun!

Please click Keeton's name to find more info on signing up on the class.

From the Imaginary Visit To Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks class*

Have you ever found yourself desperately wanting to distract yourself from something ongoing in your life and at the same time you're too distracted to do anything for long? 

From the Imaginary Visit To Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks class*

I don't know about you, but every once in a while, life gets obnoxiously tedious with lots of little "events" that I could do without. Things that cause small amounts of stress and worry. By themselves, they're no big deal.

Unfinished Daffs from 2009

But together, it's like being ganged up on and pecked by a bunch of ducks until I'm a bundle of raw nerves. Together, all those events feel huge. Overwhelming.

And that's when I turn to art as an escape.

Back in 2007, when my job was outsourced to another country, I spent 18 months trying to find another. Unfortunately, the economy was in a nosedive and there wasn't much out there. During those months, art became my way of maintaining my sanity.

From 2008

I started sharing my work on this blog and people stopped by to say hello. I found myself with a new community of friends and before I knew it, I was launching Imaginary Trips!

Before I started the trips, I would frequently "run away" to the garden or the kitchen or a coffee shop so I could escape into my sketchbook and away from the worry of trying to find a job in a lousy economy.

What I realized early on, was that I really liked traveling via my imagination! Who knew it would be so much fun. I could go where I wanted, when I wanted and I didn't have to pack a thing!

Imaginary Trips, from the very beginning has been about escape. Sure, the classes are about growing our skills and preparing for a big trip. It's also about going to places we've not been before or are not likely to get to any time soon.

Sometimes, we're not physically able to travel or we can't break from from our obligations and other times, it's not financially feasible.  There are a host of reasons why it makes sense to travel via our imagination rather than in reality.

By going on an imaginary trip, it's possible to control the weather, how long it takes to get somewhere, the circumstances upon which we travel and where we go. We can travel solo or with friends and we don't have to worry about anyone standing around tapping their toe wishing we'd hurry up. There's no rush to get home and we get to sleep in our own beds each night! We don't have to wait for the seasons to change—you can see them all if you want to—on the same trip.

It's also a fabulous way to keep our skills sharp or to continue to grow our skills when we "go on a trip." Especially if I'm preparing for a real trip I have coming up in the future. I find it so much easier to be creative all along rather than to try to get creative right before or during a big trip.

But for me, I think the most important thing about going on an imaginary adventure is that while it lifts me out of my current circumstances, it also allows me control over those circumstances. It allows me to forget about the struggles and worries for those few precious moments I'm in the zone and creating a memory on my sketchbook pages. Stress goes away. Worry melts. Joy comes and infuses the minutes and a sense of balance is restored.

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

If you'd like to join in on an imaginary adventure, please join me for "An Imaginary Visit to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Park" starting on May 12th. We'll explore the rugged mountains, hot springs, abundant wildlife and delicate wildflowers without having to camp or sleep on the ground! Click the class title for more info.

If you're not able to join in an interactive class, take a look over at The Imaginary Realm for independent learning classes. They're the same as the interactive classes without the time constraints. You work at your own pace and you have access to the materials for a year. Click on the link for more information.

Detail shot of the front cover

If classes are not for you, strike out on your own. Pick a location and decide when you're going to go, how you'll travel and who will be traveling with you. Look for information on the internet about where you'd like to go along with photos in the public domain to paint from and build an adventure in your sketchbook.

In my "spare" time, I've started a journal to chronicle a trip to the Lavender Festivals. I've only just started it and I work on it in starts and stops, but the time I spend playing in that journal are so very important to my wellbeing. It's a relief to "be away" from the daily grind.


Your imagination is the limit!

Is it my imagination or has the old-fashioned courtesy of taking your hat off when you're inside gone the way of the unicorn?

We went to dinner with my father-in-law the other night and I was amazed at the number of guys (and a few gals) with hats on. I drew the two gentlemen in the sketch above simply because they were sitting in front of us. It also surprised me to see a guy wearing a purple polo! Go, dude, good for you. 

It started out as sketching practice—and I'm pleased to say I'm improving—before becoming more of an awareness about the hats. You haven't seen the other people sketches because they looked more like aliens. Disfigured aliens. Maybe a few zombie aliens. Definitely not pretty. But highly entertaining.

I started looking around and it seemed over 50% of the male population was wearing hats. I'm sure this is nothing new. It's just one of the many gifts of sketching—it tends to raise your level of awareness about what's going on right in front of you.

Have you had that happen to you? You're sketching a place or a thing and suddenly you're launched down a totally unexpected path of learning because the sketching made you slow down to observe? That's what keeps me sketching. Those unexpected paths that lead me to random, seemingly unrelated learnings...that nearly always comes back into play at a later date.

I especially find travel journaling to be like that. Maybe because my mind is already open to new experiences in a place I've not been before. My left brain becomes a little like a toddler, "Why? Why this? Why that? How come that's green or he's wearing that or she said that?"

The cool thing about my left brain being busy is that it leaves my right brain alone and allows it to do what it does best, draw.

If you're interested in learning more about sketching on location, come and join me for An Imaginary Visit To Sweden, starting on April 7th. We'll be explore the country, its people and history. Click here for more info.

P.S. And by the way, National Hat Day is in January. As far as I know there's no National Ball Cap Day! Happy April!!

P.S.S. I am one spread away from being finished with this no name watercolor sketchbook that has been my purgatory for the last six months or so. Cannot wait to be finished with it so I can get back to my beloved Stillman and Birn sketchbook.