Painting Workshop in Wells

I just got back from an amazing four day oil painting workshop in Wells, BC.  It was with Susan Madsen, who's work can be found at http://www.susanmadsen.com.  Yogi came with, as did Rhean (hot pink mohawk life drawing model from earlier post) to puppy sit during the day while I was in class, and to have an adventure.  We took my camper and stayed at the Cariboo Joy Campground.  Interesting spot.  More about that later.  We all had a great time, met lots of wonderful new people, sang around the campfire and roasted marshmallows and weenies.  Here are a couple of the paintings that I did.  I'm now in love with oil paints.  We got back at about 2 in the morning, and I spent my day setting up an oil painting studio in the basement of Greg's building.  I can't say enough about how good the workshop was.  If you paint and you ever get a chance to go to one of Susan's workshops, do it.  It was inspiring, instructive, really well laid out.  Thanks Susan!

Canada Day Air Show and Fireworks

It's Todd's birthday today, but we celebrated yesterday, Canada Day, with a big BBQ at our place.  We had about 18 people for dinner.  Right after we ate, this fantastic little air show appeared right in front of us!  (Just like we planned.  Happy Birthday Todd ;-).  We watched from the deck, then went down to watch the fireworks from the beach.  The people are just starting to gather in this pic.  By the time we went down it was shoulder to shoulder.  Drunk teens, cops, families, jugglers, the entire cast, most with flags or glow in the dark rings around their necks.  The pyrotechnics were a bit weak.  I just kept looking at them thinking 'how would i capture that in my sketchbook?'  At the end Miss Lily (6) looked up and said 'is that it?'  If you can't impress a 6 year old, you're not that impressive.  But, fun was had by all.

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day!
Originally uploaded by sketchalina

I had a great time sketching in Gyro Park on Canada Day.  Yogi was with me, drinking my painting water and standing on my palette (I'm still picking bark mulch out of it), but being good company non the less.  He's still the friendliest puppy in the world.  Everybody loves him (especially me).

Of course right now he's driving me crazy - throwing his tennis ball under the love seat I'm sitting on, then barking for me to retrieve it. 'You're the retriever, Yogi, not me.  Oh, alright, just one more time.'

Dread-Mullet Girl

life drawing june 24 1
Originally uploaded by sketchalinaLife Drawing at the Hermesh House. This model had cool "dread mullet" hair. She had a gypsy, hippie, fruit picker vibe about her that was lovely. I chose watercolour just to push myself to be quicker with it. My mission for the evening was to do more of the drawing in pen rather than pencil, not get all hung up on whether it was 'right' or not, but to be a little more expressive with line. I got a little piece of that, but when we all shared our drawings at the end, I again was blown away by how loose and creative some of the other artists are. Hmmm. I wonder if some of their sketches might just slip into my bag by mistake on the way out the door?! That wouldn't make me a bad person, would it?? ;-)

Seriously, next time? I'm going to loosen up. Promise. More expressive lines, less gripping the pen/brush too tightly. Although, I think there's lots of stuff here that was working for me too. The eyelet was fun. It's always feels good just to be there, playing and in the company of other creative people.

Drawing Demystified

A few pages from the book I'm working on.  The book is called 'On Keeping A Watercolour Sketchbook Journal'.  I'm having great fun making it.  Should be about 20 pages of hand written and illustrated content by the time I'm done.  These three pages make up the section on drawing.  I've just finished the pages on adding colour as well - will upload those sometime soon.

Ecole Entre Lacs

I had the pleasure of being invited to Ecole Entre Lacs for an 'Artist Experience' project they were doing.  They brought one artist in for each student in grade 7.  We had the whole day to spend together, the idea being that we help them to create something along the lines of what we do - our style, our techniques, our materials.  I was paired with a great student who was totally into it.  I picked up a sketchbook and an inexpensive set of paints for her.  We sat side by side and created a couple of sketchbook pages together.  Fun was had by all!  And... bonus - I got to meet some great new artists who were also there working with students.

Silver Lake

Our latest camping trip was to a place called Silver Lake that we heard about from John (Greg's son) and his friends.  It's a little off the grid.  There's a Forestry Education camp there, but no commercial campground, plug-ins or showers or anything.  There are a handful of lovely spots nestled in the trees, a little lake with no power boats on it, and that's about it.  We did a little fishing off the pier, and rowed our lovely new yacht, pictured here, all around the lake.  We're getting the van set up just right - there are some good meals coming out of there - the bed set up keeps getting better, and we've figured out how to make coffee possible in the mornings without having to move too much stuff around.  By the end of the summer we'll be vw camping efficiency experts!