What is it about sunsets that we are compelled to capture their beauty in our sketchbooks or on canvas? Is it the colors, the brilliant light, the fleeting moment that will never be again or is it capturing the memory of the moment?

I think for me, it's a bit of all of the above. There is something poignant about a sunset as it marks the close of a day and all the possibilities it held whether they were capitalized on or not.

The photo reference for this image was taking on the last evening I spent at St. Pete Beach with eight artists back in January of 2015. To say the evening was bittersweet would be an understatement—I so did not want our time to end and yet, it had to.

And while this was not painted that evening, it could have been! You may think capturing something so complex on location would be impossible, but it's not.

It takes some prep work to get the page ready and it takes knowing the steps of breaking down a complex image so that it can be tackled quickly and easily. The other keys are working in a small format along with using select pigments and suggesting detail.

I will be teaching how to "Paint A Fiery Sunset" at Keeton's in Bradenton, FL, this Saturday, February 11th and I hope you can join me! (Please call them to register. Just click on Keeton's to see all the info and the phone number to call.)

But if you're not able to jet into Florida for a three-hour class, you can still learn how...

Introducing "Painting A Fiery Sunset" online e-course at The Imaginary Realm! This class is an Independent Learning Class which means you can start any time and you can keep the video demonstration for one year. The instructions handout is a pdf yours to download and keep forever. You can watch the video as many times as you would like until you get the hang of painting sunsets!

You can sign up for the class by clicking this link. After a few practice runs, you'll be painting Fiery Sunsets in no time and hopefully, some of them will be there in the brilliant light!

Come and join in the fun!

I truly wish studios came equipped with little guardians (maybe a daemon?) that were capable of body slamming and hog-tying us when we started to do something really stupid, but alas, they don't and I did.

It all started out harmlessly enough. I've continued to work in my Winter Interrupted sketchbook from the workshop a few weeks ago and I managed to paint the first sunset painting I've ever liked:

Our Last Sunset Watercolor Stillman & Birn Zeta Sketchbook

And life was good.

Until I went into the kitchen and noticed a really cool texture on some new paper towels we had just bought that looked a lot like a beach towel-ish texture. Well, the brain synapse fired off—beach+sunset+beach towel=brilliant idea!

Yeah, except not so much.

I am FOREVER telling folks to experiment on another piece of paper first rather than commit to your artwork and risk being an unhappy camper. So I did and it kinda worked. I used a blue stamp pad on the paper towel and stamped it on tracing paper. It worked well enough that I decided to go for it.

It didn't work. My page was a much larger area and the towel was drying before I could get an imprint.

I should have just stopped. But oh, no. Nothing quite so brilliant crossed my mind.

(And I had no little guardian to say, "You are on the verge of a colossal mistake. Step away from the sketchbook and no one gets hurt.") 

Instead, I thought, "Hey, I have a stamp with a similar texture!"

Similar but not the same and apparently, the differences escaped my notice.

Our Last Sunset Watercolor with stamping around image Stillman & Birn Zeta Sketchbook

And so I stamped it. Not bad, really, but NOTHING like I had in mind. The lines were too…straight and rigid. I wanted relaxed and flow-y. Meandering, maybe.

Annoyed with my results, I sulked for a while, trying to find a way to make the page work. Not too much later, a new thought struck!

In another moment of sheer brilliance, I decided to add gesso to the offending texture to "knock-back" the blue and hopefully obscure some of the lines.

Only, it didn't really work. (Grumble, grumble.)

So, this time, not in brilliance, but out of desperation, I decided to add some more color…blues, lavenders and grays.

(Do I at least get a point or two for persistence?)

And it sucked! I'm sure you are just as shocked as I was.

Thank goodness for gesso and baby wipes. I removed as much of the color as I could and in doing so managed to smear a bit of paint into the white border around the sketch. Oh, the horror!! I had to fix it!

(What do you mean, "Where's the photo?! I didn't want anyone to see that!)

In trying to fix the smeared paint, I touched the very dark paint and it BLED!

And then I had an even bigger mess.

("Arrrrgh, just shoot me now! Can you not see what you're doing, lass? Stop already before you've completely ruint the thing," pleads the imaginary guardian.)

But did I stop? No. I. Did. Not.

So in my final moment of staggering brilliance—you, in the back, stop with the eye-rolling and chuckles—I grabbed a couple of pieces of tape to use over the sketch so that the paint wouldn't run while I cleaned up the smear AND the bleeding.

And it didn't. The paint didn't run a bit.

But the paper tore and the paint lifted when I lifted the tape.

("For the love of Pete, woman, just...just stop!!" my little guardian would have been screaming at me.)

After repairing the smear, the bleed and the area where the paper tore and where the painted lifted, I was almost, but not quite, back to where I started.

