The Arts & Culture Fest was uplifting, inspiring, and motivating. I worked on these two portraits, chatted with complete strangers about my art, and enjoyed showing friends and family around my booth. It was an amazing experience to be in a public space, working alongside other artists. It's a little intimidating to let other people watch me work, but so refreshing to share my art and myself with others, instead of being isolated inside my kitchen studio all the time. I can hardly wait for next year!

Arts & Culture Fest - Oct 15, 2011

Looking for something to do on October 15th? Come check out the 6th Annual Arts & Culture Fest at Market Creek Plaza. I will be doing a live painting demo from 12-6pm, adding to my series of female backs. The festival is free, and there will be music, dancing, food, and plenty of art. It's a great event for the whole family. Here is the link for more info: http://www.artsandculturefestival.com/

Matisse Room Collages

These are the collages my students did while studying Matisse today. I am so impressed with their creativity and their desire to make something beautiful. We never even got to the second project. They worked on these for almost three hours, and it shows!

Upside-Down Jelly

Meet the Masters

I took a break today to do some sample projects for art camp. Basically I spent all day in an elementary/middle school art class...so fun! I can't wait to explore the works of O'Keeffe, Picasso, the Renaissance, Matisse, and Klee with the kids.

More Color

I think these two are done...time for some more sketches. I picked up some kids' books from the library with great reference photos, so hopefully that will help my process.

Color

When I was younger, I hated water colors. They take a good deal of planning, precision, and patience. Since I saw all three of these disciplines as cramping my style, I buried my watercolors in the back of a drawer somewhere. Then a friend introduced me to watercolor pencils and they were the perfect compromise between my beloved drawing tools and the tedious paints. With the jellyfish, I am trying on a technique called glazing where one color is painted on and allowed to dry and then another color is painted lightly over the top. I'm having a lot of fun exploring and I even dug out my old set of "grown-up" watercolors this afternoon.