Picture yourself sitting in an Adirondack chair somewhere along the coast of Maine, water gently lapping at the shore in front of you and seagulls soaring lazily overhead. The sun is sinking low in the sky and there’s a stillness in the air, as if the earth is holding its breath, waiting for darkness to […]
Category: Sketchbook Journaling
Sketches from Maine – Step-by-Step Iris Watercolor
Merryspring Nature Center is an idyllic little gem in the heart of mid-coast Maine. The day we visited, we had the place entirely to ourselves. There was so much to draw that I found myself wandering around for awhile just taking it all in, waiting for something to “speak” to me. Should I do a […]
Sketches from Maine, Part I
I’ve been finishing up some of the sketches I did while in Maine earlier this summer, and it’s been a lot of fun reliving that special time that I shared with my mother and five students. Three of them flew all the way from California to be there! All sketches were done in a 9″ […]
Road Trip Sketches
When I taught my Maine workshop a few weeks ago, I had to do all the driving to Maine and back – 16 hours each way. I generally don’t enjoy driving on a long trip. It’s boring, exhausting, and sometimes frustrating, like the time I blindly followed my GPS into a traffic jam in the […]
Illustrated Recipe: Mojito Watermelon
Don’t you love when you start seeing those great big bins of watermelons in the grocery stores? It always tells me that summer is almost here. I love having watermelon in season (I never buy it in the wintertime) and last summer I tried a watermelon recipe that has become one of my favorites… 9″ […]
Student Sketches from Boone
I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s behind-the-scenes look at my “Sketchbook Journaling Comes to Life!” workshop at Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff in Boone, NC. Today I’d like to share with you some of the sketches done by my students while we were there. After my big introduction to sketchbook journaling on Monday morning, I started them off […]
My Wonderful Week at Cheap Joe’s
I taught my first workshop at Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff in Boone, North Carolina, last week, and the whole experience was above and beyond anything I could have expected. My mother accompanied me on the trip to Boone, and we enjoyed gorgeous spring scenery the whole way through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, and North […]
Tuscany Sketches + Video!
I’ve been working on painting some of the unfinished sketches from my teaching trip to Tuscany last fall, and I’ll be sharing them with you as they’re completed. It’s getting me in the mood to go to Italy again! This page was drawn during a day trip to the tiny hilltop village of Certaldo Alto, […]
Spring Wildflowers Sketch
Something pretty to brighten your day…a hillside covered with wildflowers near Prosperity, PA. Woodland carpet of wild blue phlox, 5″ x 3-1/2″, watercolor in a Moleskine sketchbook I just couldn’t pass them by without stopping to sketch. I always tell my students that sketchbook journaling is all about sketching what makes you say “Wow!”, what […]
Spring Break Sketches
After a winter of traveling to teach workshops, I finally had a chance to go on a trip just for fun. I traveled to Florida a few weeks ago with a friend to visit my friend Judy, who lives near Bradenton. All of us are sketchers, so we enjoyed having a chance to paint a […]
