A year ago, before the pandemic became real, I was invited by the Tampa Regional Artists to do both a demo and a workshop for artists in their group as well as anyone visiting the Tampa area. 

Along came a virus and this all went up in a puff of disbelief. 

Fast forward a year, and we are moving forward with both the demo and workshop, but it will all be online and the best part? 

You are invited to join the fun! 

The class demo will be held on Thursday evening, May 13th, during the monthly meeting online (non-members are welcome!) and the class will be held the following Saturday, May 15th.

Because we are not actually getting together on location, the class will be based on photos from the area around the TRA art center as if we were. The area is a mashup of beautiful old houses (many on the historical register), some of which have been converted to businesses, old oak trees, gardens and if you walk several blocks, Tampa Bay. 

The class will focus on working quickly as if you were really on location, the benefits of working quickly, embracing our quirky styles and handling those pesky mistakes that are bound to happen!

Sound like your kind of visit?

Click here to learn more about TRA.

Click here to learn more about the demo. Non-members are welcome!

Click here to learn more the class and to get registered!

 As I've mentioned on social media and in prior posts, I've been in the throes of trying to convert my "storage unit" back into a studio. It has been interesting, challenging, annoying, and an adventure!

Part of what makes this situation so interesting is finding all the cool things I've bought over the years...you know what I mean, all those have-to-have-it-right-now-art-supplies because you took a class or saw a demo online. The problem with this is I've already moved on to the next-new-thing-bright-thing or life interfered and I didn't have time so I set them aside. Out of sight, out of mind! 

The challenge to finding all these fun toys is you want to stop and play with them RIGHT NOW. But if you do that, you don't get anything done in the studio. Well, you might. I don't. So I have to rein myself in and keep me on task. Much grumbling can be heard from outside the door.

Other challenges include figuring out ways to organize and store all the goodies in a way I can find them when I want them without having to dismantle half the studio to get to them. When I go looking for ideas out on the internet, I often find "pretty pictures" of magazine-cover-worthy studios. They're all color coordinated and every.single.thing.has.a.basket. They're gorgeous. But I cannot help and wonder about the function. 

While I like pretty things, what I like/want/need most is a studio that is going to function for me and the way I work. If a solution isn't exactly pretty, but works like a charm, count me in! If it's pretty, but is a pain to use...it's not going to last long. This has turned out to be a daily, ongoing challenge with the storage unit/studio and probably always will be. 

Did I mention annoying? Yes. I did. 

So you might be wondering what could be so annoying about cleaning up the studio...oh, let me count the ways! There's the annoyance of discovering you have seven rolls of certain kind of tape because you couldn't lay hands on the rolls you'd bought in the past and thought maybe you had imagined buying them. There is also the "what-was-I-thinking" purchases that make absolutely no sense at this stage. In some cases, I don't even know what project I had in mind!

But I think the biggest annoyance, or maybe I should say the one that is bugging me most today, is finding a piece of artwork I thought was finished, and finding it's not done. At least, it's not now because I've grown as an artist and when I look at it, I see ways to improve it. Then the debate begins: do I fix it or do I put it in the drawer with other completed works and go on with organizing the studio. The key thought here is, "I'll come back to it when the studio is finished." The problem with that thought is the studio is not likely to ever be finished!

Much time is spent considering what the right thing to do might be. Finally, in the case of the Easter eggs, I decided it would be worth it, mostly due to the timing of the holiday, to take time away from cleaning and organizing to make the changes. Another reason I decided to go for it is because I had set the piece to the side and I bet I've come across it three, maybe four times now and had the same debate with myself. Make a decision, would you?!

So...ta-da! I sat down last Sunday (which has become known as "Studio Sundays" and is always said in a deep, masculine voice from the Monday night football games on national television) and worked to finish this piece. It took a little over an hour as I stopped several times to make sure I was liking the changes. After I felt it was finished, I scanned it and then filed with the rest of my completed pieces. 

From there, I added the finished artwork to my Zazzle shop, Painted Thoughts Studio, as a greeting card and showed it on social media. So despite the delay of working on the studio, I managed to get at least one thing finished and added to Zazzle so it could live on outside of the studio! Not too bad for a few hours time.

