5-Day Sketching Workshop

Work on location with Laure at Jekyll Island, see live demos on sketching birds, dolphins, beach treasures, native flora, fauna, the inescapable beach kitsch and more! You’ll receive a full color handout with step-by-step instructions on many of these subjects PLUS one-on-one feedback and help on your work.

The workshop will start each day at 9:30 a.m. and finish up in the late afternoon, leaving you with plenty of time to strike out on your own for a little exploring, relaxing, shopping or whatever your heart desires!

Jekyll Island

One of the four barrier islands along the coast of Georgia known as the Golden Isles, Jekyll Island has a long but quiet history. Guale and Muskogian Indian tribes once made their home on the island before it was discovered by Europeans in 1510. Eventually, the English gained occupation. The island was home to a number of plantations. 

In the late 1800’s, a plan was created to turn the island into a winter playground for the wealthy. Members joined the Jekyll Island  Club of one hundred patrons and began building “cottages.” These mansion-sized residences were the homes of the Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and Pulitzer families. They played and vacationed on the island up until World War II. 

After the war, the island was eventually bought by the state and the Jekyll Island Resort Club was opened in 1985 as a luxury resort hotel.   

For more information on Jekyll Island, please click here. For more information on the club, please click here.

Our Visit

Each day will have us exploring the island with time in the historic district, visiting the beaches, spending time with some turtles, enjoying the Mosaic Museum and nearby areas. 

We will be capturing these  visits and more in our sketchbooks so we can enjoy them long after we leave the island. 

Activities Galore!

Whether you’re into kayaking, hiking, walking, birdwatching, or simply soaking up the warmth of the sun, there’s plenty to do on the island and in the nearby areas of St. Simons and Brunswick!

Want To Join The Fun?!

Please click here to learn all the details and to download the Registration Form! As always, I hope you can join me as it's going to be soooo much fun! Please let me know if I can answer any questions. 

My recent walkabout was to decide whether it was time for the blog to quietly fade away or to stay with it. The joy had been missing in the process. I kind of felt like I was saying blah, blah, blah. Repeatedly. 

It seems that I missed posting, but maybe not as much as I expected to. For now, I am committed to seeing it through to the end of the year and then I'll decide worth to continue.

One of the things that inspires anyone to continue doing what they do is interaction. That's why we post our art in forums and groups over on Facebook, Doodlewash and Instagram. I'm not sure if those outlets will ever completely replace blogs, but they've certainly pulled blog visitors away and every blogger I've spoken to lately says that comments (interaction) are way down.

So perhaps it's time to let go of an outdated mode of communication. I'd like to hear your thoughts as to whether you read blogs or catch all of your favorite artists and friends through other social media. (I would do a poll, but Blogger, in their infinite wisdom, has deleted that particular gadget so you'll have to leave a comment!)

For now, let's talk about the fun stuff...

New Classes!!

There are several new LIVE classes coming up, one at new venue (on the beach!!), so I'll take them in date order:

Their unusual pattern on the bell as well the tentacles make this a great deal of fun to capture on the page. We’ll be using watercolors as well as watercolor pencils to create this beauty!

The cost of this class is $35. To register for this class, please call Keeton’s at 941.485.2533 or visit their website here. Please scroll down to June 9th to find all the info!

Indian Rocks Beach Art Center
June 23, 2018
Beach Art Center
Indian Rocks Beach, FL
9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Art On The Rocks - Beach Treasures

Come and join Laure Ferlita for an introduction to Art Journaling with watercolors, pen and ink! Starfish exist in every body of salt water around the world with over 1,500 species! They can live up to 35 years in the wild and they can have up to 15 “arms.”

Using granulating watercolors along with a bit of coaxing from the tip of the brush, Laure let the paint do the work of creating the starfish’s texture. Adding the pen work helps to create a polished look to the page.

You’ll receive a FREE eight-page watercolor journal, permanent black pen and a mechanical pen that’s yours to keep as well as step-by-step instructions on how to create the vibrant starfish and add the lettering. 

I will be doing a series of six more classes at the Art Center throughout July, August, and September. For class information, please click here. I will add more info at this location as it comes available.

The cost of the first class is $38. Following classes will be $25.

Please visit their website here to register once for all classes information is made available.

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I hope to see you at one of these great venues for some art journaling fun! 

One of the artists who is frequently in class made the statement, “I understand things better when I can hold them in my hand,” and she’s absolutely right. It is often easier to translate a 3D item onto a piece of paper once we understand how it is put together by holding it in our hands...but how do we hold a wave in our hand? It’s not possible!

What is possible is to look at a wave from different angles and see the shape it takes from those angles. Once we begin to understand a little of the shape, it becomes easier to adapt what we’ve learned to other viewpoints. By working in gray values so that color does not confuse us, we can learn the shape of the waves:

From there, we’ll need to work out the paint colors needed to replicate nature’s colors. You might be surprised to learn that we only need a handful of colors and among them you’ll find orange and yellow as well as violet! Below are some of the paint mixed used to create the final wave at the bottom of the post:

Last, we’ll put together what we’ve learned and we’ll create our wave in four steps. In the first step, we create just the basic shapes. In the second step, we’ll add shading to form the depth and volume of the wave. In the third step, we’ll adjust values. In the fourth step, we’ll add the “icing” which is the details of foam using a white pen. Each step builds one upon another to give you the final portrait of a wave breaking:

By studying shapes from different angles and understanding how a wave is formed, it becomes much, much easier to create those shapes on paper! I hope you can join me!

I hope you’ll come and join the fun of painting Anatomy of A Wave on Saturday, January 14th from 9 am to 12:30! Please note, to register for this class, please contact Keeton’s directly. Their number is 941.747.2995. They're located at 817 Manatee Avenue West in Bradenton, Florida.

UPDATE: For some folks, there are two small, blue boxes with question marks in them showing just above the first image and just below the last image. For some reason, I am unable to delete them. Only three images should be showing in the post regardless of those little blue boxes. My apologies for the confusion!