In a quiet moment of admitted defeat, I decided to heed the advice of my make believe guardian and just journal on the page and call it finished before I did something I couldn't salvage.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the only true moment of brilliance I had through the whole, entire process.

The Final Sunset Page

(And if I had said guardian, at this point, his hair ripped out of his head, his voice hoarse from screaming, shoulders slumped, he would have tendered his resignation while muttering something about "bloody brilliant, my arse" as he trudged out the door.)

I think I'm in the market for a new imaginary guardian...

Shoe Spoof from #WinterInterrupted Stillman & Birn Zeta Watercolor, Stamps, Ink

Is that color overload?! Yes? Good!! Mission accomplished.

While we were poking around in the shops of Pass-A-Grille Beach during Winter Interrupted, we happened upon a sign that said "Wild women wear outrageous shoes" that featured a pair of sky-high stilettos.

I seriously doubt my feet will ever see the inside of a pair of stilettos again, but the words still resonated with me because at the time, I was wearing those very shoes you see in the image. In fact, you can see them in the very first image in this post.

No one has to tell me they're ugly. I know it. No one has to tell me they're as comfortable as any shoes I've ever worn either. I usually wear them around the house or out in the yard. Just not in public. But here in Florida, well, let's just say you can wear just about anything at the beach and no one's going to so much as bat an eyelash.

But there's a reason—a very good reason I might add—why I opted to wear these outrageous shoes…back in the fall when we were in Maine, I slipped while climbing on a granite ledge below our cabin. It was slick with silt from the outgoing tide. I did quite the number on my knee and foot.

While they're mostly healed, my foot occasionally takes exception to overuse such as walking around all.day.long at the beach. When that happens, my foot swells and any other type of shoe becomes a torture device.

So, these were the shoes I wore all week long. Attractive? No! But they allowed me to continue to function through the week. Being raised on a strawberry farm as a teenager, I got over "looking cool" many long years ago. It was far more important to be practical and dress to be warm or cool, be able to move without binding or chafing, and to be able to stand on your feet for long periods of time.

There was simply no room for dressing cool for school. Besides, unlike at the beach, there was no one to see me on the farm and those that did weren't part of the school scene.

But I have to say, these shoes have one other feature that makes them perfect beach wear…they float and they dry in a hurry. Perfect for splashing in the water!

As for the color fest above, Florida beaches are nothing if not gaudy with all the bright colors and that was what I had in mind when I indulged in the neon colors! I gotta say, I kinda like it…it certainly chases away the gray days of winter.

Do you wear outrageous shoes?!

Feet and Books from Winter Interrupted

Wow, what can I say?! What fun we had at the beach!

Eight of us spent five glorious days sketching all up and down St. Pete Beach and into Clearwater at Winter Interrupted: An Artist's Beach Sketching Holiday. We sketched everything from giraffes to old gardens to ocean critters to fish shacks!

We spent the day sketching, eating and shopping at John's Pass

It was fun hearing everyone report the weather conditions "back home" each morning as we gathered for the days outing. There was only one day it was warmer in another location pass the Mason Dixon line than it was where we were at the beach even though some of our day's started out kind of chilly!

Imaginary Trips Made Real is the natural extension of the ImaginaryTrips.com online classes. We  put the skills we've learned online into action at fabulous live locations like the beach. But I gotta tell you, the location is secondary.

An afternoon spent in another beach town sketching, shopping, laughing and talking

It is the camaraderie that comes alive on these trips and weaves itself in and around a group of like-minded artists to creates magic: colors are more colorful; the air is a little brighter; the fun a little funner and makes the moment all the sweeter that is most important.

It is positive-uplifting-battery-charging magic that's even better than therapy! Imagine spending a week with people who understand when you come to a dead stop in your conversation as well as the street to take a photo of some adirondack chairs with parrots painted on the back or when you pull out your sketchbook at lunch instead of eating your meal. No explanations were necessary.

We saw adirondack chairs with parrots, flip-flops and ice-cream cones for the back boards!

We shared about ourselves, our lives, our families, and the challenges that we face in that other life we left at home. We laughed until our cheeks hurt and we talked late into the evening more often than not.

Three of the intrepid sketchers braving the chilly winds come in off the Gulf of Mexico

We ogled each others supplies and kits and made notes on where to get those special pens or fabulous palettes.

Yummy, messy, juicy color!

Art and Imaginary Trips Made Real is not just about the pages we fill or the places we visit or the things we learn. It is about the entire experience and maybe most important, about the connections we make to others and I can hardly wait to do it again!

Wave Demo Page

In fact, I'm already looking into the next adventure—I hope you can join us!!

Where would you like to go on a sketching holiday?