Now, onto the next 394 million pieces of paper that need to be sorted, organized, stored and/or finished! 

Every once in a while a page goes so completely wrong, as in completely, utterly and totally off the rails, that it might have never ever been on the rails to begin with!

That's what happened with the page above. I used the stamp shown below with a very light colored stamping ink. The ink was pigmented and for some reason, the detail turned into undefined blobs. It was impossible to make heads or tails out of and never mind reading any of the words. It was like the ink melted like ice cream does! It should have looked like this, but lighter:


Instead, it looked icky. The only parts that were recognizable were the wings and part of the brush.

It's in my everyday sketchbook* (which I show in this video) and I had to decide if I wanted to try and salvage the page, cover it up with another sheet of paper or maybe gesso over it. I was pretty sure I couldn't just ignore it.

*My everyday sketchbook is the sketchbook that goes everywhere with me and that I use to capture happenings from my days. I seldom work everyday in this journal as that isn't realistic for me. I create when I have something I want to remember, that speaks to me.

As I said, ignoring the page wasn't going to work. It was too hideous. So that left covering it up or salvaging the page.

Since I figured covering it up with another piece of paper or paint was going to be my last effort, it was time to begin the salvage effort. My thinking was that if the salvage effort failed, I could buried it.

Due to the lightness of the ink, it was actually easier to convert the design into something else than I expected it to be. If it had been dark ink, I probably wouldn't have been successful.

Because most of the ink melted in the thicker areas of the wings, I decided to use the shape of the heart to distract from that. Then, because I could make out a few details of the wings, I added those with black ink. The brush was more of a suggested blob so I created my own. The circles were more blobs so I used paint to hint at the shapes.

Last, I add a whole lot of color to the page and finished up with a washi flake of the bird.

I had also added a quote underneath the map washi tape at the bottom of the page before I realized I had misspelled not one, but three words (are you beginning to sense this was not a happy creating time for me?!).

Rather than fight with fixing it, I opted to cover it.

I was about done with the whole mess at this point.

While I'm not thrilled that my page came out NOTHING like I wanted it to, I am thrilled that I was able to salvage it without resorting to another piece of paper to cover it up and start over.

What have you botched lately?

Two upcoming classes this week are just chocked full of fun tips, techniques and tricks to get you journaling in no time!

Beach Art Center
The first one is going to be at the Beach Art Center over on Indian Rocks Beach this Thursday, 7/12, from 1 to 4 p.m.

We're going to be painting staghorn coral, learning to incorporate values to create depth, adding in a quote and suggesting texture. Sound like your idea of great way to spend your Thursday afternoon? Come join us! For more info and to register, please go here. Class info is on the right side of the page, midway down!

Keeton's Office & Art Supply
This coming Saturday, July 14th, we're gonna be doing a little (sea) horsin' around! Summer is made for bright, happy colors and this project has them in spades!
The white design over the top along with the bubbles floating in the background really push this over the top and make it lots of fun to create.

We'll be working with making washes interesting by mingling color on the paper as well as how to quickly create the white design with the seahorse's body.

Last, we'll add some lettering to finish the page.

To come and learn how to create your very own seahorse, please click here. Please call Keeton's at 941.747.2995 to register!

Hope to see you there and if not, I hope you're keeping your brushes wet and the pages, full!

While drawing round ornaments is very fun and satisfying, especially when we add in all the gorgeous details with a little bit of gold and glitter, after a while it can be great fun to explore other shapes and sizes. Using a little creativity and imagination, we can expand on the basic circle to make more exotic shapes!

To do this tutorial, you'll need:

• a circle template OR assorted bottle caps and jar lids in a variety of sizes
• pencil
• tracing paper
• permanent black pen
• watercolors
• eraser

Optional:

• gold gel pen
• white gel pen
• Other metallic or pearlescent pens and markers

Steps:
Draw a straight line on your tracing paper. This is your base line.
Choose a circle on the template or bottle cap. Resting the bottom of the circle on the straight line, draw a circle.
Then move either to the left or right and draw a second circle the same size. See example.
The further apart the circles, the more of an "oval shape" you'll get. Experiment with the width of the combined circles to see what you like best. Add a small rectangle and a circle for the top and you have your first ornament.

