Welcome to Maine…the way life should be That’s the slogan on the welcome sign along the highway where you enter Maine on the coastal route, and I think it speaks to the feelings of most people vacationing in Maine. Wintertime may be challenging here, but summer is magical! I love coming in June. The weather […]
Category: Travel
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 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 […]
Let’s go to Provence!
I have awesome news to share —– I’m going to be teaching in Provence in 2017! When the lavender is in bloom! Can you imagine anything prettier? I’ve been working with the folks at French Escapade, who have years of experience organizing artist tours, to plan our trip. Jackie Grandchamps is the owner of French […]
Highs and Lows
My teaching trip to San Clemente was made up of a series of highs and lows. The highs were: the flowers… the beaches… and my wonderful students at San Clemente Art Supply… The low point was this… Yep, I got the flu while I was in California. I had to cancel my one-day “Sketching […]
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 […]
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 […]
2016 Tuscany Workshop
Imagine yourself wandering through the cobblestone streets of this medieval hilltop village in Tuscany. You stop at a sidewalk cafe for a cappuccino and pull out your sketchbook to begin drawing an ancient stone building across the way. Sip…….look……..paint……..see. This is the way we experience Tuscany, taking the time to meander and explore, or to […]
Day Trip to San Gimignano and Saying Goodbye to Tuscany
It had been a fantastic week at Fattoria Bacio and our final days gave us more of the same. The sunrise Thursday morning was spectacular… and the skies cleared by breakfast time, forecasting a perfect day for our trip to San Gimignano. But as we ate our breakfast, a stealthy fog began to fill the […]
