Already sick of the cold? Me too. Let's head to the beach!

Click here the class title the details for "An Imaginary Visit To The Beach!"

Class starts on February 15th—hope to see you there!

Feeling sluggish getting the new year started? Come and join in the fun at one of these classes to help you get back to the joy of creating in your sketchbooks!

Keeton's Office and Art Supply, Bradenton, FL
Saturday, January 13th, 9 am - 12:30 pm

These little, orange balls of sunshine evoke memories in the best of ways! I think in part due to the strong olfactory element and because they're just so darn cute.

Having lived in Florida my entire life and having a host of different citrus at fingertips' reach, I've always taken these fruits for granted. When I first posted the class, I heard some very delightful stories about coming in from the cold and snow to smell these treats sitting in the kitchen as well as the small wooden crates they were shipped in.

Capturing these beauties in our sketchbooks comes down to utilizing not one, but two, white gel pens as well as really working our analogous and complementary palettes. It's gonna be fun, so I hope you'll come and join us this Saturday! For more info, please click here.



Postcards In The Garden, Bok Tower Gardens, Lake Wales, FL
Saturday, January 20th, 9 am - 1 pm

Copyright is serious business.

Many people have their own idea of what's okay and what's not, but every once in a while, someone comes along that has "learned the hard way" just what copyright and Fair Use Law means.

I am sharing this LINK as a scary but cautionary tale.

I go out of my way to avoid using photos or artwork that belong to someone else UNLESS I have written PERMISSION. (I say and bold the word, written, because memories are forgotten or can alter with time. If someone has given me verbal permission but is no longer around to corroborate my story, I may be facing a battle with an heir.)

After reading the sad situation this woman went through, I will be even more diligent. She addresses some concerns I have with regard to sites like Pinterest too. All I can say, is pinner beware!

UPDATE: Here is a link full of info about posting on Instagram and reposting other folks images. It long, but it's worth the look-see.

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous (and legal-nightmare-free) New Year!

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.

From Paint A Festive Poinsettia Online Class

I'm always amazed at how fast the last three months of the year go whizzing by. I start September with the highest of hopes, believing I'm going to get oh, so much done. The next thing I know, I'm staring at the middle of December in the blink of an eye (or so it seems).

Then the pressure starts getting intense...do I have enough time to create a greeting card? What about some hostess gifts? Maybe a few pieces for my Etsy shop?

And then reality intrudes and I realize that once again, I've waited too late in the year to get started. The holiday card becomes a New Year's greeting card, the majority of gifts are store bought and Etsy gets ignored.

Ah, but not this year...or next, I should say!

Paint A Festive Poinsettia Online Class is now open! This class is also part of 'Tis The Season - Year Long Holiday Class over at the Imaginary Realm where you get to choose whether you take one class, three classes, or all of them!! 

Concept art for 'Tis The Season Holiday Class

Poinsettias have been nearly synonymous with the holidays since the early 1900s and because they're such a highly recognized plant, the artist can play with colors, shapes, sizes and it still reads as a poinsettia.

One of my favorite things about this particular plant is the complementary colors of red and green or pink and light green. These colors add a distinctive zing to the artwork that's hard to create any other way! Using an analogous color scheme is another way to jazz up the brilliant jewel tone colors of the leaves.

The Festive Poinsettia class covers drawing your plant on the page, making decisions on what to include and leave out, painting the plant, using your handwriting as fancy lettering and last, how to share your art by making a fun greeting card with a specialty cut and fold to make the edges of the poinsettia really stand out!

So if you're feeling a bit frazzled as you try to come up with an idea for the holidays, come on over and join me at The Imaginary Realm. Just think, this time next year, we'll have created 13 separate pieces of art without the usual stress and strain!

As always, please let me know if I can answer any questions!

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!

My husband is really good at getting rid of stuff—things I don't think I could ever get rid of! In a recent purge, he decided to trash an old notebook/sketchbook. I picked it up and thumbed through and came across the image below:

From Chris' sketchbook, 1998

The page tells the tall tale of a turkey that wasn't too keen on becoming dinner and how he hid behind a tree in relative safety after spotting the mighty hunter behind the blind. Chris named him, "Pokey Pete" as the bird was too smart to going blindly trotting by the funny looking blind.

The page above was Chris' way of passing a long and otherwise boring day waiting for Pete to stick his head around the tree. I always get a kick out of the extra "tidbits" he adds to his pages, both in a real and figurative sense (see the woodpecker's dribbles on his head as an example). And doesn't the turkey look confused?! It somehow makes it all the more real.

After a long, frustrating and turkey-less day, the mighty hunter set up in a new location the next day and was able to bring home a bird. Was it Pete? No way to know, but I like to think he was a little too smart for that!


See you next week!

Laure

Exploring Ideas

Building a sketchbook, or modifying one I've purchased, is part of the fun when I'm planning a trip like Paris 2018. (Wanna come to Paris, too? Click the link!) After all, why wait until the month before we leave to start playing with our art supplies? I'm ready to go now, but since that isn't possible, I can start preparing.

The system I used when I went to Acadia National Park was one of the most successful systems I've used for travel. (You can read about it here.) It involves creating a leather cover and signatures of the pages separately. The signatures are held in the leather cover via elastic bands like a Midori Traveler's Notebook. Once the trip and pages are complete, everything is bound into a permanent book with a nice cover if I choose or I can leave them in the leather cover.

Second Arrangement

I liked the system because I have a lot of flexibility to change the order of the pages and the ability to add in a page if I needed. It also saved a lot of wear and tear on what would be the final cover. One of the other BIG reasons I like doing it this way is a little scary to mention, but this is it—if I should lose my sketchbook or it became damaged, chances are good I would only lose the pages currently in the sketchbook because I won't carry all the completed sections with me each day I'm in exploring Paris.

In the images above, I have stamped out a variety of stamps on paper and then cut them out so I can arrange them in a bazillion ways on top of the paper that represents the overall size of my sketchbook. Until I find the combination and layout I want, I'll continue to push the pieces around.  

Once I discover the winning combination for the leather cover, I will use permanent ink to stamp them onto the leather and I'll share that part of the process with you in case you're interested in building your own system.

Since the trip is still ten months out, I have plenty of time to explore these ideas and make the sketchbook. If I was boarding a plane next week, I'd be going in a completely different direction with either a book I've already made or altering the cover of a purchased sketchbook.

Do you prefer to make your own sketchbook or do you use one you've purchased?