In the next example, choose a large circle or lid and again, using a straight line as your base, draw one half of the circle. The circle will be divided in half vertically.
Now move the template or cap and draw the other half so that it overlaps the first half as seen in the image below. Another way to do this is to draw one large circle on the tracing paper and then cut it in half. Overlay the edges until you are pleased with the shape. Tape the edges of the paper to hold the shape.


Make sure to use the straight line as your base to keep the sides even in length.  Add a rectangle, circle and string at the top and you have your second ornament!

One variation on this is to deliberately offset the second half so the "circle" is wider at the top than on the bottom. Play around by moving the template or cap around to get different shapes and lengths.







Moving to a more complex image, let's try stacking the circles to make a longer ornament:
After starting with the double circles like we did in the first example, I added a second row of three circles (second image). I then added a long spike. The second row of circles and spike are the same height as the large circle. This helps to keep things in balance, but it would be easy enough to go much longer with the spiked shape if you wanted to play.

In the last example, I used a row of three circles to get an extra wide ornament. I then added a second row of circles and the long spike shape. Last, I added another circle as a "dome" over the first row of large circles.

There are any number of combinations of shapes you can come up with with a little experimentation!

Let's Add A Little Paint

Since the ornaments are all drawn on tracing paper, turn the paper over and trace the outline of your ornaments onto the watercolor paper. Experiment with different arrangements by drawing thumbnails to quickly see what you like. Avoid drawing all the ornaments the same size and at the same level on the paper. I opted to split my ornaments into two groups to balance my page. Overlap the ornaments for more interest:
Next, paint around the ornaments with clear water and drop in some green watercolor paint. Keep an eye on the edges to keep them soft, as if they're fading away. While the paper is still wet, drop in other colors if you like.

Study a real bulb for ideas on where the shadows fall and where the highlights and lowlights are:

Notice how the lights are different on the frosted red ornament and harder on the shiny bobbles but they all have soft and hard lights in the shapes.

Playing around with color is half the reason I like painting ornaments so I dropped in red orange and pink. I used a granulating violet in the shadowed areas and left white skips for my highlights.

The way the image looks at the moment, it looks like the long ornament is in front of the smaller one. It takes a few tricks to move it to the front of the red ornament!

On the right side, I used cobalt teal blue and violet to paint in the ornament. I left the strip and smaller circles bare until the painted dried and then went back and added orange. I again used violet as my shadow color.

To make the two ornaments on the left look like they were overlapping, I painted the smaller ornament over the large one as if it were not there. After it dried, I added in the details in white pen on the larger ornament with a permanent ink. Once the ink dried, I washed over it with same watercolors we can see in the small ornament.


Technically speaking, there should be swirls on the backside of the smaller ornament, but I found out the hard way the ink in the metallic gel pen was not permanent and there was no way to add the swirls without lifting paint so I opted to leave them out.

If you've enjoyed this tutorial, I invite you to check out the free tutorial, "How To Sketch and Paint The Eiffel Tower," as well as "'Tis The Season Holiday Class" (just click the class title for more info!). We'll be creating awesome holiday art all year long and you can do as little or as much as you want based on the class option you choose.

And once again, I'd like to take this moment to send my wishes for the season's best to you. I hope your holidays are fun, happy, healthy and full of those you love!

January is right around the corner and what better way to start the year off right than in our sketchbooks with some sweet, orangey fun?!

Clementines seem to hold a special place in many folks' hearts as I've already had several memories and traditions shared with me since announcing this class. In part, I think it has to do with the smell of these sweet jewels that evoke strong memories and thoughts from childhood.

Capturing these on the page require not one, but two, different white gel pens! One is opaque and non-permenant and the there is semi-opaque and very permanent. The combination makes it easy to capture the look of the clementine sections on the paper.

I hope you'll come and join me at Keeton's in Bradenton, Florida, on Saturday, January 13th! Just scroll down to the appropriate date to view all of the details.

It's entirely possible, maybe even probable, that I have all things Paris on the brain these days since I'll be going to teach a Travel and Art Workshop there in October 2018! And what could be more Parisian than the Eiffel Tower?

Along with having Paris on the brain, it seems I have the holidays on my mind as well and what could be more fun than rendering the tower as a gingerbread cookie?!

