Drawing at Watkins Glen

I recently had a chance to go hiking through Watkins Glen State Park on a couple of different weekends.  The first time there, I was struck by how beautiful the park is.  Everything was so green, and all of the stone paths, stairways, and bridges were so lovely to look at.  Some of the bridges even made me think of some of the scenes of Rivendell in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, like in the photo below.  

I also learned that rain boots would make be a much better shoe decision because of all of the water on the paths from the multiple waterfalls.  The second time I went there, I wore my rain boots and brought my sketchbook to do some drawing.  

Below you can see  two pages from my sketchbook.  If you've never been to the park, I highly recommend checking it out if you're in the area.  

Photos from the Everson Museum 60/60

The 60/60 Show at the Everson Museum went really well last night! I had a lot of fun participating and I think that I will probably sign up for it again next year.  

In order to make sure that I could finish my watercolor painting in the sixty minute time period, I penciled out the picture ahead of time.  I also used masking fluid to block out the areas I wanted to stay white and painted the blue eggs.  That way, I could focus on the browns and yellows for the nest without worrying about my colors bleeding together and turning green.  Sixty minutes goes by fast, so the set up that I did ahead of time turned out to be essential.  

Here is the painting that I made at the show.  It measured approximately 10" x 10".

Below you can see photos from the event as I was painting and the event guests were walking about and watching.

This was my work area.  I had also brought an extension cord and a hair dryer to help speed along the drying process so that I could make sure that I finished the painting in time.

I had a decent amount of tickets in my bucket by the time they were ready to pull the raffle winners.

The raffle winners with my painting.  The woman was very happy that she won, stating that she is a bird enthusiast.  

60/60 at the Everson Museum

Tomorrow, June 20, I will be one of sixty artists participating in the 60/60 Event at the Everson Museum.  Sixty local artists will have sixty minutes to complete a piece of artwork, which is then raffled off in a fundraiser to benefit the Everson Museum.

The event runs from 5:30 to 7:00pm, with the raffle for the artwork occurring at 6:30 pm.  While the artists are creating their artwork, guests are invited to enjoy the complimentary hors d'ouevres, a cash bar, and live music.  Tickets are $30 per person/$45 per patron, and tickets will still be available for sale at the door.

I will be painting with watercolor, but you'll have to come to the event to see what it is!  This event is a new thing for me, so it should be an interesting experience.

Lake Bonaparte - Commission

Last week I finished this commission painting of a family's cabin area on Lake Bonaparte in the winter. The lake was frozen and covered in snow in the reference photo that I was working from.  The final watercolor painting measured 11" x 14".

If you're ever interested in commissioning me to do a painting, just drop me a line.  My availability for commissions varies throughout the year depending on other projects that I'm involved with, but I'm always willing to talk with you.

Cool Angle

I've really grown to enjoy playing with shapes to make designs and patterns in Illustrator.  It's almost like creating a puzzle in reverse, making shapes and colors that fit together in a visually pleasing composition.  

This design is currently available for sale right here in my shop.

The White Whale

It was so nice to have a quiet afternoon yesterday and to get a chance to play with my watercolor paints.  The school year is winding down, which brings with it a whirlwind of events.  The next few weeks are going to have all sorts of things going on for my classroom at school - final projects, preparing for the first annual Night Of The Arts student art show, cleaning the room, etc. - so I'm glad I had a chance to get this image out of my head and down on paper yesterday.

The whole thing was done mostly with watercolor paint and masking fluid (you can see me peeling up the masking fluid in the photo below).  I added some extra texture at the very end in Photoshop.  

This painting is currently available for sale right here through my shop.  It looks particularly good on things like the area rugs and the shower curtains.  

Also, Society6 is having a little "beginning of the summer" sale, so until the end of today, 5/26, you can get $5 off all t-shirts, v-necks, and tank tops!  There is also free worldwide shipping on orders as part of the sale (excluding framed prints, stretched canvases, rugs, and throw pillows with inserts).

The sale ends tonight, 5/26, at Midnight PDT.

Calligraphy Workshop

Yesterday I took a 3 hour calligraphy workshop at the Syracuse CoWorks in the Tech Garden.  The class was put on by Christie from Bedsidesign and it was a lot of fun.  She's going to be doing more workshops, so be sure to check her website for more information if you're interested.

I have no experience with calligraphy, but I love the look of hand-lettering (I have a whole board on Pinterest dedicated to it), so I thought this would be a good opportunity to start learning some new skills.  Eventually, once I practice more and get better at it, I would like to bring more hand-lettering into my artwork and even do some lessons on it with my students in my classroom.

Christie had put together a nice little package of materials for us to use in the class.  For three hours, she walked us through how to make the proper upstrokes and downstrokes to form letters in the Copperplate script style.  We covered lowercase and uppercase letters, and the time just flew by!  It was a great workshop and left me eager to learn more.

I really enjoyed practicing the uppercase and lowercase letters.  My own handwriting is nothing phenomenal.  Even way back in grade school, ages ago, when there was actually a grade for handwriting on our report cards, I could never earn anything past a B.  My handwriting got worse in college when I had to take notes down quickly in classes and lectures (this was just before laptops started becoming more common among college students).

Now that I'm a teacher, I tend to notice a lot of things with my students' handwriting.  Cursive handwriting is largely being phased out at the elementary school level.  There's a good read here on PBS - "Is cursive handwriting slowly dying out in America?"  In general, today's students spend a lot more time using digital devices, both inside and outside of the classroom.  They no longer spend as much time writing as they used to.  I notice this lack of skill in the handwriting of a lot of my students, and even in their manual dexterity when it comes to drawing and painting.  This isn't an across the board truth, as every student is different, but in general I'm starting to notice that it takes students longer to make confident strokes on paper with their pens and pencils.  

I've had several students tell me that they can sign their name in cursive for their signature, but that's about as far as their cursive skills go.  A few weeks back, I had several 10th grade students asking me to write their first names in my own cursive handwriting, which I personally think is severely lacking in form and style, because they thought it was cool to look at.  I think it's sad that students are no longer learning traditional handwriting skills.

Eventually, once my own calligraphy skills get better with practice, I would like to bring some calligraphy and hand-lettering lessons into my classroom.  It's a beautiful skill to have, and I think it's great to expose students to letter shapes that are not made on the computer.

Earth

It's so nice to have some time this week to make a few new pieces of art!  Now that the musical is done and over at work (it turned out great, I'll have to post some photos from it on here), I finally have brain space available to devote to making new art.  

I started this one yesterday, inspired by all of the Earth Day stuff that I was seeing everywhere, and finished it this morning.  I've also added it to my Society6 shop, so it is now available on a multitude of products.  The shop has expanded over the past few weeks to include shower curtains and rugs!  I'm working on going back through some of my older designs to resize them for rugs, but I think it's pretty cool that the option is now available.  

Also, now through April 27 at Midnight PDT, you can get free worldwide shipping from my shop!  The only items not included in the free shipping promotion are throw pillows with inserts (empty pillow cases get free shipping), rugs, stretched canvases, and framed art prints.