Paint the Pillows, Please.

I'm still very much in love with my Sketchbookery class.

These pillows were happily resting on my friend Joan's patio bench on her deck in Topanga Canyon. I believe she made them. A week or so ago, I spent a day there, soaking in the quiet. It was a little bit startling and fully wonderful.


Since we met 18 years ago, I've being at her home, but often wondered how working in LA balanced with the extra commuting time. This visit it all clicked. It was just she and her beautiful girlie and me, no party crowd. Quiet. At one point in the day, I actually sat in a chair with my head back and fell asleep in the canyon silence. Oh sure, there was the sound of a breeze off and on, but nothing like the sound of cars and people I get floating into my suburban quiet. It was so peaceful.
The pillow picture is a little remembrance of the day and the deck.

What I find myself loving about this sketchbookery way of coming at watercolor, is that I seem to be gaining some facility with the paints without the formality. I'll be so glad to go back later and get the ground-up detail of applying watercolor technique. But right now, Mary Ann Moss has encouraged me to just try to copy all I see. It's a brilliant way to become fearless! It seems that some of the detail is coming on its own.

I love the pillows, the friend who made them and the paint that got them onto the page.

What's making your summer special?

All I need is a good book.

Part of both art classes, Sketchbookery and also the Journey of Letting Go, is making an art journal with Coptic binding.

For my first attempt, I worked with Mary Ann Moss's version, a Coptic watercolor book with a chevron binding.

I'm very happy about the process and the outcome. This is the outside view, of course, made with three inner signatures of hot pressed watercolor paper, bound with bookbinding thread and utilizing a book with a perfect cover but expendable pages.

It's an arduous process for sure. Thankfully, I didn't hear the part about not making the book in one day until I was sewing the chevrons through that binding tape. It's probably best that way. Completion is it's own reward.




When I finished, I shared it with anyone who would look. My clan is supportive, with the greatest supporter, my dear husband, who would like to buy one from my store. (I have no store.)


Later, I kissed all my people goodnight as they peeled off to go to bed and when the last was gone, I went into my kitchen studio area (that would be the kitchen table) and put some paint into the book.

I worked from a picture on my iPad taken of my treasured Hebe plants and christened the first page. It's a working book, a place where I can learn.

Hebes & the Hebe Society

Hebes are beautiful. Mine are just about this color with this wonderful vibrant magenta, and some lighter pink flowers. My friend MaryEllen loves them, which made me notice them all over again. Noticing is good.

It was a rather happy day in my happy little art space.

How about you? What are you painting?

I'm a better cook because I letter

As I've mentioned quite a few times here, I'm enjoying a Sketchbookery class. This week, beyond making a sketchbook or two, we had demonstrations and lots of ideas around lettering. Pam Garrison showed some calligraphy methods. Here's a look at one of her fun designs:

Pam Garrison's wonderful art.

You can find more of her work around the net. But I say, start here.  

The lettering she demoed was similar to this style: 

To see the real lettering you're just going to have to take the class. Take the class!

It's a simple direction. Light on the upstroke, press down on the down stroke. Simple. And so confusing. Especially if you're trying to write in a lettering font style the same way you actually write. I find that I get ahead of myself and the simple instruction confuzzles me rather dramatically. 

So, I stopped. 

And looked at the video again and noticed that she was going slow. Slow. Enjoying the practice of getting the letters onto the paper. (For us to learn.)

I don't know if she goes slow when she's home alone in her art studio. But she demonstrated slow for us chimps in class and I had one of two rather brilliant AH HA! experiences today: Slow allows space for creating. It invites time to just be time which we can take to do what we truly love or want to learn or practice, etcetera, etcetera.

I slowed down and even decided to break the pattern of "trying" and zipping through. (Oh my gosh I know this so well. Why did I forget? When I was seriously working out violin passages all those days ago I went slow, slow, slow before I ever went fast. I know this in my bones.)

I made myself create the upstrokes and downstrokes separately -- breaking the writing pattern and they looked much closer to the demo.

Muscle memory is good. 

I remembered slow. 

And applied it. 

It was fun.

Then I returned to my comfortable artistic home, cooking, and made my kiddos their favorite Saturday Apple Dumplings. 

Taking time. 

Enjoying slow. 

And they really were more lovely than ever.