French tradition calls for placing special treats into a shoe or shoes left by the fireplace. However, I couldn't make up my mind on what kind of shoe to have, so I went back to the traditional stocking instead. Once I chose the stocking, it seemed only fitting to fill it with delectable treats, art supplies and useful things for a trip to Paris (maps, passport and boarding passes)!

Then I decided you all needed to share in the fun and joy with me. So I created a FREE TUTORIAL over at The Imaginary Realm!


The Tutorial also serves as a free preview of the holiday class, 'Tis The Season, where we'll be exploring a holiday theme each month through 2018. If this sounds like fun, you can find more info HERE.

I hope you will come and join the fun, both in Paris and the holiday class!

If your follow me over on Instagram, you will probably want to skip this post as it is a wrap-up of the competition I entered over at @raileurope. Rail Europe is sponsoring a contest for two creative people to take a trip via rail over Germany and Switzerland. Their #talesonrail2017 closes today and the winners are to be announced in the next two weeks.

To read the Instagram post, click here

To read the Instagram post, click here

To read the Instagram post, click here

To read the Instagram post, click here

To read the Instagram post, click here

To read the Instagram post, click here

To read the Instagram post, click here

"If you don't [keep that travel journal], you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."

Click to enlarge

Every once in a while, I spot a new art toy that I just know is going to recharge my flagging art energies and it happened when I saw the Field Artist 4" Square Watercolor Art Journal!

I just knew I was going to love it because:

• It's small. At only four inches, it fits in the palm of my hand when closed. 
• It's square. I've been having a love affair with squares for many long years and I am almost always captivated by something squared, especially if it is not usually found in that shape!
• It's a watercolor journal and that always makes me happy. 

By elevating the ordinary by paying attention, we can make it extraordinary!

A-n-t-i-c-i-p-a-t-i-o-n Spread, completed Stillman & Birn Zeta, 7 x 7 inches Ink & Wash

The idea of stepping out into the world where anyone might want to take a peek at the pages in our sketchbook can be daunting. Especially if we're new to the idea or at the beginning of developing our skills. Of course, this make an adventure like An Imaginary Trip Made Real To England seem huge, but it's not!

It boils down to performance anxiety. We're afraid of disappointing ourselves and others. What would we do if we went and then couldn't get anything worthwhile down on the page? Eeeek!

Let me ask this: if you were doing a speech in front of 150 people, would you wing it or would you write and practice your speech for days, if not weeks, in advance? If you decided to run a 5K race, would you wait until the day of the race to start building your endurance? Of course not!

My friends, sketching is no different! It takes practice, a willingness to leave our comfort zones and a sense of adventure. 

To begin conditioning yourself means starting to sketch NOW. Today. 

And that's where things like a-n-t-i-c-i-p-a-t-i-o-n pages come into play. For me, anticipation pages began as a way to practice and psyche myself up for the "big event." Eventually, I realized that I kept creating them because they gave me a great deal of enjoyment. I like the build up of excitement before the actual trip.

By doing anticipation pages, I "knock the rust off" of my skills if I've been lazy about sketching on a regular basis. When I create pages in my home environment, I try to work from life, but sometimes that's not possible. Since I don't have any chickens, I went to the computer for inspiration. I worked from the screen rather than printing out a photo. Same goes for the soccer ball.

I had a champagne cork so I used that as my model, but I didn't have any cheese rolls lying around, so it was back to the computer. This time, I found out what cheese rolls looked like and then drew them in the composition I wanted for my page. The umbrella and tea cup were my own and I drew from life to strengthen my eye and hand coordination.

Taking It To The Next Step
While you're definitely in training when you're sitting in your kitchen sketching away, working outside of our normal work area, is an entirely different experience and one that should be practiced as well.

When I first decided to sketch on location, I waltzed out the door and went to a town about twenty minutes from me. The downtown area was full of interesting old buildings and mostly deserted on a Sunday morning. I was making sure there was no one about, but it didn't matter, I still failed spectacularly! I had not yet discovered a new mindset.

Since working on location totally blew my mind, I decided to begin again with baby steps—I started in my kitchen. I would pull a chair away from the table and draw something with my sketchbook in my lap. I sketched and painted whatever was outside the window or I'd set a leaf or pot of flowers on the window sill and draw.

