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″ […]
Category: Sketches
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 […]
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 […]
Bunnies and Daffodils – Spring is Here!
As I was working on the third lesson for my Intro to Watercolor class this week, I decided to do a step-by-step tutorial for the students to show them how to paint a still life from start to finish. As I cast about looking for subject matter, my eyes lit upon the cute little bunny […]
Sarasota Farmer’s Market
One last sketch from Florida… 5-1/2″ x 8-1/2″, ink & watercolor in a Stillman and Birn Alpha series sketchbook It was too windy to sketch outside on the day I visited the Sarasota Farmer’s market with my sketching buddies, so we snapped pictures and headed for a warm, cozy Starbucks nearby. There, we spread out […]
Fun in Florida!
I felt a teeny bit guilty leaving home when winter storm Jonas was on its way, but I had to go. After all, I was teaching in Florida! 4″ x 6″, ink & watercolor in a hardbound Stillman & Birn Alpha series sketchbook I had an early flight out of Pittsburgh, and since I had […]
Christmas Memories
Our daughter and her children came to help us decorate the Christmas tree a few weeks ago and, as we hung each ornament on the tree, we found ourselves telling Nicholas, 4, and and Callista, 3, the stories behind many of the ornaments. There’s the 50-year old silver glass ball with “Leslie” written on it […]
Thumbnail Sketches – All Dressed Up!
One of the lessons I taught my students while in Tuscany was about using thumbnail sketches to zero in on a scene and test out various compositional options. I suggested using a separate sketchbook page for the thumbnails and later turning that page, with its accumulation of tiny scenes, into a dynamic page in its […]
