Sketching with Draw Madison Sketch Group.

We are sketching in a local cemetery.

Another Sunday we met at MaCha tea lounge. Which was a lovely restful place to sketch.

We have been meeting for three years and enjoy getting out and about in the area with good friends. In the next post I will share some of my sketches from the group.

Time flies when you are having a good time! 

Almost one year ago to the day, I made a decision that I needed some time off from posting my art to my blog and to the several art-related lists to which I belong. As far back as I can remember, I have felt a tie to the intuitive side of my brain, of my life. Betty Edward's book, "Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain", had a great influence on how I approached my own art and the art of my children and the children in the classes I taught. Since that time...back in the 1970's, my studies in Early Childhood Development and Education, lots of reading, lots of "trying it out", lots of thinking has taken place. But, a year ago, I wanted to dig deeper, see how I could use this in a broad range of artistic media etc.  I wanted to give myself lots of room to study, paint, draw, and experiment...on my own, without comment, without filtering it through other's views on the matter.
I actually had not planned it to be an entire year, just the spring and summer. But, things have a way of happening and side-roads were followed, health, personal and family, happened and here I am one year later! I have a fat set of sketchbooks bulging, a pile of paintings and canvases, boxes of Zentangle designs and I'm having a ball with it all!
I have no intention of dragging my blog followers though it all, of posting it all, but will just take up where I am now. I will try to comment on various aspects of my experiences as I share new art that relates to it.

These are two paintings I've finished recently.
The first is a mixed media painting on canvas using various papers in collage and acrylic paint.
This was a tough one to get a photograph of because the shine of the acrylics caused glare. Thanks to my husband, Bob Wilson's photo skills, he was able to get a photograph that did not have glare. The blessing of having a resident photographer!

 The second is in traditional watercolor on watercolor paper.
The part that did does not show up  well will have to be imagined...the use of iridescent Daniel Smith watercolor paints on certain rocks, parts of the water and trees to give the scene that "last glow" in the evening light.

When Pears Go Swimming

I'm trying out a new brand of watercolor paints and really like them. They are called Maimeri Blu and are made in Italy. They come out of the tube with an intense color that holds up well to painting with lots of water. Here I used pears as a subject, because that is part of the April project challenge for the Watercolor Workshop group I take part in. Also, I did some playing with effects of spattering, spraying water, dropping in salt and also adding a little alcohol....not all in the same place, but in various spots on the painting.
While this is not quite the fully planned out painting, it does show the "study process" that you need to do to try out new materials.

Lotus

This painting was started from an exercise in intuitive composition I did while reading a book on composition by David Friend. It was started by drawing lines freely on a piece of paper while not looking at the paper and not trying to draw objects.
The next step was to look at my sketches done this way and see what they reminded me of. In this one, I could see a woman sitting and looking down. From there I went on to design the whole painting. It is mostly painted in watercolor, but in some areas white gouache was added to the watercolor paint. Also, in some areas I did a glaze of Daniel Smith Iridescent paints. This is difficult to see on a photo of the painting, but it does give a bit of mystery to the scene. If you click on the painting, you will see a bigger image and some of the iridescent glint shows up. This was a fun process.

Morning Mist at the Lake

Here is another of the projects for the Watercolor Workshop group I belong to. This month we are painting fog and mist. The photo reference we were using had a big clump of trees in the exact middle. So I spent some time rearranging the elements before I was happy to paint it. It was a challenge to paint the atmosphere of the mist and not be tempted to paint the actual trees and lake.

Woman Sitting By a Tree Stump in the Desert

From time to time I like to show art done by my grandson, Benjamin Wilson Feit. Ben loves to paint and to do collage. But, recently he has been making sculptures out of Sculpy. One day this past week a small package arrived at our house from Ben. Inside was this very creative sculpture along with a note from Ben about the sculpture. The note is above, beside the sculpture. By the way....Ben has a great imagination and takes on characters . From time to time he has been one of the Beatles or various other favorites. Right now, he is signing his name as "Bjorn" in honor of one of the musicians in the group: "ABA".

This Old Boat....Needs Some Repair!

This is a painting in watercolor that I did for the January project for the Watercolor Workshop group I take part in. We all paint from the same photo reference, but are free to change, adapt, compose our painting as we want. This was fun as it dealt with an old boat with peeling paint.