After a while, I became bored with this set up and went outside and drew in my backyard. My backyard's not all that exciting so it didn't take too terribly long before I decided to go to the park and sketch. Sure, I chose an area where I wasn't likely to run into anybody, but I was still getting out there. I eventually went into town to sketch and then a restaurant and so on until I conditioned myself to sketch anywhere. Not all sketches were successful, but the training was!

I would occasionally gather up my courage and go sketching around a bunch of people in a busy location. Sometimes it worked out and other times it looked like a rabid squirrel had scribbled all over the page. My nerves would get the best of me and I'd panic.

But you know, I survived. And with each attempt I became a little stronger, a little gutsier. I also realized that most people have no clue what I'm doing. They don't notice. They're too busy with their own dramas to be worried about me and my little sketchbook.

There's also something about interacting with people, by choice, that lends another layer of patina over the whole experience. Most folks that stop and talk to you, who want to see what your doing, want to be like you. They want to be brave enough to sketch "out in the wilds." They want to be creative. Just listen to them. You'll hear it in their voices when they speak.

Changing Your Mindset
When sketching in the wilds, it requires a different mindset than sketching in familiar [safe] surroundings. First and most obvious, is the amount of time we'll have. When we work in our homes, we can work as long as we want [in comfort] on something, usually while working from a photo.

When we're on location, we have a much more limited amount of time and we must adjust our expectations to match the amount of time we have as well as the current skill level we possess.

Rather than viewing the time limit as a bad thing, use it to challenge yourself to see just how much you can get done on location. If you're not getting much down on the page, start looking for ways to work quicker. This usually means leaving out details or suggesting them rather than meticulously recreating them.

Another big change to consider is this: if you don't get finished on location, you can always take a quick snap with your phone and use it for reference later. Knowing you can take a photo helps to reduce the amount of pressure we place on ourselves to get the page finished in one sitting. Sure, that's the long term goal, but we're in training and that goal will be met eventually.

Last, it's a sketch. It's not a mini-masterpiece! When we're on location, dealing with the elements, the light changing, people walking around and other distractions, sketching becomes a mini-adventure within the bigger trip! It takes on a life of its own that becomes an indelible memory that queues up every time you look back at your sketch. And I will share a secret with you...even lousy sketches still serve as a great portal back to the moment in time where it was created!

So instead of postponing a marvelous adventure like An Imaginary Trip Made Real To England until "you're ready," go ahead and sign up today! Then start training for an adventure unlike any other. Challenge yourself to sketch something each and every day. Even if it's for just 15 minutes a day, you'll have logged over 30 hours of practice before we leave for England!!

And remember, once we're in England, you'll be with likeminded people and I'll be there by your side to help you create a sketchbook full of great memories!

How do you prepare for a big art trip? Any "training tips" you'd like to share that help you move past fear?

Bonfire Sketch, Stillman & Birn Zeta Softcover, 3.5 x 5.5 inches, watercolor and ink Click To Enlarge

This past Saturday night, we had a bonfire at my sister-in-law's house. She had a huge oak to fall recently and it took down the old playhouse. Between the stump and the wood from the playhouse, there was plenty of wood to burn.

It happens to be spring in Florida and the trees and grasses are blooming themselves silly. Since I am an "professional level" allergy sufferer, I had taken plenty of allergy medicine before we left to go over, but I knew the smoke would be an aggravating factor in keeping my allergies under control.

After we roasted hot dogs over the open flame, I opted to retreat back from the fire and sit on the lanai. This gave me the view you see in the spread above. I was about thirty to forty yards away and I could not help but notice the way the Spanish moss dangling from the trees seem to pick up the light from the flames and sparkle.

This prompted me to pull out my sketchbook and begin drawing.  My husband's aunt and uncle showed up with a bottle of Disaronno (yum!) and it seemed appropriate to add it to the page. Those pesky people were added because they kept wandering on and off the "stage."

The gal on the far right was one of the last to arrive and the fire was burning quite hot by the time she attempted to roast her hot dog. Her stance was created from trying to get close enough to the fire to roast her dog without roasting herself!

