My friend Teresa is hosting a garden party in a few weeks. Her gardens are filled with old-fashioned roses, lush perennials, and towering trees. Picket fences, birdhouses, and quirky garden sculptures act as accents, and a beautiful greenhouse built from recycled materials sits in the middle of it all. This won’t be just any garden […]
Category: Sketches
Looking Back
My husband tossed a key on the kitchen counter and said, “I guess we don’t need this anymore.” It was a key for Summerhill, our hilltop home for the past twenty-two years. I picked it up, and a flood of memories washed over me. Sunrises and sunsets, summer evenings on the porch, birthday parties, Christmas […]
Biding Their Time…
Do you remember the beautiful gardens I had at Summerhill? I do. I’m reminded of them every day when I look out the windows of our new house and see nothing but a sea of mud in every direction. The contrast to the views I had last spring is hard to ignore. I remember the […]
Daffodil Days
After a long winter that seemed like it would never end, I had a chance to welcome spring this week at Joe Hamm’s Daffodil Hortus, a daffodil farm set amidst the rolling hills of Washington County, PA. I met up with some of the Summerhill Sketchers for a garden tour and painting session. (Yes, we’re […]
Floral Watercolor Monograms – Part 2
In my last post, I showed you the floral monograms and cards I made for my sister and mother for Christmas. For the past several days, I’ve been putting together a tutorial for you about the process I used to create the monograms and print the cards at home. I’ve taken pictures, scanned images, edited […]
Floral Watercolor Monograms – Part 1
We all know the challenge of trying to find a gift for the person who has everything. How do you find something that’s personal, useful, beautiful, and/or different from anything they already have? Well, here’s a great idea that I came up with for my mother and sister this past Christmas. This project was inspired […]
Step-by-Step Watercolor: Blackwater River Sketch
It was the final afternoon of my painting getaway at Canaan Valley and I had gone for a short hike with my friends Jane and Elaine to stretch our legs and grab one final sketch before the sun set. We found a beautiful spot beside the river, quickly set up our stools, and got out our art gear.
Fall Sketches
Autumn is a great time for sketching in western Pennsylvania. Our fall foliage rivals that of New England, and we always enjoy lots of beautiful, clear, sunny days before the dreariness of late November sets in. Would you like to see what I’ve been sketching this fall in our neck of the woods? Our driveway, […]
Sketches from Alpine Lake
The past few weeks have flown by and, with all that’s going on with finishing up our new house, I’m afraid I’ve fallen behind in posting some of the sketches I’ve done recently. So, I thought I’d play catch-up and show you some of what I’ve been up to. I went to Alpine Lake several […]
“How to Paint a Cheeseburger” + Week 6 Giveaway
Sketchbook journaling is about everyday life. It offers a way to capture moments in time and hold onto them by drawing and painting what you see and experience. And what’s a bigger part of life than food? My everyday sketchbooks and travel journals have food sketches scattered throughout their pages. Some were done at home… […]
