Illustrated Watercolor Journaling
I had the pleasure and privilege of teaching a full day workshop on Illustrated Watercolor Journaling at the Killington Arts Guild in Vermont last weekend. I’m always inspired by the creativity and enthusiasm that comes from gathering people together for a day of painting! I don’t usually paint much when I’m teaching, but I started this beet as part of a demonstration and then finished it back at home. I always aim to make my journal pages reflect something meaningful or interesting from my experiences, so I finished the page with some… Read More
November Birches
Like many artists, I want my paintings to turn out well. But that typically means that I sacrifice experimentation for tried and true techniques. Risk vs. Return. At some point, though, I start to feel stale and uninspired, and then I know that it’s time to change the line up and go for risk. Such was the case with painting these birches. Here, I cast off my usual careful drawing and painting style and tested a variety of watercolor techniques. To achieve background depth, I built up layers of color behind the… Read More
The Art of the Croissant
Pastries and painting—what could be better?! I recently enjoyed a lengthy watercolor session with fellow artist friends, one of whom is also a master pastry chef. Making croissants, I learned, is a two-day affair of rolling, layering, folding, and chilling dough—an art in itself, which seemed fitting to commemorate on the page. Fit for a queen, Marie Antoinette is credited with introducing the Austrian kipferl , a crescent-shaped pastry that originated in Austria, to France around 1770. French pastry chefs jazzed the simple crescent to create the croissants we know and love.
Winter Wren
Small in stature, but with an exuberant song that makes up for it, the winter wren is more frequently heard than seen. The song always surprises me— warbled and sweet, it goes on and on, ringing through deep, moist northern forests in Maine where I hear it each summer*. I went to the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven for a reference for the winter wren. On display in its ornithology collection are five species of North American wrens. None is very large, but the winter wren is astoundingly… Read More
Moods of Autumn
I met Connecticut artist Jan Blencowe last week and we headed to Hammonassett Beach State Park to sketch together. The Connecticut coast is on the Long Island Sound, rather than directly on the Atlantic, so there is no surf. Instead, stretches of quiet beach and boulders dropped by glaciers some 17,000 years ago line the coast. Hammonassett also preserves 460 acres of salt marsh and that’s where we headed to try to capture the color and mood of Autumn. The day was bright, but windy and cool. After sketching the salt marsh for… Read More
Life and Pears
The allure of supermarket pears is real: perfectly shaped, beautifully colored, promisingly sweet. Pears grown wild are not like that. They come warped and blemished; who knows what’s inside. Life and pears…not the way they’re supposed to be, but how they are. Sometimes sweet, sometimes rotten. “It’s how we cope that makes the difference.”
Beautifully Poisonous
I found a ring of impressive mushrooms in the lawn outside my son’s apartment in Lexington, Virginia last weekend. It had been raining for several days, which brought on the fall bloom. Curious, I picked these samples, drew them, and then did some research to identify them and learn more. How fun to discover something so beautifully poisonous! I’ve done many pages like this over the years. I love finding something that I don’t know much about, sketching it, taking notes, reading and researching, and combining it all on the page. The result… Read More
Well Protected
Sharp spines, thick shells, noxious odors — the lengths a tree will go to protect its seed! I found these while exploring a local cemetery in my new hometown. Alive among the dead, the American chestnut really caught my attention. Once the predominant tree of Eastern forests, they are a rare find today. A fungus nearly killed off the entire species by 1940. In contrast, the ginkgo is an ancient survivor. Native to China, but planted widely in cities, ginkgoes have been on Earth since the days of the dinosaurs. I had never… Read More
In Between
At Slocum’s River Reserve near Dartmouth, Mass, I found myself drawn to the quiet beauty of the salt marsh on an overcast day— all gold and green, tinged with red. In between land and sea. In between one place and another. There is a silent ebb and flow; life in flux each hour, each day, each season. My time here is a gift at the end of a hectic summer, made possible because I too am in between. This place, painting it, is my own calm between seasons, between moving out and… Read More
Home Grown
It’s very satisfying to grow your own tomatoes. Not just cherry or grape tomatoes, which are fine, but full-sized Brandywines or beefsteaks. While other gardeners have been harvesting their tomatoes for a few weeks, my late-maturing heirlooms are just beginning to ripen. And I suppose that’s good. The slow yield has given me one or two to eat and more on the vine to paint. This page is a bit of an experiment. I recently bought a new fountain pen—a Lamy Safari—and I tested it with a deep blue-gray waterproof ink from… Read More
Drawn In 