The whole thing was sketched in low-light conditions and I even started adding paint while sitting there. I finally realized I was having a harder and hard time seeing what I was doing and I was going to need better lighting conditions to finish up. I still needed to add the lettering and fire sparks.

It was until late Sunday evening that I had another chance to work on the spread. I had painted the tree, the stump and the fire the evening before, but after being away from the spread, I could easily see I needed to go darker. Much darker!

My other challenge came in trying to show the heat of the flames against the night. Everything was actually very warm in temperature—the surrounding background, trees, sky and ground.

I opted to make the background much cooler by making it a dark blue with violet and burnt umber added in. I kept the ground around the stump, the tree, moss, fire and light being cast by the flames as warm as I possibly could to building up contrast between the to temperatures. I showed a slight hint of grayed green to indicate the grass.

Last I added in the headline on the right page echoing the same colors as the flames. The added text at the bottom was just the date and reasons for the bonfire in the first place. I have to say I wasn't at all sure of how this would turn out when I began the page, but I am so glad I did as I enjoyed the evening immensely!

There are few things better than good food, good friends, a roaring fire and my sketchbook!

Having fun playing with a squishy sweet Valentine's message for my honey! I used a Molotow masking pen to create the lettering and then watercolored over them. I added a bit of shading using Faber-Castell PITT pens to the first and last words.

And of course, Ms. Moby had to get her nosy self in there too!

In a recent conversation, an artist shared she had just purchased a pre-filled watercolor palette and it only had one green pigment. Not only did it have only one green, she confessed, she didn't even like the color. She explained it was a very "fake green" not found in nature and she didn't think she could paint a garden whether it was her own, a cottage garden in England or a botanical garden like Selby.

Since she was new to art journaling, she was not ready to spend a lot of money on tubes of paint she wasn't sure she'd ever use. I get it. Setting up a custom palette can be an expensive undertaking when you go with quality grade watercolor pigments and it requires a commitment to invest in costly supplies. (If you're looking to try top artist grade paints without the big outlay of cash, consider an ImaginaryTrips.com palette here.)

Does this mean she (or you) can't paint a garden if you only have one green pigment on your palette and you don't even like the green?

Absolutely not!

A Simple Exercise
To learn more about the green pigment(s) on our palette, we need to have some organized fun! We need to play with all those pretty colors to see what happens when we start mixing them together. I say organized fun because we want to be able to replicate any successful mixes easily. and to do that, we need to make sure we label each and every mix. If we mix with abandon, we may or may not know which pigments combined to give us that fabulous now color.

For this exercise, I used a palette of eight pigments by Yarka White Nights or Gamma brand.

Step 1. Choose a shape and draw it out on a piece of tracing paper in pencil. Flip the paper over and trace the lines several times with pencil. I chose a leaf since I was playing around with greens. The shape itself is not so important as long as the shape can easily be divided into two parts and the shape is large enough to allow ample room for playing. (My leaf was approximately 1.5 inches long by 1.25 inches wide.)

Step 2. Either on a piece of watercolor paper or on a page in your journal, trace several shapes using the tracing paper as transfer paper. I scattered the leaves around the page, but the shapes could just as easily been in neat and tidy rows. I found it more entertaining to scatter the shapes.

Step 3. Choose a green pigment and paint it from light to dark in one leaf or shape. (Example 1) This is the base color and should be labeled as such. This shows how dark the pigment is when fully saturated as well as how light it is when it is diluted with water.

Example 1

Step 4. Choose another leaf and select one color to mix with the base green. The first color I chose was yellow. At the bottom of the leaf, I painted a small spot of green and a small spot of yellow so I could look and see at a glance the two pigments I used to achieve the greens within the shape. On the right side of the leaf, I started with the green at the top of the leaf and then the second color at the bottom. I let the two paints touch and mix in the middle of the leaf without help from me. This allows for both pigments to retain some of their original characteristics as well as to combine with a second color to make something new.

Step 5. For the other side of the leaf, I mixed the pigments together on the palette before painting the mix onto the paper. I call this homogenizing the paint because you eliminate most, if not all of the original pigments' personalities to form a new color. Because I was attempting to create greens, I pushed the new mix towards green whenever possible. I also lifted the paint on this side while it was still damp because sometimes the mixtures were more pleasing when they were not fully saturated.

Step 6. Once I ran through the eight colors on the palette, I started mixing two pigments to make green. I mixed yellow and blue to see what type of green I could make. Since I only had one yellow pigment, I then moved onto creating with three pigments by adding a touch of orange to the yellow to make an Indian yellow before mixing the color with blue and with green.

Other combinations I used were yellow and brown mixed with green, blue and violet mixed with green, red and yellow with blue...all in pursuit of finding pleasing green mixes.

Oh, What You Can Learn
Every mixture you create is not going to make a pleasing green, however, it may make a gorgeous gray or a moody black or a rich brown! Just because it didn't make green doesn't mean the new mix is not useful.

Look closely at the areas where the paint was lifted while it was still wet to determine if there may be a useful color not the paint is not at full strength. Make note of any combinations you dislike so you'll know to avoid that combination in the future. If there were any combinations that were especially pleasing, draw out a few more shapes and explore them further using more or less of each pigment to find out the range of the two or three pigments when combined.

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!
Many greens available on the market and in pre-filled palettes today are mixtures of greens and yellows. Occasionally, you'll find a green mix with orange, white, blue, or even violet pigments.

When you throw blue into a green mix that contains orange, what do think will happen? It will most likely turn to a grayed green as orange and blue are complements. If you have a green that has yellow in it and you add a bit of violet the results are likely to be gray as well.

Is it bad if it makes a grayer color? Oh no! Think about a foggy morning when everything is shrouded. Those grayed greens come in handy for shadows, foggy and overcast days.

Some palettes give you the composition of the pigments used to create each pigment and some do not. Even if the information is not provided, you can often tell if a pigment is a mixture depending on how it mixes with the other colors. Use this knowledge to avoid making mud!

Label, Label, Label!
Create a legend for your page if you create a page of mixes. Be sure to include the palette you were using as well as a small example of each pigment in its pure, unmixed state. Make notes as to which side was mixed and which side the paint was allowed to mix on the paper. I find dating the page to be helpful also. This information can be invaluable later when you're sitting in the meadow in England and want to paint the leaves of a Early Gentian.

And just so you know, there are few things more frustrating than going through old mixing sheets and seeing a mix you really, Really, REALLY like and you have no idea which pigments were used to make it. I'm sure you can guess how I happened to come by that experience! Don't be like me—label, label, label!

Last But Certainly Not Least
Just as this works for green, this exercise will work for any pigment on the palette. The exercise can be very handy when you're considering adding a new pigment to the ones your existing palette. If a pigment does not mix well with over half of the pigments I use on a regular basis, I typically will not add it to my palette as I know I won't use it.

As you begin exploring the pigments on your palette, I think you will quickly find there are far more possibilities than you thought possible. The time you spend playing with the pigments NOW will pay huge dividends later when you're out on location.

Up Next...
In the next post in this series, we're going to take what we learned in our mixes and start applying it to creating a garden!

Part 2 can be found here and Part 3 can be found here!

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!

There is a great deal of peace and serenity to be found at Selby Gardens in Sarasota, FL, and I found myself in need of a place to unwind and decompress after my whirlwind experience at the Suncoast View show. Selby was the perfect place!

What was even better was running into two of the artists who sometimes join me at Keeton's for classes. They even had their kits with them!

There was a light breeze coming in off from the bay that kept things nice and cool. I walked around for a few minutes just soaking in the ambience before pulling out my Stillman and Birn sketchbook. This is the Zeta version and it's their smallest softcover size at 3.5 x 5.5 inches, closed. It's perfect for small bags and pockets!

The sketches above were all done on location, but with a two-hour drive in front of me, I chose to add the color after I arrived at home. (It was only when I went to paint this that I realized I had not finished the tree that went with the really odd bloom at the upper right side—it looked like it was ready to strike! I didn't even take a photo! I must have been distracted!:)

I will be teaching a two-day workshop there in March, Painting Postcards in the Gardens, and we'll have a chance to explore this phenomenal place together in our sketchbooks—I hope you can join me! I will be returning in April for a second class as well.

Please let me know if I can answer any questions and I hope to see you there!
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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!